ㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤ

ㅤ
ㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤ
for paz,
the other half i've been searching
for since zeus split us apart.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤ

ㅤ
ㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤ
KAMIKAZE GIRLS dir. tetsuya nakashima

CHAPTER TWO. Theia ManiaㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤAnd although there were so many, the net was not broken.ㅤㅤTHE BIBLEㅤ/ㅤjohn 21:11 ( new king james version )

ㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤ
ㅤ

ㅤㅤTHEY'VE got closer, Higa Junichirō and Todoroki Shōto, Kageyama Kio mused. There's still an undeniable gap between them that Higa Junichirō was probably already working on however, they're no longer strangers. Todoroki Shōto seemed like he hated the boy━ she wouldn't be surprised if he truly did. It's become somewhat common for people to hate Higa when they're first meeting him. ( Perhaps it'd be more accurate if she were to say that they hated meeting the version of themself he manages to drag up from the depths of their soul when speaking to him. ) But that type of emotion, you can only waste on a man you know; Todoroki Shōto's passionate dislike or mellow hatred for Higa Junichirō only goes to show that he's lost this game. Love, hatred, reverence, and denial━ they're all the mocking echo of passion. Higa Junichirō is an enitity that brings about all of those feelings. It's only strange because there's an eerie lull about him that makes you wonder about him even if he's simply passing by, but either way, you see him and your mind suddenly swerves and you feel like a body in the driver's seat that has just lurched into your horn and the beeping is loud and incessant in your ears. If he wanted you to see him, then he'd make it be so. Then, you find out, you hate him. It was like he did it on purpose, almost as if he had a masochistic like for being hated, but Kageyama Kio had nothing to say about his strange tastes. They usually worked out perfectly fine for him in the long term.

"Where's Higa?" Suddenly appearing behind them, the tray is carelessly dropped onto the table, food jumping at the sudden force, bits landing on the side and splattering sauce onto white tables as the girl slid into the booth. She immediately began stabbing the western styled food with her fork, peering over at the two sat in silence. The smell of smoke and oil that persistently followed her pink haired friend makes Kageyama's nose scrunch up in distaste, shifting herself away from the girl.

Kageyama Kio watched as sauce splattered from Hatsume Mei's tray into the air, grimacing as she brought up a wall of water to keep herself safe and left Shinsō to his devices. "We probably won't see him around for a while; he's started a new charity case." The pink haired girl makes a noise of acknowledgement and says nothing else on the topic, continuing to shovel her mouth with food as quick as possible to go back to her inventions. Their third of the trio is characteristically silent. Though it's hard to ignore how Shinsō Hitoshi was staring past the two girls to keep a steady gaze on their fourth and a boy he declared war on yesterday, sat together in another booth, and being as open with it as possible. Whilst she was judging Shinsō for his open staring, Kageyama won't deny that she also found Higa's latest patient intriguing though probably for a different reason.

Higa had no obvious modus operandi when it came to choosing them━ her table of friends proved that but he had a habit of picking those vunerable. He was like a dog, able to sniff fear and softness no matter how thick the skin you shroud yourself in. It was all an intricate game to him━ a long lasting hunt ending with a skeletal body with only its beating heart stuck in its ribs. He'd eat you whole, peel the skin off your flesh, tear through muscle and cartilage and leave only the bones and the heart. He doesn't stop until you're nothing but calcium metal, frames of intricate, rotting bone twisted into rounded corners protectively around your drumming heart, filling in gaps for your missing organs. She doesn't know how or when he made the time he collect either Shinsō or Hatsume, how he met them a further mystery but he had showed up to the table they occupied currently with them in tow and it had stayed that way for some reason. If he had chosen Todoroki Shōto to restore, that meant Higa had noticed something fundamentally off about him; he had noticed a scab and decided to pick at out rather than let it heal. As much as she hated admitting it, Higa Junichirō was good at whatever he did━ whether it was due to his stubbornness or lack of shame, people he invested time in would finally meet some sick, twisted enlightenment.

