MHA: Lust Quirk

Hagakure was talking.

I knew because her gloves were gesturing. White gloves, floating at shoulder height near the back of the group, moving in the quick emphatic circles of someone making a point. No arms connecting them to anything, no face above them. Just gloves and a voice.

"-but if we'd rotated the flanking line earlier, before Todoroki's ice wall cut off the east corridor, Sero could have closed the gap with his tape and the ambush team wouldn't have been isolated."

She was right. The formation drill Aizawa had run us through for the last hour at Ground Gamma had broken down in the middle section. Todoroki had overextended his ice, Sero's tape couldn't reach the separated group, and the whole exercise collapsed into everyone fighting individually instead of as a unit.

Aizawa was standing at the front of the debrief cluster. Gray scarf, dark circles, the coffee thermos from Recovery Girl's office in his bandaged hand. The class was gathered in a loose half-circle on the grass outside Ground Gamma. My uniform was damp from the exercise. Kirishima had a bruise forming on his jaw where Bakugo had tagged him during the melee phase. Midoriya was writing in his notebook so fast his pen was a blur.

Aizawa's eyes moved across the group. Moved past Toru's gloves. Landed on Momo, who was standing two people to Toru's left.

"Yaoyorozu, what adjustment to the formation would have prevented the breakdown?"

Momo straightened. "If the flanking line had rotated fifteen seconds earlier, the east corridor would have remained open for Sero's tape to bridge the gap. The ambush team's isolation was preventable."

She said what Toru had just said. Almost the same words.

"Correct," Aizawa said. He made a note on his clipboard. "Everyone else, review the timing of your rotations. Dismissed."

The class broke apart. Conversations started. Kaminari was complaining about his elbow. Bakugo was already walking away. Iida was organizing people into cleanup groups with hand gestures that looked like he was directing traffic.

Toru's gloves dropped to her sides. Slowly. They hung there for a second. Then she turned, her shoes scuffing the grass, and walked toward the locker room entrance.

Nobody else had noticed.

I was looking at where her voice had come from. Aizawa was looking at where his eyes went. Momo was in his sight line. Toru was standing right next to her, but Toru was always next to people without being where eyes went.

He hadn't done it on purpose. He'd done it on autopilot.

I changed directions and walked toward the hallway where Toru had gone.

The corridor outside the Ground Gamma locker rooms was wide, fluorescent-lit, and empty. The floor was that industrial tile they used in every school hallway in Japan. It smelled like cleaning solution and sweat from the training grounds.

I could see her shoes. White sneakers, the school-issued ones, walking about twenty meters ahead. The laces on the left shoe were untied. The shoes were moving at the pace of someone who wasn't in a hurry but didn't want to be caught either.

"Hagakure."

The shoes stopped.

"You had a good point about the formations."

The shoes didn't move. For a couple seconds, the hallway was just me and a pair of sneakers on tile and the fluorescent buzz overhead.

"You heard that?" Her voice was smaller than usual. Toru's voice was normally bright, pitched high, with drawn-out vowels that made everything sound cheerful. This was flatter. The brightness turned off.

"The rotation timing. You were right. Aizawa just answered the wrong person."

A pause. The left sneaker shifted. The untied lace dragged on the tile.

"He does that a lot," she said. "Everyone does. It's fine."

It wasn't fine.

"People look at faces when they hear a voice," I said. "Momo was standing next to you. His eyes went to her instead."

"I know how it works." Sharper now. The shoes turned. She was facing me. "I've been invisible my whole life. I know exactly how it works. People hear me and look for the nearest face and find someone else and forget I was talking. It happens in every conversation, every class, every group photo. My parents had to put a bell on my bedroom door so they'd remember I was home."

A bell. On her bedroom door. So her parents would remember she was home.

"I heard you," I said.

"Why?"

"Because I was looking where your voice was coming from."

"Nobody looks where my voice is coming from."

"I did."

She was quiet. The sneakers were still. A door opened somewhere down the hallway and a second-year walked past with gym equipment, didn't look at either of us, turned a corner and was gone.

"You're the first person," she said. Her voice cracked on the word "first." "Who heard me say it. In there. You're the first person who actually heard me say it and knew it was me."

"Can you..." She started and stopped. The gloves came up and pressed together. Fidgeting. The white fabric was slightly dirty from the exercise, smudged with dust on the left palm. "Can you look at me?"

"I am looking at you."

"No, I mean... try. I know you can't see me. Nobody can see me. But can you just... try?"

I looked at where her voice was. Between the two floating gloves, above the pair of sneakers. The empty air where a person should be standing.

Since the power jump, my vision had been sharper. Shadows had edges I hadn't noticed before. Colors were more saturated. The fluorescent light had a flicker that I could see now that I couldn't see a week ago, a sixty-hertz pulse at the edge of my vision. My senses were processing more data than they used to, and I hadn't had time to figure out what all of it meant.

I focused on the space where Toru was standing.

The hallway behind her was a straight shot of tile and lockers and a fire exit sign at the end. I looked at the tile. The lockers. The fire exit. And in the space between me and the background, the lines didn't quite match. The edges of the lockers behind her were fractionally displaced. The tile pattern warped by a millimeter where her body was refracting the light around her. A shimmer, like heat haze on asphalt, except it was shaped like a person and it was standing three meters in front of me.

And at the top of it, where her head was, the distortion moved.

"Your hair moves when you talk," I said.

The gloves went still.

