two.

—madmen are hard to handle; i will manage.

THERE'S THIS NEAT TRICK THAT HISASHI LEARNT BACK IN GRADE SCHOOL, if he blinks after a while, he loses his awareness entirely, and after staying in the underground compound for ten hours straight, he's really glad he learnt it. hisashi is granted the luxury  of going outside—after ten hours. a day off. except, not really—they printed out working hours for him. like this is something he volunteered to do—or like he's being, oh, who knows—payed. hisashi is this close to blowing a fuse and possibly having to change identities, again. no big deal, really. all he has to do is keep his temper under wraps. keep calm and smile on!

anyway, nayami is waiting on the front doorstep of the apartment complex. blue hair falling over his eyes, but he still spots hisashi. a yellow, chipped, grin swallows his face; his eyes go so wide that hisashi can see it without his glasses. nayami scuttles over like the twelve year old vermin he is—his well-worn version of jumping for joy. buddha-knows that they're too tired for things like that. still, the sunrise is pretty, even over shoddy tin roofs and broken windows. there's barely enough light to make the broken beer bottles on the floor glimmer. the day isn't just dead anymore.

which makes sense on account of it being, like, three-am. 

"where were ya' scaredy?"

oh, right, disappearing for ten hours. huh, forgot time existed for a second there, "hmm," hisashi keeps his voice real steady, "volunteer babysitting, some kid in a basement."

this is how half-lies work: hisashi says something that's technically true in and of itself—he skims out the worrying parts, like: because the probably-yakuza threatened to hurt you if i didn't. see? doesn't that work out well? hisashi is stuck someplace bad, but nayami isn't. nayami stays where he is—semi-happy and rambling about the fluffy socks he got from the donation bin.

(he wonders if nayami ever thinks about his baby sister.. does he even know her? does she count? he told hisashi once that his parents didn't want his defective body lying in their house. hisashi would have broken to nothing if that'd happened to him as a child—nayami' s strong. so strong that it makes hisashi's chest pang.)

what is the reason for reverence? hisashi's got his ungodly abomination growing guiltily in his stomach and it wraps around his pancreas like a wire. sand mulling about in his brain, sifting through dirt, there are crumbs of gold somewhere in there ― so maybe a good idea or two is possible.

"you comin', scaredy?" nayami's yellow tooth smile beckons and, well, who is scum such as hisashi to decline?

"you ever think about what having a quirk would be like?" hisashi blurts. he closes his mouth so fast his teeth clank together with the force of it. "i―never. i. sorry―"

"i don't really care 'bout it, y'know?" sometimes nayami looks so old, and hisashi slips, calls him mizu when he shouldn't. says a lot of things when he shouldn't, "'s just something i don't got, 'nd just thinkin' bout it makes me a lil miserable. so, there's no point, 's like. uh, what's that.. that play-doughs cave thing? you were talkin' bout it a while ago."

"that's plato and yeah. i think about. the cave and the light it's—the grass is just, uh, greener on the other side. i think―" hisashi doesn't look at his hands, not when his gloves are off like this, but nayami does—it's arbitrary, less than a split second, "―just, y'know. what life'd be like. if things were, uhm, different."

"well―who cares anyway!" nayami rolls his eyes, kicking his feet from one of the four whole chairs in hisashi's shithole apartment. "things are good the way they are."

(hisashi does not think of: socks with holes in them, or shoes so worn down the soles are glued back on, or a free clinic with a three hour long wait time for a broken jaw and an eye swollen shut, or the sound that keeps him awake at night—a shaking noise so quiet he would miss that it was sobbing if he wasn't paying attention. he doesn't.)

"yeah," hisashi says so seamlessly he's surprised he doesn't fall apart right there, "things are fine, just the way they are."

hisashi has always been a good liar.

he gets to bed as fast as possible. withering into.. nothing..

beep. hisashi's eyes dilate, body stiff and, unfortunately, awake.

he got a text at four-seventeen in the morning that reads the boss wants you here at eight and hisashi debates snapping his phone clean in half. he doesn't, on account of it being his phone. anger broils on the inside of him, the likes of which hisashi knows is bound to be genetic.

he's just tired.

(his mama was always, always, so long a fuse. until she saw what happened to his chest, to his feet, to his back. he's sure that if mama saw his hands now, she'd hiss in rage.)

hisashi grumbles and turns back around.

he doesn't manage to fall back asleep.

sometimes, hisashi thinks he ought to have stayed in that alleyway. (there is a pulling in his chest, a heart beating off-rhythm. there always is. his hands hurt.) hisashi's dizzy. just a little dizzy that means he's getting sick. a cough slinks its way out of hisashi's mouth.

then, a mumble from the other bed in the room, "ya sick, scaredy?"

hisashi stifles the next cough, "nah," he wheezes, "the air's just dry."

nayami rolls his eyes, hisashi can tell, "liar."

six-am is the worst time to be alive. hisashi wants to do something hopelessly outrageous; like going back to sleep, or something. his head hurts, what is this debauchery? does this ever end?

