The next week, Dabi moved through the world like a ghost—distracted, drifting. Maybe I'd pushed too far. For once, I almost felt bad.
He'd always been terrible at cricket, but we still invited him to play. Mostly because he owned the bat. His eyesight was garbage—twice that week, he took a hard leather ball to the temple because he never saw it coming.
Then he stopped coming altogether.
Instead, he stayed home with his cats. Specifically, Badoo—Karachi's fattest feline, a 8kg fur monster with the dignity of a Mughal emperor. Every morning, when we gathered at the end of the street, Badoo would sit with us like some kind of furry sentry, watching until we left.
The damn thing hated me, though. Clawed me twice for no reason. Maybe it smelled the blood on me—not human blood, but the kind that lingers after childhood "experiments."
Back when I was younger, I'd read frogs could breathe anywhere. So I tested it: sealed them in plastic bags, buried some alive, tied rocks to others and sank them in buckets. Lizards could regrow limbs? I'd slice off tails and watch. Fifty frogs. Maybe more. All in the name of science. Dabi caught me once, mid-experiment. His face did something weird—like he was seeing me for the first time.
"Something worth breaking," he whispered.
Then he exploded.
"You sick psycho! Is living just a game to you? They feel pain!"
Badoo was with him, those judgmental cat eyes drilling into me. Why? It wasn't like I'd done anything wrong. Schools dissected frogs all the time. This was just… private research. Dabi scooped up his cat and left me standing there, alone in the empty plot, wondering why I was the villain.
The Drift
After that, things changed.
Dabi and I orbited each other like strangers. Bram disappeared into DOTA matches—turns out he was weirdly good at it. Cricket lost its thrill. Even the frogs stopped being interesting. School blurred into monotony. I needed something new. Something that'd make my pulse hammer like it used to.
Something… alive.