Kageyama Kio and Higa Junichirō met during their second year of middle school, different middle schools, Higa would clarify when retelling the story as if it made it magical. He claimed it to be "a fateful encounter" even though she knew he barely believed those words himself and Kageyama Kio would claim it had nothing to do with the rigid and forward theme. It wasn't fate that that was the day Kageyama Kio wanted to lengthen her time outside her house. Full of impulsive and childish decisions, she tightened her hold on her backpack, stared her usual path in its unlikely face and turned to face the path right next to it.

They both seemed so similar when she was stood at the fork, lined with lonely brick houses; with a small patch of grass on the street between houses and trees planted on the green, casting deep shadows on her figure as she dragged her shoes on the cement. The same dreary sky ahead of her, the sun sinking slowly into the cement, oozing lava from its core into the blue, she wondered if her mother was worrying over her lateness. She finds that this path has a couple of differences. For one, there was the orphanage she had heard so much about, a wooden fence stationed around the perimeter and holding back the joyful sounds of parent–less children. Kageyama Kio thinks something miserable and horrible about their glee, she can't remember what it was but knowing herself, she can say with certainty that she did. Scowling at her misery, she turned back around to go home. Then, Higa Junichirō foricibly barrels into her life and all the differences between this path and her usual are forgotten.

It was sunnier when they met━ the middle of summer with its sticky heat and glaring light. Kageyama Kio could've use her quirk to ease a little bit of her discomfort but then she thought back to the last time she had done that. She rolled her eyes and brings her hands up to tangle into her hair━ longer than it is now━ and pulls it all up into a ponytail. After threading her hair through the band for the third time, she lets go; she remembers his shout being too gleeful for her liking as her hair dropped down to whip against her back. "Incoming!" Her head snaps upwards and she sees him being chased by a group of boys bigger than both of them.

They would never get along, she had always thought that and it turned out to be true for a completely different reason however. She ended up using her quirk somehow as her thin arms snap upwards, branches of water flowing out from her legs and then darting forwards to push both Higa Junichirō and the boys chasing him away from her.

That particular memory ends with her sat in a police station, next to Higa Junichirō as he tried to offer her sticky, wet lemon hard candy. She turned to ignore him, not wanting to touch the icky plastic wrapping of the sweet, bits of lint and thread from his cargo shorts stuck to it. She doesn't know how he bared his teeth into her, how the water that retreated back to her was dyed in her own blood but he had got her. The gnarly fibers had twisted around her scaled body, the movement of the wooden boat up above too fast for her tail to get her out of; suddenly, she had found herself in a world with those who walked upon their own two legs, without salt in her peripherals that would burn and agitate her eyes. A snare in both its verb and noun variation━ he was the psychical rope tied off into a noose that caught her and the very action of laying low to wait for her to step in, tightening around her ankles.

Todoroki Shōto is somewhat similar, a measly man–made creation that revered a God to the point of imitation. There had been obvious strokes of restoration over his protective varnish; dirt and grim swabbed off his face and broken impasto returned to his uneven facade. With a broken, flimsy frame, the incomplete restoration of Todoroki Shōto presented itself infront of her. She had always disliked the large walls of UA's hallway made of glass, allowing light to filter through indiscriminately; the sun drowns the two in its brilliance, waves of luminosity filtering down on their figures as they find themselves in a sudden shoot–off. There's a feeling of intimidation that crawls up Kageyama's revealed spine as his painted heterochromic eyes stare blankly into hers, trailing down her skeleton until he lands on the skin between her skirt and white socks; his eyes flickering through emotions like a VHS tape, each stroke painted in a deranged manner to mimic two opposing expressions that no one will ever know of.

