Yo I did not expect so many people to like ts.
Anyways wusgood.
---
The sword dissolved.
It didn't dissolve immediately, the edge went first, the light started dimming from the tip inward like a candle being pinched. Then the weight left his hand completely. His fingers were empty and the rain was hitting his knuckles and the man on the ground wasn't moving.
Ren stood there.
The alley was quiet. The woman was gone. She'd run at some point during the walk, while Ren followed the third man, his attention fixed on the crawling, the sobbing piece of shit, and the wet concrete. She'd gotten up on shaking legs and disappeared into the street, and he hadn't noticed.
Noticing her wasn't what his brain was doing.
The first two men were gone too. Crawled away while his back was turned. Completely, stripped, stumbling into the dark. They'd be back in the world by morning, two men with no powers and a memory of a courtroom that nobody would believe if they described it.
The third man was at his feet. Face up. Eyes open. The rain hitting his face and running into his open mouth and he wasn't blinking.
No wound. The Executioner's Sword didn't cut or stab, never left marks. It just ends you in one touch. The body was intact. Uchida Kengo looked like a man who'd laid down in the rain and decided not to get up.
Ren looked at him for a long time.
He was waiting for something. Guilt, maybe. Horror. The weight of having just killed a person landing on his shoulders the way it did in movies, the shaking hands and the thousand-yard stare and the slow realisation of what you'd done.
It didn't come.
The binding vow sat quiet in his chest. He searched for the lie and there wasn't one. He had killed this man and he believed it was right and his cursed energy agreed because his cursed energy couldn't agree with something he didn't mean.
The hollow part of him, the thing that had been empty for months, the space behind his eyes that Isaac had noticed and his mom had felt and Midoriya had tried to reach, it was warm. Like a room that had been cold for a long time and someone had finally turned the heating on.
He stood there for several minutes. The rain fell. The konbini light hummed at the corner. A car passed on the street beyond the alley without slowing.
Then he put his hands in his pockets and walked home.
---
The walk was strange.
The same streets, the same buildings, the same vending machines glowing in the dark with their same drinks behind the same glass. But it all had texture now. Detail he hadn't registered in months.
The rain had a smell. Wet asphalt and ozone and something green underneath that might have been the trees in the park two blocks over. He'd walked past that park a hundred times since the binding vow and never once noticed the trees smelled like anything.
The sky was changing. Not sunrise yet but the black was softening at the edges, turning grey-blue in the east, and he could see the exact line where the night ended and the morning was coming in. It was the kind of thing you only noticed when you were actually looking.
He was actually looking.
He walked through neighbourhoods he knew by memory, past houses with dark windows and cars with wet windshields and a cat sitting on a wall watching him with the unbothered patience of something that had never once questioned whether it mattered. He looked at the cat. The cat looked back.
By the time he got home the sky was light grey and the first birds were making noise. He let himself in. Took off his shoes. His jacket was wet. He hung it on the hook and went to the kitchen.
He sat at the table with the wobbly leg and ate a rice ball from the fridge and it tasted like a rice ball. It no longer tasted like nothing it tasted like food that someone had made and that he was eating and that had a flavour and a texture and a temperature and all of those things were registering in his brain for the first time in weeks.
His mom's alarm went off upstairs at six. He heard her get up, heard the bathroom door, heard her footsteps on the stairs. She came into the kitchen in her robe and stopped when she saw him at the table.
"You're up early."
"Couldn't sleep."
True.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah." He looked at her. Actually looked. "Yeah I am."
She stared at him. She was looking at his face the way you look at something you'd lost and found again in a drawer you'd already checked three times.
"You look... brighter," she said. Careful. Like saying it too loud might break it.
"I feel brighter."
She smiled. It wobbled at the edges but it was real. She came over and kissed the top of his head and went to the stove to start breakfast and her humming was louder than usual.
Unbeknownst to Yui her son was a murderer.
But she kept glancing at him over her shoulder. Quick looks. The kind she thought he didn't notice. Her son had been disappearing for months. Fading out behind his own eyes like a light on a dimmer. And now, overnight, between dinner and dawn, something had changed. He was back. The warmth was back. The presence she'd been reaching for and missing was suddenly right there at her kitchen table eating a rice ball at 6 AM.
