Ryuu closed the door and leaned his back against the wood. He let his head thud against the surface.
"It was horrible."
He described the room of the morgue. He told them about the way the technician pulled the sheet back to reveal the grey, ash-colored skin and the jagged line where the bone had shifted under the scalp.
By the time he finished, his voice was a flat...and emotionless.
"I'm sorry," Momo said.
She walked over and stood on his other side. She reached out, her fingers brushing the hair back from his forehead.
"That is a weight no one should have to carry. Especially not twice."
"He looked like a doll," Ryuu said.
He stared at his own hands. They were still wet from the rain...which also served as a reminder of where he went to.
"Just... broken. Like something someone dropped and didn't bother to fix."
Mina grabbed his wrist and pulled him away from the door. She led him toward the bed, and they sat down together.
She pressed her entire side against him, her body heat seeping through his black shirt. Momo sat on his other side, taking his hand and interlacing her fingers with his.
"What do you need right now?" Mina asked.
She leaned her head on his shoulder, her pink hair tickling his neck.
"I don't know. To not feel this. To go back to that day and stay in the dorms." Ryuu's fingers tightened around Momo's hand.
"I keep thinking...if I'd been faster. If I had used my Resonance differently. If I'd stayed and fought with him instead of running like he told me to."
"Stop." Momo's voice was firm. She squeezed his hand, forcing him to look at her.
"That path doesn't go anywhere. You are calculating variables that don't exist anymore. You did exactly what a son and a hero-in-training should do. You survived."
"But...what about the next part...I don't know how to do the next part," Ryuu admitted.
"We'll take it one breath at a time..." Mina murmured. She shifted, wrapping her arms around his waist and pulling him closer until he had to lean into her.
"Then the next one. We're right here."
The room went quiet. Outside, the rain turned into a heavy downpour, the droplets drumming a chaotic rhythm against the glass.
*Boom!*
A flash of lightning flickered across the walls with thunder accompany it.
Bzzzz.
The phone in Ryuu's pocket vibrated. He pulled it out.
[Aizawa-Sensei]: Memorial details finalized. 2:00 PM tomorrow. A bus is prepped for Class 1-A. Reach out if you need anything.
"I...I don't want to go," Ryuu murmured as he stared at the glowing screen.
"I don't want to stand in a suit and listen to people talk about a man they never met. I don't want the cameras on me. I don't want to be the 'surviving son' for the news."
"Then don't go," Mina said. She didn't hesitate.
She just pulled back enough to look him in the eye. "If it's too much, we can stay here. We'll tell Aizawa you're sick. We'll lock the door."
"I can't," Ryuu said.
"You can," Momo countered. She leaned in, her shoulder pressing against his. "You went today. You saw the truth of it. You don't owe the public your grief, Ryuu."
Ryuu thought about his mother's face in the car. He thought about the way she had gripped the steering wheel.
"My mom is expecting me. And..." He looked at the floor, the image of the grey face on the steel table returning.
"He died so I could be here. If I don't show up... it feels like I'm throwing that away. I have to go."
Neither of them argued. They knew that look in his eyes.
Mina climbed further onto the bed, pulling Ryuu down with her. She laid her head on his chest, right over his heart.
Momo moved with them, settling on his other side and resting her arm across his stomach.
They formed a physical barrier between him and the rest of the world.
"We'll be on that bus with you," Mina whispered.
"Every step of the way," Momo added.
"Thanks...I don't know what I would've done without you guys." Ryuu's closed his eyes.
Which made the girls to have gentle smiles playing on their lips.
To Ryuu all he could fell was the warmth of them was the only thing keeping the cold from the morgue at bay.
He felt the steady rise and fall of their breathing, a sharp contrast to the stillness he had seen earlier that day.
He reached out, resting one hand on Mina's shoulder and the other on Momo's arm, holding onto the only things that felt real.
***
The rain continued to lash against the window. The three of them remained on the bed, a tangled pile of limbs and shared warmth.
It was already night time when Ryuu, Mina and Momo heard a hesitate knock on the dorm room's door.
Knock! Knock!
The sound was soft, but in the quiet room, it sounded like a hammer. Ryuu didn't move. He didn't want to break the heat he was finally starting to feel...
Like Mina could already read what he had in mind, she stood up. "Don't worry, I'll go check who it is by the door."
Mina sat up, her hair messy from the pillows. She hopped off the bed and walked to the door. She cracked it open just enough to peek out.
"Is Ryuu up for visitors?" Ochaco asked.
Mina looked back at Ryuu. He felt the weight of the silence in the room and realized he didn't want to be alone with his thoughts anymore. He gave a small, slow nod.
Only to find Ochaco, Tsuyu, and Jirou stood there. They weren't in their school uniforms anymore.
Ochaco was wearing an oversized pink hoodie, Jirou had on a loose band t-shirt, and Tsuyu was in a dark green tracksuit.
"Aizawa-sensei told the class you had to step out with your mom for official business today," Ochaco said as they stepped inside. She was carrying a small bag of convenience store snacks. "And since tomorrow is the memorial... we figured today was for the identification. We wanted to see how you were doing."
The three girls entered. The room felt smaller with six people inside. Ochaco and Jirou sat on the floor, leaning their backs against the foot of the bed. Tsuyu took the desk chair, turning it so she could face Ryuu.
"Was it... as bad as they say?" Jirou asked. She wasn't looking at him; she was staring at a loose thread on the rug.
The question sounded like a click in Ryuu's brain...to be honest, that's a question he didn't want to answer.
"Worse," Ryuu mustered out a word...
He looked at his palms, then wiped them against his sweatpants.
