[MACHIDA STATION – 6:11 PM]
The platform hummed. Fluorescent lights. Announcements. People moving like they knew exactly where they were going.
Yuta did not.
He leaned on a pillar, let the cool metal steady him, then checked the overhead map. Lines in different colors snaked everywhere. His brain lagged two steps behind his eyes.
He'd been asleep for over an hour and a half. Missed his stop by a home run, and was completely unfamiliar with wherever he was right now.
"You've got to be kidding me!" Yuta surveyed his surroundings with hollow eyes.
"Okay… I'm in Machida, which is… not Hinohara."
His mouth was dry. His legs felt like old batteries—holding a charge until you asked them to do anything. He took the nearest exit to get air and nearly walked into a street vendor shouting about skewers.
The evening had cooled.
Neon signs blinked on, one by one. Salarymen, couples, probably a hero sidekick in a hoodie trying unsuccessfully to look like a civilian.
Yep, this was certainly not Hinohara.
'Great. Just great.'
He collapsed onto the bench and checked his phone.
Battery: 47%
Wallet: ¥1,384
Dignity: Long gone.
'At least my chakra's coming back.' He looked at the only bright spot in this scenario. Nearly two hours of napping had regenerated most of his chakra reserves.
Somewhere between 60-80%. He could feel it.
But,
'Why does it feel .... Bigger?' Upon careful inspection, he realized that his current chakra supply far surpassed what he previously had.
It had more than doubled.
Still not much, but it was something.
He frowned, focusing inward.
His chakra pathways felt wider. Less restricted. Like someone had cleared out debris from a clogged pipe.
'Did nearly killing myself actually help?'
That was how it worked in Naruto, wasn't it? Push yourself to the limit, recover, come back stronger.
Typical shounen logic. Train until you almost die, repeat until overpowered.
He would NOT be testing that later. This was the real world for crying out loud. For now, he just needed to get home.
'Find another train. Go back. See Mom. Go home. Easy.'
Hence, he stood on the platform, staring at the departures board like it had personally betrayed him.
NEXT TRAIN TO HINOHARA: 6:52 PM
Forty minutes.
'Dammit!' Visiting hours ended by 8:00. He doubted he would make it. And even if he did, it would be way too late and draw way too many questions.
'This is a nightmare. Mom's gonna kill me if she finds out this happened.'
He groaned and dragged himself toward a bench.
'Alright, no need to panic. This is something you can resolve carefully. Just give her a call and tell her you won't be able to make it .... Damn! She's gonna ask me why. I'll tell her I'm preparing for the sports festival ... But how much preparation can I actually do? My previous quirk wasn't all that great. Forget the quirk, just that alone will make sure she'll sniff out something's up. Tell her about my Quirk getting stronger? She'll probably begin worrying unnecessarily that I'll do something stupid like revenge ...'
Well, technically she wouldn't be wrong there as he was already planning said stupid action. But she didn't need to know that.
"No… no, no, this is a terrible idea,"
There was no helping it.
If he told her he overslept on a train? Suspicious.
If he said he stayed after school? She'd ask why.
If he said he felt unwell? She would demand specifics.
If he blamed homework? She'd know he was bluffing instantly.
Why can't you just say you stayed in the Library or some similar, you ask? Because she would know he was lying.
And so, five minutes passed as Yuta sat in the bench, trying to figure out what lie sounded least suicidal.
'Okay. Just say you missed the train. Easy. Simple. Honest…-ish.'
He inhaled, thumb hovering over the call button when ... BRZZZ!
His phone started ringing. He nearly jumped out of his skin.
"MOM" lit up the screen in bright blue.
"… oh no." he whispered. Classic case of speak of the devil and he will appear. The situation just worsened when mom called by herself.
It meant she was curious enough to want to know.
"Speak of the devil," he muttered, then winced. "No, wait, she's not a devil—she's just terrifying."
He swallowed hard and picked up.
"Hey, Mom."
"Yuta?" his mother's voice answered, warm but direct. "You're late. You should've been here an hour ago. Did something happen?"
The tone alone almost made him hang up.
"Uh—yeah, about that…" Yuta straightened in the seat, gripping the phone with both hands. "I'm not going to make it tonight."
A tiny pause.
"…Why?" she asked.
She already knew something was wrong.
He felt sweat bead on his neck.
"Well—I, um—lost track of time."
Another pause.
"Yuta," she said carefully. "Lost track of time doing what?"
"Studying of course."
"Studying what?"
"A class project, with my friends."
He said as smoothly as he could, hoping mentioning friends would soother her. He was wrong.
"So you're telling me you're still studying?"
"Oh no. We finished a while ago. I missed my train."
