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44. The Child

Rule 116: Second chances are fine, but a third and fourth, when all it's doing is hurting you, it's time to let them go.

"So you know a while back when you asked us for advice about forgiving people?" Aki began. The three of them were sat in their usual spot for lunch, the sun back to beating down on them and the shade of what was becoming their tree a beautiful kindness.

Otsuka's brow furrowed as she blankly groped around her brain for the right memories like a blind man searching for a green pillow in a sea of pillows every colour under the sun and finding Rubik's cubes instead. "Um, that's a no. When did that happen?" she asked, trapped between not recalling a reason why she'd ask advice for something like that and not trusting her own memory because it was a sieve on the best of days.

"You know, when we met and you wouldn't give us any details but Shinsou helped you out and you were good!" Aki enthused, golden eyes glimmering in the warm sunlight.

It hit her harder than a freight train filled to the brim with lead. Her eyes blew wide. "Oh! How could I forget?" She slapped her forehead, remembering the most recent addition to her rulebook. Rule 116 was her best version of what she could remember Shinsou telling her. She knew it wasn't verbatim but the rules she wrote down and memorised didn't even need to make proper sense as long as she understood the meaning. That was the most important bit. "What about it?"

"I just wanted to check everything was alright with it," Aki explained. It had just sort of occurred to him, and it felt like a reasonably safe topic. He was honestly still reeling from finding out everyone Otsuka knew before UA had been killed in one terrible villain attack, fate was a cruel thing when one of the few trips her old school took in a year turned to tragedy like that. Everything that happened in Hosu, it was all such a mess.

Otsuka nodded. "Yeah, we've been texting and I think they're really trying, you know?"

Aki smiled brightly, tilting his head back at just the right angle for the green-lining around his hair spike to catch the dappled light through the leaves. "That's good," he told her before his expression fell into something far more sinister, "but you know if they ever do something to hurt you, I'm going to claw their eyes out with my bare hands and use their bones as jewellery."

Otsuka blinked, slowly computing the threat that was also kind of sweet? Maybe. "I'll remember that, thank you." Whether 'thank you' was the proper response or not, it felt better to be polite considering Aki seemed perfectly willing to follow through.

"And I'm sure Shinsou would do exactly the same," Aki promised, flicking the other boy's shoulder.

Shinsou jolted up, his half-closed eyes shooting wide and his arm going out to catch Aki's on reflex, only for Aki to dodge well in advance with his wonderful quirk's assistance. Shinsou blinked, looking between his two friends. "Did I miss something or can I go back to sleep?"

"Do you sleep at night?" Aki checked, slowly bringing one hand to rest on his friend's shoulder without almost getting attacked for it.

Shinsou blinked languidly, and Otsuka honestly thought he might just leave his eyes closed on the next blink and fall asleep again. "No, I party all night with my thousands of friends," he answered, voice so drained of any life it sucked the energy out of the other two and probably the grass around them.

"You've been falling asleep in lessons ever since the sports festival."

"I fell asleep in English once, and unlike you, Aki, I can afford to do that," Shinsou returned. He almost chose to say that last bit in English but he knew it would've been lost on Aki and he didn't know enough about Otsuka's language skills to know if she'd understand.