"He didn't look like the man I knew. He looked like a statue made of wet ash." He voiced out the same words he has been repeating since he came back from the morgue.
"There was dried blood in his hair. His face was crushed on one side."
The room went completely still. Ochaco gripped the hem of her hoodie until her knuckles turned white.
"I went through that when I was ten," Tsuyu said suddenly.
"Ryuu looked up to see Tsuyu who was resting her chin on her hands atop the back of the chair. Her large eyes were steadily fixed directly on his.
"My grandfather was in a train derailment," she continued. Her voice was flat and calm. "The police couldn't confirm his identity through the wreckage, so my parents had to take me to the morgue to identify a specific scar on his leg. I was the only one who remembered exactly where it was."
"Ryuu felt a jolt of focus. He hadn't expected the blunt honesty.
"It was the first time I understood that a person could just become an object," Tsuyu said. "I had nightmares for a year. I wouldn't enter a room if the lights were off. I had to see a therapist every week."
"Does it go away?" Ryuu asked. His voice was thin, barely audible over the rain.
"The image doesn't go away..." Tsuyu said. "I can still see the way his skin looked under those blue lights if I try. But the weight of it changes. Eventually, the image stops being the first thing you see when you close your eyes. It just takes a long time, ribbit."
Jirou shifted her weight uncomfortably on the floor, her earphone jacks twitching slightly against her neck.
"I-I...I didn't lose anyone close," she stammered out. "But after the USJ attack back in our first year... I couldn't use my quirk for a week. Every time I tried to amplify sound, I'd hear the villains' voices again. I thought I was going crazy."
"What helped?" Ryuu asked.
"You could say time, I guess... and me forcing myself to use it anyway, even when it made my hands shake." Jirou looked at the door.
"Sometimes the only way out is to just keep walking forward, you know?"
Ochaco had been silent. Now, she gripped the fabric of her hoodie.
"My family almost lost everything when I was thirteen," she murmured. "The construction business nearly went bankrupt. I remember sitting in the kitchen, listening to my parents cry because they thought we'd lose the house."
She hugged her knees tighter. "I felt so helpless. I couldn't do anything to fix it. Things got better eventually, but that feeling of being completely useless... I still get it. Every time I can't save someone or can't help enough, girl hiding in the kitchen comes back."
"Is there a point to these stories?" Ryuu asked. He didn't mean for it to sound harsh, but the words came out blunt.
"The point...," Momo said softly, her hand still resting on his, "is that you're not the only one in this room who feels like they're missing a piece of themselves."
"We've all been broken," Mina added. She leaned her head back against the wall. "Not in the same way, and maybe not as deep. But we've all had to figure out how to stand up when our legs didn't want to work."
Ryuu looked at them. He looked at Tsuyu's steady gaze, Jirou's nervous fidgeting, and the way Ochaco's knuckles were still white.
He wanted to say his situation was different. He wanted to say that seeing a body was worse than a business failing.
But he saw the look in their eyes. It wasn't pity. It was a recognition of the same weight he was carrying.
"Okay," Ryuu said.
They stayed until the clock on his desk hit eleven. They didn't talk about the memorial or the Commission anymore. They talked about the new menu in the cafeteria and the training exercises for Monday.
They filled the room with the sound of normal life until the image of the morgue felt a bit normal again.
When they finally stood up to leave, the room felt suddenly cold.
"See you in the morning, Ryuu," Ochaco beamed a smiled at Ryuu.
"See you." The door clicked shut with Tsuyu and Jirou also waving bye to him.
Ryuu stood in the center of the room also waved a bye.
The moment the room settled he couldn't help but stare at his reflection in the dark window.
"Take the medication," Momo said. She stood by the nightstand, holding out a small white tablet and a glass of water. "You can't go into tomorrow on zero sleep."
Ryuu didn't argue. He took the pill, felt it dissolve on his tongue, and washed it down with a cup of water that was handed to him by Mina.
He climbed back into bed. Mina and Momo settled on either side of him, their presence a literal shield against the dark. The medication worked fast. His limbs felt heavy, and the racing thoughts in his brain began to slow to a dull hum.
He closed his eyes.
***
When he woke on Saturday morning, the room was dim. The sky outside was a thick, bruised blue, and a steady drizzle of rain was already hitting the glass.
He sat up slowly, his head feeling heavy from the medication. The room was dim, lit only by the bruised-purple light of a stormy dawn. The rain was back, a steady, rhythmic tapping against the windowpane.
He turned toward the center of the room.
Mina and Momo were already awake. They weren't in their pajamas anymore; they were dressed in black formal dresses, their hair pinned back neatly. They were standing by his closet, working in complete silence.
Momo was using a handheld steamer on a black blazer, the white vapor curling around her hands. Mina was carefully laying out a crisp white shirt and a dark tie on his desk, smoothing out the fabric with her palms.
They looked up when they heard the bedsheets rustle.
"How do you feel?" Mina asked. Her voice was soft, matching the quiet of the morning.
"Heavy," Ryuu admitted.
He looked at the black suit. It hadn't been there when he went to sleep. Seeing it now...it's sharp, dark, and ready, made the reality of the day settle into his bones.
"We pulled it out for you," Momo set the steamer down and walked over, sitting on the edge of the bed. She placed a hand on his knee. "Everything is ready. You just have to put it on."
Ryuu looked at his hands. They were steady, but his chest felt tight.
'Today,' he thought. 'Today I bury him.'
He took a long, slow breath, forcing the air into his lungs. He looked from Mina to Momo. They were both watching him, their expressions clear and resolute. They were his anchors.
"Okay," Ryuu said, his voice gaining a bit of strength. "It's time." He stood up and walked toward the suit.
The day had arrived.