Like it were possible, Kageyama Kio feels the water in her body retreat deeper into her body, swimming upwards and hiding behind various organs. She continues scrutinising him for foreign touches as if he wasn't freezing the water within her into sharpened icicles, poking at her skin to both get out and hide deeper within her. The left side of his face was marked in damnation, skin discoloured in colours of violent reds and burning blood; his right was clear, dimmed by the bright colour of his hair yet still managing to stand out. His right features were less prominent as if rounded off by a form of salvation, dulling the shine of a pointed knife and rusting the metal tip.

"Kio!" She snapped her head back to see Hatsume Mei walking towards her, an array of metal in her hands as she peeked her head over the mountain to see her. The water seeps out from behind her, relief easing off the wave as they swam away from Todoroki Shōto, ducking down erratically to slither across the floor to hold her friend's scraps. Hatsume Mei's shoulders rolls, relieved from the strain as she walked up to the girl.

She doesn't notice Todoroki Shōto until Kageyama Kio glances back at him, wondering why he was still stood there. "Hey! You're Juni's friend right?" Todoroki Shōto's eyebrows furrow angrily at the thought. "Where is he?" Hatsume Mei comically searched the empty hallway behind the boy, hands placed over eyebrows, as if Todoroki Shōto was hiding Higa behind him.

"We're not friends." Hatsume Mei doesn't seemed to bothered by his words as she stepped away from him, returning to Kageyama's side. Kageyama doesn't think she'd get along with the class 1–A student, she knows that Shinsō would probably take half–hearted jabs at him, and Hatsume Mei was overly friendly with everyone anyways but Kageyama couldn't see herself getting along with a shadow of her past. It's disgusting. To be approached by a creature that resembles a previous you.

Todoroki Shōto's face has settled on looking furious━ eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened; Kageyama Kio recognises the signs of Higa Junichirō's impacts. How being an accused affiliation with him would make you feel impossibly sick, how that affiliation would turn you a traitor to your brothers and sisters. But denying your connections to him would attest to the denial of your whole self, it was refusal to grow and mature.

Though in the end, neither will matter.

Kageyama Kio learnt it first–hand: it'll never matter how many times you deny Higa Junichirō, he'll come back for you and it's not because he's any kind of selfless saviour that knows no shame in the face of rejection and only knows love. No matter how much Kageyama Kio regarded him as some kind of untouchable deity that came down to embrace her, it doesn't change what he was. Higa Junichirō was a selfish boy━ an unyielding snare. He had fallen from above, banished for following his heart, seducing other creatures with promises and vaunts and though you may want to pity him, to study the texts that will follow his inevitable descent and cry, 'he only wanted to listen his heart! Take him back!' It was his wish. He gave up living amongst the great to follow his unruly, rebellious, evil heart━ there's no use in pitying him for his own choices. It may seem admirable but he was nothing but a power–striken fool, obsessed with being known. It was his selfish desire to surround himself with as many stars as possible, to have himself burn within the hearts of stars so they could cast his name far and wide; he wanted masses to turn to differing sights and think of him first and foremost.

Even so, under the smallest possibility that Higa Junichirō did not manage to catch Todoroki Shōto, to beckon him with words of promise, Kageyama Kio would still burn as he wanted her to. Burning up the Milky Way, expanding large enough to swallow up the world, to engulf the growing galaxy, even when facing judgement and pressure, to accommodate for a man's entering has always been the woman's way of living. It was her mother's way, and in taking up her second name, it will be Kio's way.

She'll turn his life into scriptures for the rebellious to live by.

Still. She wondered why him, with his haughty, boy–ish gaze, his hands in his pockets, and an irritable tone. Why Todoroki Shōto? Sure, he's strong. Out of all the people Higa had chosen, Todoroki Shōto was the one that would probably go the furthest. Stood here now, it only seemed right that he was basked in the glowing ichor dripping from the sun but she still couldn't understand why; that hot–headed, flashy blond who arrogantly parted the sea of people yesterday with his bag hanging from two fingers and the beginnings of hell on his shoulders would've been her guess. It was easy to see him being picked apart. Hatsume Mei's eyes warily glance between the two before she opens her mouth to bid Todoroki Shōto goodbye, Kageyama Kio turns to follow her.