She was happy. She was relieved.
She was also his mother. And mothers who had spent four months watching their sons turn into strangers didn't stop being afraid just because one morning looked better.
She didn't ask what changed. She wanted to. She could feel the question sitting in her mouth like a stone. But asking might break whatever this was and she wasn't willing to risk that. Not yet.
She made breakfast. He ate. She watched him eat and the watching felt different from how it had felt for months.
More like hope.
Hope with a knot in its stomach.
---
Monday.
He woke up at six and actually wanted to get out of bed instead of negotiating with his own body about it. He ate breakfast with his mom and when she asked how he slept he said "well" and meant it. He went to school. Tanaka-sensei was doing review for the term exam and Ren answered a question without being called on and the answer wasn't a blunt critique of the system, it was just an answer. Tanaka-sensei looked at him like he'd grown a second head.
At lunch he ate on the roof. The sky was still grey. The bento was good. He noticed it was good.
After school he met Isaac at the gym. Bench press. Isaac was coaching from the side, clipboard in hand, talking about scapular retraction.
"Your bar path is cleaner today," Isaac said. "Like noticeably cleaner. What happened?"
"Good sleep."
"Since when does sleep fix your bar path?"
"Since today apparently."
Isaac squinted at him. Then his face changed. Not the suspicious squint. Something softer. "You look different."
"Different how?"
"Like someone's home." Isaac paused. "That sounds weird. But you know what I mean. For the last few months you've been... away. Right now you're here."
"I'm here," Ren said. And he was.
They trained. It was the best session in months. Not because the numbers were higher but because Ren was present for it. He felt the bar in his hands. Felt the weight. Felt the effort.
After the session Isaac high-fived him and said "same energy tomorrow" and Ren said "yeah" and meant it.
---
Tuesday.
He studied for three hours in the evening. He read about prosecutorial discretion in Japanese courts and actually found it interesting instead of necessary.
His mom was in the living room. The TV was on. He could hear it from upstairs, low volume, the evening news. He wasn't paying attention until a word caught his ear.
"...unidentified man found deceased in an alleyway in the Matsuda district early Sunday morning. Police report no visible signs of trauma. The cause of death is currently under investigation. The victim has been identified as Uchida Kengo, age forty-one. Authorities are asking anyone with information..."
His mom's voice from downstairs. "That's near the laundromat. Kenji, did you hear that? A man died in the alley by the laundromat."
His dad's voice, muffled, from somewhere in the house. "People die, Yui."
"Don't say it like that. That's two blocks from here."
Ren looked at his laptop screen. The cursor was blinking on a paragraph about burden of proof in circumstantial cases.
He felt nothing.
The information that a man he had killed was on the news entered his brain and his brain processed it the same way it processed the weather.
He went back to reading.
His dad came home at the usual time. Stood in the doorway of his room.
"You're studying."
"Yeah."
"You look less like a corpse than usual."
"Thanks, Dad."
His dad almost smiled. The corner of his mouth moved about two millimetres and then retreated. He went downstairs.
At dinner his mom made katsudon. The victory dish. She didn't say why. Her son was sitting at the table with eyes that had something behind them for the first time in months and she was celebrating in the only language she spoke fluently.
But she was watching. Still watching. The brightness in him was real, she could see that, she could feel it across the table. And that was what scared her. Because she didn't know where it came from. Things didn't just get better overnight.
Not like this.
Something had happened.
She pressed her hands flat on the table after he went upstairs and left the warmth there and it was relief and fear in equal measure and she couldn't separate them anymore.
---
Wednesday it started fading.
Not all at once. He woke up at six and the getting-out-of-bed negotiation was back. Not as bad as before.
Like a door that had been open was slowly swinging shut and he could see the gap narrowing but couldn't reach it to hold it.
He went to school. Answered a question in class. The answer was fine but the wanting to answer wasn't there. He'd done it because the routine said to, not because the impulse existed.
At lunch the bento was good. He knew it was good. He couldn't feel that it was good.
Thursday was worse. The texture was going. The smell of rain, the taste of food, the feeling of the bar in his hands at the gym. All of it dimming.
Isaac noticed.
"You're away again," he said. Quiet. Not coaching voice. Friend voice.