bleary eyed, hisashi fumbles quietly out of bed―the sun is high and dry, beaming merrily through his feeble blinds. hisashi crumples a little, so, this is the beginning of the rest of his life, huh? he's really done for now.

he huffs mirthlessly into the air.

oh well, nothing to do now. he throws on the crappy button up and dress pants they so graciously afforded him, hisashi grumbles into the morning; quiet enough that nayami stays asleep. flinching like that. (isn't he the point in all this? buddha, hisashi is so fucked in the head for this, isn't he? always throwing everything into fires for the people around him, isn't he? it would be funny at this point―if it wasn't so miserable for him, that is.)

he brushes his teeth, washing that awful taste out of his mouth―pops the first pill of the day, and puts in the coffee to brew. his battered phone buzzes in his pocket.

pretending to be awake this early in the morning is damn near impossible―yamiko-san better be greatful. then, she never is.

"kukkun! how are you?" she beams through the phone. hisashi takes back what he said about obnoxious lighting from the sun, yamiko-san makes hisashi damn near murderous― way too early in the morning.

"yami-san.. timing."

she chortles, "yeah yeah, anyway, you busy? there's this job in downtown shibuya with your name on it if you say the word. pays plenty good this time 'round."

the coffee pot stops sputtering and hisashi fills up a cup―sugar and milk to taste and everything, "what's—uhm, what time is it?"

"six-thirty-four-am."

hisashi rolls his eyes and pops the second pill of the day. downed with boiling coffee, "you know what i—what i, uh, meant."

"did i?" she snickers.

hisashi huffs into his coffee, hands shaking lightly from the draft, nayami must be freezing, hisashi should get some warmer clothes. "how much does it, uhm, how much does it pay?"

"do you accept?" she says, hisashi can hear her voice shake, quirk exertion, he cannot be bound like that because she made a promise.

"what's the, uh, the pay?"

(what is his soul worth?)

"yami-san."

her voice cracks, wobbling gently, "hah, you really did get a spine, huh?"

hisashi keeps his mouth shut, pops another pill, how many is that? three, four? he counts the time in his head—three, not four. his fourth one is oblong. this is where he always gets confused, isn't it?

"it's your rent, and then some." yamiko-san says, and hisashi really thinks she's just incapable of giving a straight answer; hisashi really never liked her much for a reason. "i even have a pair of glasses, your prescription, as a side."

"if you're, uhm, lying—" he starts.

"i can't lie," she reminds him, "if you don't remember."

"don't trick me, yami-san, you know you'll, uhm, regret it in the end. i'm the, uh, the best agent you have right now."

hisashi wonders if she's looking at that son of hers now, bright eyed and gone, "i know. i can't lie, remember?"

"okay—i—i'll do it." he fumbles.

"great—tell me when you get off work, yeah?"

hisashi pops his last pill and finishes the rest of his coffee, "yeah. i'll, uh, text you."

the train is coming soon, and nayami's children center hired a teacher, didn't they? he pokes a divot in nayami's head from his spot in the doorway until he feels nayami groan and get up. he leaves. he really hopes that yamiko didn't fuck him over again—he's just about on the cusp of losing his crappy apartment as is.

everything is cold today. 

hisashi should have expected the hallways to be freezing. white white white as far as the eye can see and he expected it to be warm? the walls bleed into each other, seeping blue through his gloves to his fingertips.

a little bird man―who looks more like a stuffed animal than anything else―is leading him to the room. hisashi isn't blindfolded by anything other than the threat on nayami's head.

(hasn't he always been easy?)

eri is holed up in the corner of her room, perhaps wide-eyed, or maybe her eyes are just big. whatever. money is money.

he really should stand in the corner; let his quirk sink over the room until his.. shift.. is over. he should have asked yamiko-san where he was supposed to meet her. he should have ―

"hey," hisashi fumbles, hands twisted, "remember me?"

hisashi's mouth is a red inkwell waiting to be splatted across these white walls, maybe she knows that. maybe all kids always know that. nayami seems to know, but nayami isn't a fair standard, anyway―hisashi blinks at eri.

"white hair, remember?"

(one summer ten years back, mizu would have been how old? doesn't really matter; what matters here is that, one summer ten years back everyone went to the beach, the okinawa trip of the milenia and hisashi remembers nothing else on account of him being horribly sick the entire duration of the trip.

except for the last three hours before the flight back. he went to the beach, alone. he was supposed to be with his travel buddy, but lui han chen was adamant about actually swimming. so, hisashi went to the beach, white sand everywhere, and he almost had a heatstroke. passing out in the summer sun like that.)

hisashi has fragments for memories and sometimes when he holds them he sees his hands but mostly he just sees red. bloody: an ugly color, an apt description. there is something savage about the way hisashi's memory functions. there is a distortion in the way time works, new people always become old friends; there something cruel, the way in which strangers become enemies as fast as they do. the way watercolor changes the way people look.

when he sees eri, he sees the picture in the hallway. the photo of his father, white hair, red eyes, smiling. when he used to stare at that picture he'd see the damage to his fathers hands, stained by bullets, he father said, and dream of having hands like that. when he's looking at eri she looks like his father and that makes his stomach curl.

