My Hero Origins One-Shots

Don't Tell Shino

This takes place before the building blew up.
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Artemis P.O.V

I'm pretty sure this place is haunted.

Over the past few days, strange things have been happening to me in this dorm.

It started off with just some creaks and groans of the floorboards, which didn't seem that bad. But then, it would become unnaturally cold in my room. I would be doing my homework or designing when the hairs on my neck would rise.

This cold then started to feel more like someone was breathing down my neck.

But what definitely gave me the message was when I was taking a shower.

The common thing when a shower is on is that the heat will fog up the mirror. When I was younger at the orphanage, I would draw little designs in the fog, which a found to be cute.

But not this time.

When I turned off the water and wrapped my towel around my waist, I looked up at the mirror and muffled my terrified yelp.

Smudged into the mirror was face. Sort of like one I made as a kid, just it took up the whole mirror. I never touched the reflectional glass, I'm pretty sure no one opened the door to the bathroom while I was in there.

Hastily, I cleaned myself up and ran out of the bathroom. My rush somehow lead me to the main room of the dorm, where Rikku and Shino were chiling.

"Woah Arty!" Gasped Shino in surprise, turning his head away.

On the couch, watching anime, Rikku faced the sudden commotion, then immediately blushed and covered her eyes.

"What?" I asked, shocked and scared at their responses.

Shino had to choke on his words a little bit, his face flushed a deep red, deeper than when he saw me at the café.

"C-Can you...Gah.... P-put some more clothes on. Please." He sputtered out finally, then muttered something to himself that seemed to make his blush spread to the tips of his ears.

I looked down and yelped again. In my rush, I still had my towel around my waist and nothing to cover up my chest.

I tried to form an apology, but gave up and rushed upstairs to put on one of my shirts. Once I was back down with the others, Rikku was giggling at Shino who was still overlong his face with his hands.

"S-sorry about that!" I cried, standing awkwardly at the stairway.

Shino cleared his throat "It's alright Artemis. But we were actually going to knock on the door to give you a heads up."

Rikku shut off her show and leaped from the couch.

"Yeah, are we going to the café?" She asked excitedly. She was already in her outfit and ready to go. I honestly forgot about the café. I have been so on edge with these strange events, things seemed to have slipped my mind.

"Y-you can Rikku," I said, my nerves still racking "I think I'm going to skip it today. I'm feeling kind of tired."

Rikku seemed sad about that, but agreed anyway. As she ran out the door, I turned to Shino.
"So what are you going to be doing?" I asked him.

He shrugged "Probably just run some errands and see what Blake is up to. I need to clear my head." He still had a dust of pink of his cheeks. "How about you?"

I though for a moment. No one was going to be in this house. It was going to be me and whatever the heck was tormenting me.

"Umm, probably just some fashion projects, that new student we got last week sent me a letter so a costume request. Sadly, her demands require a certain type of fabric that is a bit hard to get." It technically was the truth, but that's not something I was going to work on.