"Excuse me, the tall girl, I need to speak to you."

It felt wrong to talk to him━ she realises that it's because she felt like she was going behind Higa's back━ but she glances back at Hatsume Mei, who shrugs as if to say 'what's the worse that could happen'. Kageyama Kio cannot get along with Todoroki Shōto. The silence is filled in with miscellaneous topics from the pink–haired girl and the two beside her are mostly silent, with Kageyama Kio adding her input into her friend's conversation and Todoroki Shōto tuning them both out. He has taken the side closer to the outside walls, his shadow sent back to cast upon Hatsume and Kageyama. Eventually, the three have reached Hatsume's classroom and with one final grave, almost begging, look to her friend, Kageyama Kio is left with the boy.

"Higa Junichirō," his name is wrong on his lips, syllables all churned together fast like the mismatching of two cogs, "what's wrong with him?"

Her laughter is broken into chunks, an odd sight where she's visibly shaking, with her open mouth gulping in waves of the sunlight and her arms holding onto her sides, and the audible seasons breaking apart into a loud summer, turning quieter until it circled back around to her gasp of breath. Her eyes snapped into crescents and the girl was almost toppling over. By the time she's calmed down, there are a mass of tears in her eyes as she brings up her sleeve to collect them, still chuckling as she did so.

Still though, she's right. She wouldn't get along with him.

This desperation to understand Higa Junichirō, to the point where he disregarded his own mind to seek out another━ it's all too familiar. Foaming at the mouth, his jaw low to the ground and blood seeping out of all orifices, they were both animals that would need to be put down because of their curiosity. Regardless, Kageyama Kio shifted on her balance onto her other foot and said, "what specifically are you asking about?"

( The question confuses Todoroki Shōto; the boy himself angers him. Though his presence was the more obvious unsettling and standout thing, the heroics student was hesitant and almost unwilling to speak to Higa Junichirō. After he had broken into private property and thrown Todoroki Shōto's mind for a loop, he created an unavoidable scenario in which they both needed to leave and left Todoroki to settle in his upturned grave with dirt still trapped under his fingernails and the heavy feel of his own breath returning to him.

Since then, he didn't expect Higa to make a return in his life nor did he want him to. He wondered how Higa Junichirō had come to the decision to land outside his door when the wood was marked in lamb's blood, why he hadn't turned away and carried his virus elsewhere. But he returned to Todoroki regardless, slipping into the booth across from him without him noticing.

Sliding in through the crack of his door, Higa Junichirō comes to ruin those that he touches. Just like the first time he intruded into Todoroki's life. )

Todoroki Shōto realised his question was entirely too vague but Higa Junichirō was a question in its entirety. A shift in pitch at the end of a sentence, the unsure elongation of a word, a tag question; his existence, if it could be called that, was an anomaly. He didn't think that the girl would take his words seriously after she spent a minute shaking with amusement at his ambiguous question, either way, he wouldn't pass up on the chance to finally, finally understand what his deal was. He settled on the most obvious and annoying feature of Higa Junichirō.

( Higa's arms had come up after he made himself comfortable, elbows planted on the table so his chin could settle in the palm of his hand, his fingers dropping onto his face gently. Having Higa's murky face so close to his view gives him an irritating headache, an overload of unscripted colour and textures all spitting out at him. Each one determined to be seen, piercing through the membrane of his eyes and scratching at his skull. )

Kageyama Kio seemed a little shocked at his choice, eyes blinking slowly as she nodded her head. He hears her muttering something to herself before she had shaken her head. "No, I don't know what the deal with his face is."

"Do you," Todoroki Shōto pauses for a second, wondering if she may think he was crazy, "actually see him?"

"No, and I doubt anyone can."