"How many?"
"Huh?"
"To not be here by now, it means you stayed in school studying for an hour straight and missed the train more than once. That doesn't sound like you at all."
He stiffened.
"Yuta. What really happened?"
"I—It's nothing serious—"
"You sound nervous."
"I'm tired."
"You also sound like you're hiding something."
"I'm… not?"
Silence.
Not normal silence.
The heavy kind.
The I-know-you're-full-of-crap-but-I'll-let-you talk-yourself-into-a-hole kind.
"Yuta," she said softly, "are you in trouble?"
His soul left his body.
"N-No!"
"Did someone bother you?"
"No!"
"Are you hurt?"
"No!"
Another pause.
"…Are you lying to me?"
His pulse spiked so hard it echoed in his ears.
"Why would you think that?"
"Because you're using your quirk to control your voice."
"..."
"And because I'm also using mine."
"..."
"You do that to make your voice sound flat so it won't sound nervous or give away any signs. It's good enough to fool most people, but you forget I gave birth to you."
Her voice had entered the investigation mode.
If she pushed any further, he would fold like wet paper.
"So I'll ask you one more time dear. Where are you now?" Yuta's body stood motionless.
His brain on the other hand, had gone into light speed, creating and discarding a multitude of excuses to salvage this situation.
Just when Aiko was getting impatient.
"I WAS ... WITH A GIRL."
The silence that followed was catastrophic.
If God existed, He muted the entire world so his mother could properly process that sentence.
"…A girl?" she repeated, sounding like she was holding a fragile teacup that suddenly turned into a live grenade.
Yuta shut his eyes.
"…Yes," he said weakly.
"What kind of girl?"
"Just—a girl. From school. She—uh—wanted to talk. We hung out after school. I lost track of time and didn't notice until it was too late."
There was a long pause.
He prayed to every deity across every franchise.
Then:
"…Oh."
Oh no.
He knew that oh.
That was the mother immediately recontextualizing everything she heard in the last thirty seconds oh.
"I see," she said, very calmly. "Well… that's alright. You don't have to rush over. If you're spending time with someone, I don't want you sprinting across the city just for me. Though I would have appreciated a text."
He was dying.
He wanted to jump onto the tracks.
"Mom, it's not—it's—look, I'll explain later, okay?"
"Is she nice?"
"Mom—"
"I won't pry."
"You are absolutely prying."
"Just a little."
He dragged a hand down his face.
"Be safe. And be respectful."
"MOM!"
"I'm not saying anything. I'm just saying something."
He groaned into his palm.
A chuckle came from the other end of the phone.
"Now I understand why I felt your nervousness and guilt bleeding from the other end of the phone. You could have just said so. No need to dance around it."
She sighed.
"My little baby's growing up."
"Can we please end this embarrassing topic. I'm on the road."
"Alright little man. Come over tomorrow and tell me all about her. "
My stomach crumpled.
"I will."
"Love you, sweetheart."
"…love you too."
The call ended.
[AFTER THE CALL – BENCH]
Yuta dropped his head back against the wall.
His soul left his body.
His dignity shriveled up and evaporated.
"…I can't believe that worked."
His mom was sharp—scary sharp sometimes.
Not because she could read minds or detect lies, but because she always felt when something was off.
Especially with him.
Her quirk wasn't some super sense or heart-monitor nonsense.
It was subtler than that.
Her Quirk was called ATTUNEMENT.
Basically, she could see and feel the emotional dissonance in people. Not through sound, not through heartbeat, not through micro expressions, but through a faint, instinctive empathetic signal that reacts when someone she's around is distressed, hiding something, or conflicted.
In simpler terms, she could feel someone's emotions.
Guilt, fear, nervousness, cunning, and the likes. An emotional tuning fork if you will. A quiet intuition sharpened by years of pulling people out of burning buildings and disaster zones.
She noticed emotional tension like it was a blinking warning light.
Which meant unless you were emotionally dead inside like, lying to her was nearly impossible.
Nearly.
He sighed and slumped on the bench, pulling his hood over his eyes.
"…I just weaponized a fake romance to escape interrogation."
Honestly, it was the only thing he could think of. The only thing plausible enough to salvage the situation. Though whether this situation was salvaged or not, he didn't know.
What he was sure of, was that this was totally cringe.
He leaned back on the bench, staring at the ceiling of Machida Station.
"… Just great. Now I actually have to invent a girl now. One crisis down. Infinite more to go."
___
Yuta stared up at the ceiling of Machida Station, mentally begging the universe to give him a reset button.
No such luck.
He checked the time.
6:22 PM.
Seven minutes had passed.
Seven.
He'd lived an entire emotional lifetime in those seven minutes.
