RESURGENCE - MHA x FReader

Chapter XV: Nice or Not So Nice Meeting You

The city breathes differently at night.

It exhales secrets you can't hear during the day, the kind you're not supposed to understand but can't help but listen to anyway. The air is colder, but it's not the temperature that gets under your skin — it's the feeling that everything around you is stretching, yawning, coming to life when you thought it was supposed to be sleeping.

You liked that.

The sidewalks shimmered under streetlights that buzzed like sleepy insects, casting long, crooked shadows that stretched out like they had nowhere else to be. Rain still clung to the asphalt, puddles mirroring neon signs and the occasional passing car like little broken pieces of some glowing dream.

The air was thick and strange—cool against your skin, heavy in your lungs. It smelled like wet concrete, rusted iron, rain-soaked trash, and a hint of cigarettes someone was smoking on a balcony two floors up.

You let out a small sigh, kicking a loose pebble with the toe of your worn-down sneaker. It skipped across the damp pavement, bouncing once before clattering against the side of a rusty dumpster. The sound was sharp and out of place in the silence of the alley. The plastic bag in your hand rustled with every shift, the cold weight of your Pocari Sweat and konbini snacks swinging against your side in time with your steps.

Honestly, you weren't even supposed to be here—not in this random alley, anyway.

The plan had been simple: walk two blocks, grab some snacks, go home, watch a movie, sleep. Nothing too complicated. No drama, no nonsense.

Your parents were cool with you running quick errands like this. Kids your age in Japan were pretty independent. You'd been walking to school alone since you were seven. The city felt safe, as long as you didn't do anything dumb.

Stick to the main streets. Don't talk to strangers. Don't cut through back alleys. Easy rules.

And you followed those rules... most of the time.

But tonight? Tonight, your brain had decided to go rogue without so much as a warning.

It all started with one scrappy-looking cat—grey, thin, and fast—zipping past you like it was on a tight deadline, probably with a meeting with the cat mafia. You barely caught a glimpse of its flicking tail before your legs were already moving, sneakers splashing through the shallow puddles, trailing after it like some kind of clueless idiot.

You just liked cats.

And maybe you were secretly hoping it would lead you to something cool. A whole underground cat gang, tucked away in the shadows, living a life of adventure and mystery. You could see it now in your mind: a secret society of cats, their eyes glowing in the dark, moving silently between the alleys like they owned the whole damn city. In reality? Probably not as impressive as you imagined. But it sure sounded way cooler in your head.

As you kept moving, the alley seemed to stretch longer, the shadows growing deeper, the faint hum of city traffic on the other side of the block dimming with each step. You barely noticed it at first—the way the usual buzz of the city was fading, replaced by the wet slap of your sneakers on the pavement and the soft, erratic thrum of your heartbeat. Your breath started to catch, not from exertion but from the unsettling silence creeping in from all sides.

You should have turned back, but the cat was just a few steps ahead, darting through the shadows, moving so fast you almost wondered if it was a ghost.

Maybe that's why you kept going.

Something about the way the alley twisted and bent, disappearing behind a cluster of rusted pipes and half-broken streetlights, made it feel like you were being drawn into some kind of secret. The city you knew was suddenly a little less familiar. A little more dangerous.