( "Are you religious?" Higa Junichirō asked, with his head tilited in his palms like it were a normal question for acquaintances to ask each other. Todoroki Shōto wondered, for a second, what that girl sees when she looks at Higa. When she had him wrapped up in her quirk, the feel of skin against her water as she dragged up him upwards to look at him, what was she looking at? His eyes? The blackhole frozen and situated in the middle of coalescing constellations that only lit up the reflection of the one stood infront of him? What eyes were made to do that? What human was made like that?)

Kageyama Kio doesn't seem like the type to lie so he accepts this answer. Then, his quirk came to mind. "Does he have some kind of mind reading quirk?"

"Not that I'm aware of." Kageyama Kio watched some fall of emotion dawn on Todoroki's face. At this point, she's full of nothing but pity for him. It's not strange that he's trying to find out something more about Higa, Shinsō Hitoshi was the same way when they were first introduced. "I know you came to me because I'm his friend, but in all honesty, I know just as much as you do." She was the exact same way, it annoyed her that they were essentially middle school friends but she knew nothing about him. To a certain extent, it still bothers her now but that hits her at high tides, when she was walking behind him and their pink haired friend and the dizzying colours of his clothes are finally far away enough that his murkiness looks normal. When he's that far away, he looks correct and she can finally see him as a whole, it's then that she realises that she doesn't know a lot about Higa Junichirō.

"Okay, thanks then." When Kageyama Kio looks back up, she sees that Todoroki Shōto is still stood across from her. His features still raised and nailed in that awkward and angry manner. She wondered if Higa Junichirō had planned this too. The torturous and slow descent of having a mirroring image stood infront of her, Todoroki, stood here now, reminds Kageyama Kio of that young girl, who had made her mother a promise less than twenty–four hours earlier to stop using her quirk, snapping her arms upwards. Her eyes pressed shut, denying herself the sin of becoming a witness to her acts, the boiling water that followed her dramatic movement, seeping out of her legs and rushing fowards to push Higa away from her. Todoroki Shōto, with his fist clenched and lips pursed, denying that he knew of Higa Junichirō and yet asking about him.

( Todoroki's eyebrows had scrunched in confusion to his words, his tray pushed away from him as he began to lose interest in eating. "Christian to be specific," Higa prompted as if it were any clarification. Todoroki Shōto shook his head. )

It's laughable that she even entertained the idea that Higa Junichirō wouldn't find a way to worm into the heroics student's brain, planting his propaganda there and letting it become a maggot, rotting his brain so that his body would become a host to Higa's ways. She remembered being this devastatingly desperate to understand Higa, though back then, there was no one else she could turn to to learn about him.

Walking away from Kageyama Kio, he only finds himself more confused both by Higa Junichirō and his purely transactional conversation disguised as interactional. He despised Higa's roundabout way of speaking, how he'd create euphemisms to slowly taint Todoroki's view, how his words were never concise. It was his masked way of feeding you more meat, to fatten you up so that if the beasts come, they will find you first and be satisfied with eating your flesh. Todoroki Shōto had always been better at taking beatings, he'd hate being softly spoken to like he were a child that couldn't wrap their head around complex matters. He hated how sudden decisions were made without his knowledge for his own protection.

( Higa Junichirō, despite the way his eyes softly widened for pleasant surprise to seep through the planets, seemed to be waiting for this denial. "Really? It's just that there's a verse that reminds me of you. Ecclesiastical chapter ten, line two: The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left." He says this like it would mean anything to anyone but himself. After his inquiry into his quirk and how he pieced together Todoroki's answers last night, it's not hard to understand what Higa meant by that quotation. )

A fool.

Despite how the directions were switched on that Bible verse, Higa Junichirō was calling him a fool; in a way, he understands where exactly the boy was coming from or how he'd take that away Todoroki's decisions. The Fool━ someone on the cusp of nothing and something, the number zero, the letter x. The number zero and the letter x are mere placeholders. Wherein the stability of zero is risky, the letter x is always x; Todoroki Shōto exists on a spectrum between free will and determinism. He applies his free will to whatever's easiest and decided that the things that are hard are out of his control. Sometimes, x is always equal to x and other times, it becomes equal to y. In this way, Higa Junichirō regards his attitude towards his father and the fire gifted to him as a natural phenomenon, something that Shōto did not choose for himself; he didn't choose to hate his father, it was simply meant to be. It's in this way that Todoroki Shōto, under the wrong lighting, is considered to be a fool, whom doesn't understand his own contradictive ways.

