MHA: Lust Quirk

The text came during sixth period.

Present Mic was doing vocabulary drills and Kaminari had just been forced to pronounce "onomatopoeia" at full volume for the third time and the class was still laughing when my phone buzzed against my thigh. I didn't check it. Aizawa had a policy about phones during class that involved confiscation and a lecture nobody wanted to sit through twice.

After the bell I pulled it out. One message from Mina. Four words.

"We need to talk."

No emoji. No exclamation mark. Four words and a period.

Mina had never sent me a text with a period in it.

I put the phone in my pocket. Kaminari was saying something about the cafeteria special and Kirishima was asking if I wanted to come to the arcade this weekend and I said "maybe" and "yeah sounds good" and none of the words connected to my brain because I was doing arithmetic. Ochaco had left my apartment yesterday morning. She'd said she was going to tell Mina. Mina had sent four words and a period.

The result was in my apartment.

The walk home was twenty minutes. The train was crowded. A kid with a Quirk that made his ears glow green was standing by the doors and his mother kept pushing his hat down over them. The hat kept sliding off. The ears kept glowing. By the fourth time I was watching for it and the kid caught me looking and grinned and his ears glowed brighter.

I got off at my stop. Walked the three blocks. The convenience store cat was in its spot. Different cat than last week. This one was orange and missing half an ear and it watched me pass with the indifference of an animal that has decided you are furniture.

My building. Third floor. The hallway smelled like someone was cooking curry two doors down. My door was unlocked.

I opened it.

Mina was sitting cross-legged on my bed. Arms folded. She was still in her school uniform, the blazer unbuttoned, tie loose, sleeves rolled. Her bag was on the floor by the desk. Her shoes were by the door, lined up neatly, which was how I knew she'd been here long enough to calm down from whatever she'd been feeling when she arrived, because Mina only lined her shoes up when she was thinking.

She had a key. I'd given it to her three weeks ago. She'd put it on a pink keychain shaped like an alien head and I'd said "why an alien" and she'd said "because I'm pink and not from here" and I'd said "you're from Chiba" and she'd laughed for a solid minute.

The doorframe had five dents in it from yesterday. She hadn't noticed them or she'd decided not to mention them. Her gold eyes tracked me from the door to the middle of the room. Black sclera. No grin. Her mouth was a flat line.

I dropped my bag. Sat on the floor across from her. Same spot Ochaco had sat three nights ago. The distance between the floor and the bed was less than a meter. Her knees were almost touching mine.

"Uraraka told me she likes you," Mina said.

Her voice was level.

"I know," I said.

"She told me over tea. At the cafe. After fourth period." Mina unfolded her arms and put her hands on her knees. "She sat across from me and she ordered matcha and she said 'I need to tell you something about Ryo.'"

"Ochaco."

"Yeah." Mina looked at me. "She used your first name. That's when I knew it wasn't just 'I like him.' That was a 'we already happened' first name."

I didn't look away. "Yeah."

"And you..." She stopped. Her jaw worked. Her fingers curled on her knees and the pink skin on her knuckles went a shade lighter. "You and her."

"Yes."

The word sat between us. The curry smell from the hallway drifted in. Gerald was on the ceiling above the desk, motionless. The fridge hummed.

"I knew," Mina said.

I stared at her.

"Your heartrate changes around her." She unfolded her legs, put her feet on the floor, sat on the edge of the bed. Closer now. "I can't hear it like Jiro can. But when we're close, when your chest is against mine, I can feel your pulse. And it runs different when she's been near you. Faster." She looked at her hands. "After the gym. When you came to my room that night. Your pulse was already up before I touched you. You'd been with her."

She meant the sparring session. The gym floor. Ochaco's wrists pinning mine. Mina had been in her dorm room when I showed up that evening and she'd put her head on my chest while we watched something on her phone and she'd felt my heartrate and she hadn't said a word. A month ago.

"I've known since the Sports Festival," she said. "Since you started watching her during the cavalry battle. You watch people. You watch everybody. But you watch her differently."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because you didn't." Her gold eyes came back up. "I was waiting to see if you'd tell me. Or if you'd just keep going and hope I didn't notice." A pause. "She told me herself. She came to ME."

"I told her it was a good idea."

"You TOLD her to tell me?"

"No. She decided. I said it was a good idea."

Mina's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. "She's braver than you."

Ochaco had walked into a cafe and ordered matcha and told the girl whose boyfriend she'd slept with. And I'd been sitting in sixth period conjugating English verbs.

"About this?" I said. "Yeah. She is."