"What?"

"The light bends differently around your hair. When you move your head, I can see the distortion shift. It's like..." I was reaching for a comparison and the only one I had was wrong but accurate. "Like looking at something through water. The background ripples a little where your hair is."

Dead silence.

The gloves were motionless. The sneakers were planted. The shimmer in the air was still.

Then I heard a sound. A wet intake of breath. A sniffle. Another one. The gloves came up to approximately where her face would be.

She was crying.

I couldn't see the tears. I couldn't see her eyes or her cheeks or whatever her mouth was doing. I could hear it. Short breaths through a nose that was getting congested. A hiccup that she tried to swallow.

"Nobody's ever-" She stopped. Swallowed. Tried again. "Nobody's ever-"

She couldn't finish.

The gloves dropped. The sneakers moved. Three fast steps and then warmth hit my chest, her hands grabbing the front of my gym shirt, her face pressing into the space below my collarbone. Forehead against my sternum. Hands gripping my shirt. A body that was warm and solid and shaking with small quiet sobs.

I couldn't see any of it. I was looking down at my own shirt being crumpled by invisible hands, the fabric pulling inward where her fists were, the material pressing flat where her forehead was. The only parts of her I could see were the gloves. White fabric, smudged with dust, fisted in my shirt.

I put my arms around her. Or where I thought her back was. My hands found something warm and solid and I adjusted until my arms were across what felt like shoulder blades and a spine and the back of a rib cage that was expanding and contracting with each sob. My hands were touching her but my eyes were seeing my own forearms crossed over nothing. The visual said I was hugging air. My hands said I was holding a girl.

She smelled like strawberry shampoo. Sweet and sharp and underneath it the general school-soap-and-training-sweat smell that everyone had after an hour at Ground Gamma. But the strawberry was hers. That was the only thing about her that was specifically, individually hers in this moment. Invisible face, invisible tears. Strawberry shampoo.

She cried into my shirt. I held her. The hallway was empty and the fluorescent lights buzzed and a door opened somewhere far away and closed again and nobody came.

Her breathing slowed. The sobs got farther apart. The grip on my shirt loosened a fraction and then tightened again, like she'd started to let go and then decided not to.

"Sorry," she said. Muffled against my chest. "Sorry, I'm- I don't usually-"

"It's fine."

"I got your shirt wet."

"I was already sweaty."

A sound. Small. Almost a laugh but too shaky to qualify. Her forehead was still against my sternum. Her pulse came through her skull. Fast, gradually slowing.

"Can you still see it?" she asked. "The distortion."

I looked down. The shimmer at the top of the nothing-space against my chest. Her hair, refracting light differently when she moved.

"Yeah."

Her hands uncurled from my shirt. The gloves smoothed the wrinkled fabric, the gesture automatic, maternal almost. Then her hands went to her sides and she stepped back and the warmth left my chest and I was standing in the hallway alone with damp patches on my gym shirt where her face and her tears and her hands had been.

The sneakers were two meters away. The shimmer was above them. The gloves hung at her sides.

"Hagakure."

"Hmm?"

"Your point about the rotation was better than Momo's version. She agreed with you but she couldn't have made the observation first. You read the collapse before anyone else did."

Silence. Then a sniff. Then the gloves came up and wiped across approximately where her eyes would be.

"Toru," she said.

"What?"

"You can call me Toru." A pause. "If you want."

Her sneaker scuffed the tile. The left lace was still untied. The gloves fidgeted at her sides, fingers twisting into the hem of what I assumed was her gym shirt.

"Your shoe's untied," I said.

"It's always untied. I can't- the lace is invisible too. I can't see it to tie it."

I looked at her shoe. The lace was visible. Dangling against the white sneaker, threading through the eyelets. The lace was visible because it was part of the shoe, not part of her.

"The lace is visible," I said.

"What?"

"Your shoelace. I can see it. It's not invisible."

"Oh." A small sound. "Nobody's ever told me that. I always assumed- I just. I always tuck it in because I figured people could see it dragging."

She'd been tucking her visible shoelaces into her shoes for her entire life because she assumed they were invisible too. Nobody had ever told her they could see her laces.

I crouched down. Her sneaker was in front of me. The lace was white, dirty, the aglet chewed. I tied it. Double knot. My fingers were too big for the small laces and the knot was messy but it held.

I stood up.

The shimmer above the sneakers was still. The gloves were pressed together at chest height. The strawberry smell was fading.

"Thank you," she said. Her voice was small and bright and cracked at the edges. "For the lace. And for the- for hearing me. For looking."

"Anytime."

She turned. The sneakers walked down the hallway toward the girls' locker room. The shimmer moved with them. At the corner, the left glove came up and waved. A small wave, the kind you give when you're not sure the other person is still watching.

I waved back. She couldn't know I did. But I did it anyway.

The hallway was empty. The fluorescent lights buzzed. The damp spots on my shirt were cooling.

I stood there for a while. Then I walked to the boys' locker room. Kirishima was already changed and was asking Kaminari about the arcade trip. Bakugo was slamming his locker shut with force that bent the metal slightly. Midoriya was scribbling in his notebook, still in his gym clothes, pen moving like he'd forget everything if he stopped writing.

I pulled my shirt over my head. The damp spots from Toru's tears were on the chest, roughly where her face had been. Two dark patches on gray fabric, shoulder-width apart, at sternum height.

I folded the shirt and put it in my bag.