His stomach growled loud enough for a passing office worker to glance at him.
"…traitor," he muttered at his abdomen.
The reality settled in:
He wasn't seeing his mom tonight.
He had forty minutes to kill.
And he was starving.
"Fine. Food first, existential dread later."
He opened his phone and typed:
cheap food near me
Options popped up instantly—ramen, convenience store bentos, skewers, a takoyaki stand two streets over.
His eyes locked onto the takoyaki.
"Sold."
He stood, slung his bag over one shoulder, and started weaving through the evening crowd. The lights were brighter now, the streets fuller. Machida had that "mini-city that refuses to sleep early" feeling—shops closing, shops opening, people everywhere.
He followed the map. Down a main street, across a pedestrian crossing, then—
"Shortcut here?"
A narrow side street would cut the walking time by half.
Shortcuts were a teenager's natural enemy, but he was too hungry to care.
He turned in.
Dim lights. Closed shutters. A vending machine humming beside a bookstore. The air smelled faintly of detergent and asphalt.
Yuta walked quietly, rubbing the back of his neck, brain replaying the phone call like a bad sitcom rerun.
He rounded another corner—
—and nearly tripped over a child.
"—whoa!"
He lurched forward, caught his balance, and looked down.
A girl.
A tiny girl, about eight or nine, who had collided with him and bounced backward like she expected to be hit for it.
"Oh—sorry," he said, hands raised instinctively. "My bad. Didn't see you."
She froze.
Wide burgundy eyes stared up at him from behind messy white hair.
A single small horn jutted from the right side of her forehead.
Bandages wrapped around her forearms and lower legs—clean, neat, professional.
Her dress looked like it hadn't been bought but issued.
She was barefoot.
Barefoot.
In an alley.
In the evening.
Yuta blinked, recalibrating.
Small kid. Dirty clothes. Bandages. Bare feet.
Possibility #1: runaway.
Possibility #2: pickpocket.
Possibility #3: bait for a mugging.
Possibility #4: some weird Machida situation he had zero interest in being a part of.
He stepped back half a pace—not rude, just cautious.
"You uh… lost?" he asked quietly.
She flinched.
Not a dramatic flinch.
A practiced one.
Like she expected every interaction to hurt.
Yuta frowned.
'Why does she look… familiar?'
White hair. Red eyes. Horn
'It's ..'
The frown deepened as the nagging feeling spread.
"… Do I .. know you?" he muttered under his breath. "Or is this one of those coincidences ... Deja vu perhaps ..."
He couldn't quite remember where he had seen this face from.
Could it be?
She didn't answer. She just clutched her dress and stared at the ground like she was waiting for permission to breathe.
This was… uncomfortable.
He wasn't a hero.
He wasn't trained to deal with crying kids or hurt kids or whatever this was.
He was exhausted, starving, and lost in a city that wasn't his.
He cleared his throat.
"Uh… look, you should get home. It's late. Your parents are probably—"
A sound echoed from the far end of the alley. 'Dammit!' Yuta's face changed. 'I knew it. This must be a villain robbery or something.'
He turned around and mobilised his chakra, ready to fight off a group of hoodlum criminals.
What he actually saw was not what he expected.
A tall man stepped from the shadowed end of the alley. Coat Jacket. Purple feather-lined collar. White gloves. And a birdlike plague mask covering his face.
Following behind him was a taller, large, muscular man dressed in a black tank top with a stand-by symbol and a similar plague mask.
'What the hell ..'
His brain could barely process what was going on before the first man spoke. "Oh ... It seems we don't have to look anymore."
His eyes shifted to Yuta, showing no signs of emotion.
Not hostile.
Not friendly.
"You're in the way," he said evenly. "Move."
Yuta tried to answer, but his mouth had gone dry.
The man shifted his attention past Yuta, toward the small girl behind him.
"Eri."
The name came out like an order.
"Let's go home."
The girl's entire body locked up.
Her breath hitched, barely audible.
Her fingers clutched her dress so tightly the fabric trembled.
Fear could be seen marring her features. No, not fear, terror.
Yuta blinked once.
Twice.
"…Eri?"
His stomach dropped.
No. No, no way. No way in hell—
His brain started connecting dots he really didn't want connected.
White hair.
Red eyes.
One horn.
Bandages.
Bare feet.
Eri.
Eri.
His pulse spiked.
If that was Eri—
Then the man in front of him…
Tall.
Black shirt.
White gloves.
Purple feathered collar.
Plague doctor mask.
A second man behind him, huge, masked, silent.
Recognition slammed into him like a train.
No. No, no, no—
Overhaul.
Overhaul.
'Fuck.'
__
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