However, when The Fool is upright, he can start anew.

( Taking his words at a face value is the only thing that Todoroki can do. "Because of my inclination to my right?" He wished that Higa Junichirō would simply say what he meant, to throw a fist in his face to awaken him to the world that Higa was living within, where Todoroki Shōto was not an appendage connected to his face but a separate molecule. )

The Fool admires the sky without realising he is near walking off a cliff, with little belongings to call his own. He lives in a world of unstability━ where the start of his forever troubling revelation splits the roads into two halves, where he's stood at a fork with one road too familiar to the child he used to be and the other unfamiliar to a man he has yet to meet and both scares the present him. The Fool, a zero, has the ability to become less than or more than, decrease or increase, negative or positive. Or he simply stays a zero, rooted in place; too scared by both the known and unknown, he stays where he is and soon finds out that everyone has passed him and that he is too late to catch up.

( Higa Junichirō hummed, head tilting in his hands. "I guess you'd take it in a literal sense." There's something else that bothers Todoroki about the boy. )

Todoroki Shōto squeezes his eyes shut, dragging a hand through the middle of his hair, where his mother and father met before dragging the hand downwards over his face, pressing harshly down on his eyes. The breath that leaves him is not a cold condensation of fog that his mother had left behind, it is a ragged, hot breath that warms up his hand and makes his palm itch. The air travels through the webs on his fingers before he drops the hand, ignoring the pulsing heartbeat that he feels over his palm.

ㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤ
ㅤ

ㅤㅤRAKING his eyes over the room, Shinsō Hitoshi lazily makes his way over to his usual booth with only a milk carton in his hands. The sound of careless chattering annoyed him a little, something beginning to itch his palm, the feel of hair tickling his neck. Though despite that, he found himself still listening out, picking apart details of their gossiping that related back to the USJ, the villains, the class 1–A students, and more importantly, All Might; his feet walk him to the booth, stopping suddenly infront of Hatsume Mei and Higa Junichirō, both of whom were also sharing what they had heard about the incident.

The shadow he cast upon them was enough to make Higa Junichirō lean back from Hatsume Mei, looking up at him. "Shinsō! You must be pretty annoyed right now," he spoke without refrain. Hatsume Mei giggled from across him as she was nodded to slide over.

"It's okay! You'll get there one day!" Hatsume spoke as she laughed, prompting Higa to follow along with her obnoxious laughter, following the beat of her hand hitting against his back, as if they were keeping him out of some inside joke.

Though despite him ignoring them both, finding some entertainment in reading the nutritional table on the back of his carton, the two continued joking about it. "Maybe you should go over there and declare war on them," Higa Junichirō prompted, a slow grin dawning on his face.

Somehow, that became an outing for them. Hatsume Mei had thrown herself forward and told Shinsō that he couldn't go to check them out that day because she had things she needed to do that day after school that she wasn't able to postpone. Higa Junichirō's face slid into a comfortable grin, leaning back from the two as if separating himself from them, watching them like they were built into a TV; pixilated entities that lived out their scripted life with a lense following them and a commander of perfection. A medium of ocular greatness, that only came to inspire great myths through loosely worded prophecies, staying disconnected to the discord his scriptures may awaken.

It reminded him of the first time they met. The time, place, and day all remained irrelevant to him, he barely remembered why he was out that day.

It was raining, he thinks. The dark clouds hung heavy in the air, his limbs aching with every move, fibres of miniscule muscle tear rubbing against each other and gaping open with every move against gravity, the plastic bag in his hand hung inches from the floor. The black shirt he wore was thin, tucking into his trousers and cut off at his shoulders, the warmth━ warmth of the sun? Maybe it wasn't raining when he was out.