"you remember don't you?"

"ku-tan?" she mumbles.

close enough. "yep! and you're eri-chan!"

she might have nodded, she probably nodded. the coffee is kicking in. yum.

"can you.. " she starts, then scrambles to he bed, lifting the futon up and grabbing some scrap paper with―

"you want me to draw more color wheels?"

his heart clenches in his chest; his stomach roils.

it's going to be a long day.

he starts and ends the day in a circle.

yamiko-san loves sending hisashi on the most pointless, roundabout, errands. he's currently breaking into someone's apartment. boring. trivial. easy work for a high reward. except for the fact that—according to his own research—cough, giran, cough—the man who lives in this apartment is a full on serial killer that can paralyze people. which is why nobody wants to do this kind of work. sometimes, hisashi is glad for this absolute nightmare of a quirk.

so, shuffling through some clothes to find a pure silver necklace and a bandana shouldn't be to difficult on account of this house being very well kept (serial killers are so tidy) but hisashi digresses. snooping around shouldn't be this hard. 

hisashi flounces around, picking things up with his quirk and putting them back in exacts. 

it takes a while to actually find the damn thing—it's hidden in the stuffing of a cut in the bottom the the bed. the necklace, he means. he found the bandana ten seconds into the search. so, hisashi meanders toward the window when he hears the clink of the door being unlocked. 

now, a dilemma: run or hide, fight or flight, jump out the window and hope for the best or hide under the mattress and maybe get caught.. by a serial killer.

quick thinking has never been hisashi's forte, he's more of a mull-it-over-for-weeks-if-not-months-at-a-time kind of guy. this is the second fastest decision that he makes in his life:

hisashi jumps out the window. the glass cracks around him, some fucked up facsimile of a halo.

necklace and bandana acquired!

now, time to do the worst thing humanly possible to his body.

grocery shopping. he drags his body into the nearest market and scrounges up the prices; ramen and onigiri make up todays menu, but he also picks up some vegetables and some soy sauce and..

hisashi stops by a clothing store on the way home. he wanders the aisles looking for green and white gloves―nayami's favorite color combination for some ungodly reason. he peaks through until he gives up and just gets a seperate set that happens to have red, green, blue, and a very light-almost-white grey pair of gloves. he deposits the yen to the blurry visage of a worker. one who must be just as tired as he is.

"have a good day." says the worker.

he's practically dead on the way home. (eri was surprised to see him back, he wonders what that means for a moment; eri copied his color wheel four times on notebook paper in his absence, he wonders what that means for a moment; eri — with wide eyes like nayami. hisashi doesn't think about it.)

hisashi almost knocks out completely on the bus home.

(he imagines his mother in front of him, soft hair. she doesn't recognize him and he hurts― but isn't that the point, anyway? isn't the point to bleed at the face of his sin? buddha's luck will never befallen something as drenched in bad karma as hisashi.)

nayami isn't waiting outside—hisashi's chest shutters for a second.

"nayami―" he calls, "you home?"

there's no answer. (he's dead. he's dead. he's dead. they found his body on a deserted alleyway floor covered in his own blood. he's dead. he's dead. singed half to death and bled out the rest of the way. he's dead. you must be glad, that quirkless leach. he's dead. he's dead.)

hisashi fumbles in. nayami is, of course, alive. he's with a kid his age—the kid has, has, has—hisashi squints. their hair is long short spiky smooth straight curly blond black brown purple grey―their skin is dark light tan pale washed out. their clothes are ratty dull bright cohesive a mess of colors. hisashi fumbles. their eyes are yellow black green silver blue redredredred, "nayami, who, umm, who is this?"

"hah?" nayami turns, blue eyes looking livelier today than they have in weeks, "oh, this is, uhm, naki-chan. she, uhm. she."

"i'm in nami-chan's class." she says. her short long midlength hair swivels when she turns, "we're doing sensei's homework."

"oh," hisashi laughs, "oh, okay, you scared me for—for a second there i though that.. never mind. uhm, help yourself to. anything, really."

(hisashi feels his face heat up in embarrassment.)

he really does suck with kids, huh?

he starts.. packing away the groceries. things go in cabinets and the fridge; away where they belong. hisashi is: mindless, braindead, empty headed, it feels like there's sand pouring in the cracks of every though he has. hisashi would laugh to himself if nayami wouldn't catch it. maybe ishi-kun was right, maybe there is a wrongness that permeates the air..

"scaredy," nayami yells from the kitchen, "did you take yer meds yet?"

(did he?)

(what time is it?)

hisashi blinks, eyes raw. he's been staring at the cabnet, "i forgot again."

"'course you did." nayami says.

"can you pass them? the ―"

"clear ones, i know."

(of course he does.)

"thanks, nacchan, you're the best."

he scoffs (he always does), "i know."