"I know."
"It was only two days, Ren."
"I know."
Friday. The hollow was back. Maybe seventy percent. But he could feel it sitting behind his eyes again, the familiar absence, the room going cold because whoever had turned the heating on had left and taken the warmth with them.
He sat at his desk that evening. Laptop open. He read the same paragraph four times and retained nothing.
He went to bed at nine. Lay in the dark. Stared at the boot-shaped water stain.
Sleep didn't come.
At 11:30 he got up. Put on his jacket. Went downstairs. Shoes on.
He walked.
---
Friday night.
The streets were quiet. He took a different route than last time. East instead of south. Through the residential blocks past the school, past the park where the trees smelled like something a week ago and smelled like nothing tonight. Past a row of closed shops and a ramen place that was still serving two drunk salarymen through a window.
He walked for an hour.
Two people arguing outside a bar about money. A teenager skateboarding under a streetlight. A stray dog eating something from a torn garbage bag.
None of it was enough. He felt the hollow pulse at the argument outside the bar, a faint warmth, and then it faded because two drunk men arguing about money wasn't justice. It was noise.
He went home. Lay in bed. Didn't sleep.
Saturday night.
Different route. Longer. Through the commercial district where the bars spilled people onto the sidewalks. He walked for two hours. Passed a fight outside a konbini. Three guys, one of them had a weak emitter quirk that made his fists glow. Using it in public. Technically illegal. Technically a crime.
Ren stood across the street and watched.
The hollow pulsed again. Warmer this time. His cursed energy stirred, reaching for something, wanting to move. He could open the domain right now. Put the guy with the glowing fists on trial. Unlawful quirk usage. Judgeman would convict in thirty seconds.
But the guy was drunk. His friends were pulling him away. The other two were walking off. Nobody was hurt. Nobody was in danger. The crime was real but the weight of it wasn't enough. Wasn't significant enough.
IT WASN'T GOOD ENOUGH
He wasn't looking for technicalities. He was looking for something that deserved it.
Someone that deserved it.
That thought landed in his head and he heard it clearly.
He went home.
Sunday night.
He went further than before. Past the commercial district, past the residential blocks, into the part of Musutafu that the hero agencies patrolled less because the property values were lower and lower property values meant fewer taxpayers meant fewer complaints meant fewer patrols. The logic of a system that protected money, not people.
The streets were different here. Darker. The streetlights were spaced further apart and some of them didn't work. The buildings were older. The alleys were narrower.
He walked with his hands in his pockets and his hood up and the cursed energy humming under his skin and the hollow sitting behind his eyes like a passenger waiting for its stop.
He heard the sound from two blocks away.
An explosion, small, followed by breaking glass, followed by a sound that was either a wall collapsing or a body going through one.
He turned the corner.
A convenience store. The front window was shattered. Glass on the sidewalk. Smoke coming from inside. A figure standing in the doorway with a quirk that was actively burning, flames curling up both arms, licking at the door frame.
The cashier was on the floor behind the counter. Face down. Blood pooling from underneath him, spreading slow and dark across the white tiles. He wasn't moving.
There were two other people inside. Customers. A man and a woman, backed into the far corner, the man holding the woman behind him. The fire was spreading across the ceiling. The register was open and empty. Cash scattered on the floor near the doorway, some of it burning.
The figure in the doorway turned. Male. Late twenties maybe. Eyes that were too wide and too bright, the kind of eyes that belonged to someone who had stopped caring about consequences a long time ago. Not the wild panic of a first-time criminal. The flat, practiced calm of someone who had done this before. His arms burned. The flames weren't natural, they were blue at the core and orange at the edges and they pulsed with a rhythm that matched his heartbeat.
He saw Ren.
"The fuck you looking at? Walk away, kid. This doesn't concern you."
Ren looked at the cashier on the floor. At the blood. At the way it had stopped spreading because there wasn't enough pressure behind it anymore. At the two people in the corner with the fire above them getting closer.
He looked at the man in the doorway with the burning arms and the too-wide eyes and the calm that came from practice.
And for the first time since Wednesday, something warm moved through it. Something that felt like waking up. Something that felt like the heating coming back on in a room that had been cold for three days.
Ren smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.
And then he—
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