Either way.

The sun stood ahead of him, agressive and painting Shinsō's achy limbs in liquid gold, the muscle memory of exercise breaking him apart; the white bag full of miscellaneous cat food brushed against his joggers as he walked down the narrow path. Light reflected from beads of water upon grass blades and his reflection was seen in every puddle that he disrupted, black boots falling into the water and creating a weak, temporary rainfall upon insects of lesser importance. He remembered hearing a group of excitable boys before he sees them, so much younger with so much more opportunities for miserable to turn them into driven maniacs.

Their height stopping around his waist, their pristine clothes fitting them perfectly; the sun shone around them, its light refusing to penetrate through the darkened shadows that tore around malicious grins and heavy stomps. The innocent laughter accompanied pained meows, the shadow that scurried around their shoes, unable to move told him everything.

Before he knew it, he had used his quirk.

He never saw their faces, never learnt their names; they heeded his words, unable to do anything else, and left. It was as easy as clearing his throat to get their attention and then telling them to, "fuck off" as hostile as possible when they turned around with their eyes scared and horrified, like he was the one tormenting them or cornering them.

Shinsō Hitoshi remembers vaguely disliking Higa Junichirō. He vividly remembers how the first time he saw Kageyama Kio smile━ a subconscious smile, one that looked like it tore through muscle and skin━ was when he told her this. His eyebrows furrowed as he remembered around the details, "━cats, and then he appears behind me like he was there the entire time, fucking prick."

Kageyama Kio nods as if she wouldn't expect anything else. They shared details about his strange face, how he seemed like an apparition made of coloured smoke, how sometimes if you stare at him long enough, you get the urge to waft your hand straight through his face. Following the sudden wind, his features will bleed into the path you carved into the atmosphere, the lingering stickiness of his skin will cling to your hands. He remembered Kageyama Kio telling him that Higa made her sick offhandedly, as a jokingly serious comment.

It's his inability to pass judgement on people. Despite how he acted━ like a God of the less━ he didn't judge people. Though his questions and actions forever danced upon the line of rude, intrusive, and/or insensitive, they were always judgement–free. That's what had made her sick of him, how he wanted to understand someone. How his turbid eyes will penetrate through your words, as if they were taking apart of you as you spoke to him; it's a somewhat painful load, to have or beg someone to fully understand you, to know you without any judgement. Those with that torrid obsession with being understood will never know the fate they are passing onto those that will inevitably know them; though not always evil, disguised as a blessing from the gods above, the entheos desire to have someone justify your ends because they know your means will destroy them.

With Higa Junichirō, it was always, always simple curiosity.

When he appeared behind him, carrying a black umbrella over his head, the strap around his wrist and a gloomy shadow cast over his face until he moved the metal stick to his shoulder. Shinsō's quirk, seconds away from activating because he thought it was one of those young boys who were returning, completely halted. Somehow, between Shinsō Hitoshi losing his breath over his unruly appearance and his confusion of why he had stopped, Higa Junichirō had squatted himself down next to the purple haired boy and his index finger had reached out to brush back the fur of the fattened cat. He continued staring down at the back of the boy's, wondering if he should use his quirk on him to get him to leave and forget about their meeting, he wondered if he had been Shinsō use his quirk on the younger boys. A gnawing fear turned his feet cold, an intermittent buzzing irritating him, spasms of tingles etched into his skin; did he see him use his quirk?

"You've been feeding it?" Higa Junichirō continued pushing apart the fur, his nail separating knots and the pad of his index finger creating waves with the wet fur. Painting a world of amber seas, strokes of orange followed the curvature of his finger and separated from masses of copper waves. He suddenly turns his head back, his wavering finger moving away from the cat. Shinsō Hitoshi slowly nodded silently and watched the cat reach for his floating hand, gently pawing at his palm. Its attention was finally diverted away from Higa when Shinsō crouched down beside him, ultimately choosing to ignore his presence, running his large palm over the cat's fur to ruin the other boy's previous work and then pulling out the tins of cat food.

