Mystery from Another World--MHA

Part 136: Lethe's reminiscing dwindles/Truth about Kurogiri

Lethe hadn't been sleeping well since the destruction of the city. He kept dreaming of his sister-- and the past.

The memories seemed more vivid than ever. Using his quirk had always had that one side effect: he'd remember what he suppressed as if he was the one who lived it, the images playing before his mind.

He'd done it so much there was hardly a time of day he didn't have one in the back of his mind, but he'd learned to ignore them mostly.

Over a week afterward though, he was restless, thinking of the events that caused him and Medea to have to run.

When the fire in their house had started, Lethe hadn't been present, so he wasn't sure what happened.

He knew that up until then Medea's quirk had only ever shown itself in her eyes changing color and never any outward manifestation. The doctors had said she was just a late bloomer. Their theory was her quirk was too weak to show itself much without intense training.

What they'd said afterward was it was actually too strong to properly come out until she let it.

Lethe didn't know what she'd been arguing with their parents about when it happened. Probably something stupid. At 13, they'd both been starting their rebellious phase, which for him had been sneaking forbidden comics into his room, and for Medea had been dying her hair purple...but she wanted to do more. She always wanted to get out and do more than her parents were comfortable with.

No doubt it had been that, and he'd heard yelling, and then heat had assailed him through the walls, and fire had blasted them open in one huge burst of energy.

Medea had become a nuclear reactor, it felt like. Way out of control. It was common, he learned later, for a first appearance of a quirk to be that explosive and erratic if it was an unusual one.

The house had started to cave in from heat and the force. Lethe had heard their parents yelling at them to get out, so he ran, and Medea followed, and she'd phased right through the walls and out into the street, still on fire. Some people had seen her who were out walking. They also called the police.

It was a blur to Lethe after that for his own memories, but for Medea's, he knew there had been so much screaming, and people yelling and whispering about her being cursed.

And of course, the most painful of all, watching the inside of the house cave in, and their parents had not made it out.

The fire department and heroes said later that it looked as though they had tried to go back for something. And the roof had fallen in on them before they could make it out. The fire was already so large, the smoke and fumes probably had smothered them before the flames even reached them.

It was horrible... Lethe had wished many times he could suppress his own memory of what happened. His quirk did not work on himself.

It really wasn't Aya's fault, he'd thought to himself at the time, scared of how she'd reacted to it all. She hadn't meant to destroy the house. She hadn't meant for her quirk to go off. None of them had known it would. Couldn't she get angry without causing such a tragedy?

It was better if she didn't know. She could never trust herself again... He was afraid she'd do something to hurt herself if she carried that guilt or the memories of what people were saying about her.

So he suppressed it all...and she was happy again.

And he would always remember what happened. Enough for both of them.

They could be happy, if he just took on the weight of the truth, and Medea was blissfully unaware of it. It worked, didn't it?