Suko - a shindeku story

Chapter 16

Izukus POV:

I had left my cell behind me for hours now, but I still felt like I was left in a cage.
Should I return to the heroes? Get my official identity cleared up and be a hero-fancying UA student, helping to fight people i had called my own for years now?
Or should I return to what we had?
Suko.
Only that half of him was missing and that he had lost most of his contacts, considering he now had to fight heroes and villains.

The hero's wanted him because he committed crimes. The villains because he didn't commit them enough.
He now had some kind of family with those messy loud and tired UA heroes, that had even wanted to adopt him.
But if they did, he would be a symbol of the hero system he had fought against for so long.

I sighed and decided to go for a short walk, I mean, it wasn't as if anyone was searching for me or wanted to get rid of me or something.

Without even noticing, his feet had carried him to a familiar place.
The old white building was staring back at him.
There he had spent so many hours planning about how to flee, that he didn't even think about the other children there.
Sure he didn't have any friends, but even tough he was quirkless, not all of them hated him.
I wondered what had become of them.
Had they been adopted?
Were some of them still there, waiting for the day someone would adopt them?

Slowly I started to walk up to the building.
I made my way above the walls that surrounded the building when I noticed how... empty it seemed.
The paint had started to come of and the light was shut down, all doors closed.
Curiously I stared trough one of the windows.
My eyes widened in shock.
The room, once a tidy home to a kid, was black and burnt.

Thanks when I noticed the message pinned to the entry door.
A message was pinned to the old steel gate. "This Building burnt down in a fire two years ago.
This orphanage is closed. Places contact us for more information on currently available orphanages"

My breathing hitched before speeding up again.
I ran up to the next window. To the next and to the next.
All of them were burnt and black.
Then I came to a all to familiar room. I had spent hours there. I had laughed there, cried and just... had fun.
When I looked back at the past I mostly saw dark, sad memories, narrow white rooms and nights without sleep, spent crying.
I had forgotten how much fun I had.

Once Toshi and I had been out together playing in the fields. It was spring, the flowers had bloomed and everything had been painted in so many different colours.
We were laughing and playing in the fields, playing childhood games we had both missed out on and laid in the fields, simply enjoying ones company.
It was a memory I had wanted to keep remembered for ever, but after all those years I had started to forget.

"Look Zu! The red flower! It reminds me of you."
"Me? But people always tell me I look like a bush, green and...greener."
He giggled.
"That's not true. Also, I really like Green!
But I meant because it's the only one here, that's red.
The other flowers never saw one grow red.
So they try to grow taller then the red one.
They want to cover it up because it's different and try to be the tallest, so the picture won't be destroyed.
They are scared what would happen if someone'd discover, because no one ever had seen a red flower grow as tall as the others.
You see now, Zu?
They aren't better than you, only because they are a different colour.
But they will always try to tell you, because what would happen if someone'd realise that those red flowers, are just like them?"

I entered the room through the missing window. I hadn't seen it at first, but the back of the building was falling apart, the old walls breaking down slowly.
The fire must have startet in one of the kids room and continued to spread to the others seeing the they were the most burnt.
I wandered trough the burnt corridors.
I wondered if all the kids had made it out of there.
I hadn't known many of them, but even tough some made fun of me, I hoped they had survived.

As I walked inside the building further, I soon come to realise that the fire must have had started at multiple spots around the same time.
Multiple kids rooms were completely burnt down and the walls were falling apart.
In the cafeteria it was the same.

One fire next to the room I once slept in, the other two rooms next to Toshis. The other two in the cafeteria and in front of the entering of the hallway.

I couldn't quite remember the kids sleeping there, but I did remember that the one next to me, always was quite friendly, even if he sometimes would help the others pick on me.
He seemed to be friends with most of the people there, not like a person that would want to make enemies or pick many fights just for the fun of it.
I didn't believe the fire would have been started because of him.

I entered the next burnt down room.
It was the one next Toshis, but even tough the hallway in front of it was pitch black and seemingly all burnt, it wasn't quite as destroyed I had believed it would be.

Yes, it was burnt and falling apart, but if the fire had started there, it would have been so burnt down that you would not even be able to enter it, seeing there would probably not even be a room anymore, but just some burnt, broken pieces of wall.

I entered it further and looked around for some traces, when I realised the burns showed a weird pattern.
As an usual fire would, it had started in the corner of a room and expanded further, but if you looked closely, you could see that some spots were darker then some, forming an uneven circle.

As if someone had thrown a ball at it.
A burning ball.
Which might have just been inflamed by the whistle of a man.
Just who did that remind me of?