Higa Junichirō watched Shinsō work meticulously to get all the food out of the can and onto the plastic bag that he spread out on the floor without saying much. The cat had already began to eat the food, ignoring how Shinsō shook the tin erratically or hit it against his palm as it chewed; when Shinsō Hitoshi finally gave up with the smaller bits of tuna still clinging on, he noticed that Higa was gone.

Though after that meeting, Shinsō didn't see him again until he got into UA. A week after they had settled into the new routine, Shinsō Hitoshi suddenly could pick him out of a crowd.

Maybe it was a joke. Maybe Shinsō Hitoshi had grown too accustomed to listening to Higa Junichirō, either way, at the end of the day, he found himself walking towards the hoard of people crowding around the open door of class 1–A. When he was met with both Higa and Kageyama stood at the front, Kageyama glaring down a particular boy inside the class and Higa smiling at him, he knew that Higa wasn't joking at all. After that, Higa Junichirō was gone again. Kageyama Kio provided that he had chased after one of the boys and made her way off to find Hatsume Mei, Shinsō Hitoshi detoured on the way home.

Higa Junichirō holds no evidence that he is made of others, with his upturned eyes, the sun feeding the bounce in his steps, and the Earth quivering under his laughter. He was someone you couldn't see struggling. The image of him drowned in blood is painted in greatness, drawn out wide with his wing span nailed open to encompass the sins and his ribs protruding, each bone close to ripping through skin, painted in human tones as they curved around his still heart. Shinsō Hitoshi never claimed to be bothered about the judgement that is passed when they learn of his quirk, at some point, it became a waiting game━ forcing himself to be uncomfortable and uneasy in the presence in other until the roles were switched when they found out about his quirk. It wasn't as if Higa Junichirō had 'accepted' Shinsō Hitoshi's quirk and uplifted him for staying true to his dreams even as he was condemned numerous times for something he could not change.

It was mild indifference.

Shinsō Hitoshi found himself stood in that darkened alleyway where they first met, the cat nosing at his shoes, meowing for his attention as he stared down at its matted fur. Tangled together, each line meshed together into a knotted mess, brown pollution falling into the waves of straight hair and tugging it all into a quasar. He leaned down to embrace the black hole, brushing the matter into the planet; letting the gravity of his finger dictate the atoms, circling the fur around the main body of dirt stuck on the cat.

Higa Junichirō did not care for anything deeper than the you that stood before him, taking you in wholy with everything else acting as a distant planet, orbiting around you━ the whole burning mass that connected these strange occurances and detailings of cold, hot, wet, and dry planets. Thrown away minor Gods of unconventional things will learn humility; treated as a humans, they will learn to find another God to revere.

Like it does for everyone, it began as a simple, excitable dream for a young child. Along the way, faced with scorn and hatred, he became desperate. It was no longer about being a hero to do himself right, to want to save other people, it turned into a revenge; to be able to laugh in the face of everyone who had mocked him, beat him, he will become a hero. It was no longer a promise between himself and a younger him, it became a threat. This was about saving himself. ( Higa Junichirō may make you aware of this fact but he will leave you to save yourself. Such is a God that only watches. ) It was raw desperation from a child who never learnt of God. And desperate animals will eat their young and when the young are all gone, they'll teeth on their own leg.

ㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤ
ㅤ

ㅤㅤNOTE(S)ㅤ━ㅤthis chapter literally has everything thrown into it. religion, art restoration, maths, philosophy, tarot cards, etc.; you're welcome, it was paz's birthday when the first version of this was published. it is obviously no longer her birthday but it was written with the intention of wishing him a happy birthday so the vibes are still lingering ig and it's still dedicated.

ς(>‿<.) via. quy