Mina looked at me for a long time. Her mouth tightened and her eyes narrowed and then her jaw loosened and she settled into something I hadn't seen on her before. Mina ran on instinct. Right now she wasn't.

"Am I not enough?"

She said it quietly. For Mina, quietly was almost a whisper.

"You're more than enough." I didn't hesitate. "That was never the question."

"Then what IS the question?"

I stood up from the floor. Sat next to her on the bed. Close enough that our arms were touching. Her skin was warm through the uniform sleeve. I took her hand. Her fingers were tense and her palm was damp and when I laced my fingers through hers the faintest fizz touched my skin. Her acid. Leaking. Stress chemistry spilling over.

I held on.

Her eyes went to our hands. The fizz intensified for a second. The smell of her acid cut through the curry and the room's usual smell. She watched my fingers. I didn't pull back.

"The question," I said, "is whether you can share me and still feel like you matter."

"I mattered first," she said. Fast.

"Yes."

"And I still matter the same?"

"More."

She stared at our hands. The acid fizz slowed. Stopped. Her grip tightened.

A full minute passed. I counted because the fridge was cycling, each tick of the compressor distinct, and there were roughly sixty of them. The curry smell faded. Gerald moved one leg on the ceiling, adjusted, went still.

"She's nice," Mina said. "Uraraka."

"I know."

"I don't hate her."

"I know you don't."

"I don't love this."

"I know."

"Stop saying 'I know.' It's annoying."

"Okay."

She looked at me. The flat line of her mouth cracked at one corner. Her horn caught the light from the window.

"I'm not leaving," she said.

"Good."

"But you're going to have to make this work, Ryo." She squeezed my hand. Her nails pressed into my skin. "Not me. You. I'm not going to manage your schedule or your guilt or whatever this is. You're going to make sure I don't feel like Tuesday's leftovers."

"You won't."

"That's a promise."

"Yeah."

"You break it and I dissolve your favorite hoodie."

"I only have one hoodie."

"I know."

She kissed me. Hard, brief, her free hand grabbing the front of my shirt and pulling me in. Her mouth was warm and she tasted like the matcha she'd had with Ochaco and her horn pressed against my temple. It was a short kiss. Possessive. Her teeth caught my lower lip when she pulled back and her gold eyes were bright and close and her grip on my shirt didn't loosen.

"She better be as good to you as I am," she said. Against my mouth. Her breath was warm and her hand was still fisted in my shirt.

Then she let go. Stood up. Smoothed her skirt. Adjusted her tie even though it was already loose. Her hands were steady now. The acid was gone. Grabbed her bag from the floor, slung it over one shoulder. She walked to the door and put her shoes on and the pink alien keychain was visible clipped to the strap of her bag.

She opened the door. Paused. Her eyes went to the desk. The shirt. Ochaco's folded shirt, still sitting where she'd left it yesterday morning.

Mina looked at it. Looked at me. She didn't ask whose it was. She knew whose shirt it wasn't, and hers were all stolen, never folded.

"The doorframe has holes in it," she said.

"Yeah."

"Since when?"

"Yesterday."

She looked at the dents. Five finger-shaped impressions in the wood. She put her own hand against them. Her fingers were smaller. She pulled her hand back and looked at me and her eyebrows went up.

"Your Quirk?"

"Something like that."

"Huh." She looked at the dents one more time. Then at me. "You're getting stronger."

Third person in a week to say that. Ochaco had grabbed my arm. The doctor at Hosu had flagged the growth rate. Mina was reading it in a doorframe.

"Yeah," I said.

She stepped into the hallway. Turned back.

"I'm still your girlfriend," she said. "Whatever else is happening, that's the baseline."

"That's the baseline."

"Okay." She adjusted her bag strap. "I'll text you later."

She left.

The door closed. She pulled it shut behind her, gently, the latch clicking into place.

I sat on the bed. The room was quiet. My hand was tingling where her acid had touched it, a faint itch under the skin that would fade in a few minutes. The spot on my lip where her teeth had caught was warm.

Mina's matcha was on Ochaco's lips through Mina's mouth. Two girls drinking tea together about me and then one of them coming here to kiss me with the taste of it still on her tongue.

My shirt from yesterday was still folded on the desk where Ochaco had left it. Mina's hoodie, the one she'd stolen from me two weeks ago and then returned because it smelled like her instead of me and "that defeats the purpose," was draped over the back of the chair.

Two girls. One folded. One stole.

I pulled out my phone. One new message from Mina, sent forty seconds ago.

A single emoji. The alien head. The one from her keychain.

I put the phone down.

Outside, the convenience store cat yawned.