#when we stopped going to class me and my best friend got closer casue we started texting more

[thesardonicwriter]

Epoch, Chapter 2

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The third day… the third day that I can still remember as clear as day started out normally. Happily. I gave Byakuya a hug before he left for UA. He pushed me off of him as he went out the door, muttering something I couldn’t hear under his breath. I yelled that I loved him before he shut the front door. Something had happened the day before. He hadn’t spoken to anyone since then. I wanted to know what had happened. I was worried about him. Byakuya wasn’t the nicest person in the world, but he was still my brother and I loved him. I wanted to know what was wrong. Sort of. It was in that weird kind of “I’m a kid and curious” kind of way.

I was driven to school by my mom on her way to work. I could have walked. I wanted to, but she insisted on driving me. She only had a few more years of young Aiko left, she said. She wanted to make the most of it. She said that to me every morning with a smile. I loved my mother’s smile. It made me feel warm and loved every time I saw it.

That morning wasn’t any different than any other. Looking back on it, there seemed to be hundreds of details that made it seem so much worse than it was. That’s really just me trying to put meaning towards it, I think. It was one of the most important days of my life, after all. There had to be something more that was significant. The truth of the matter was that there wasn’t. A normal morning on a normal day. Nothing significant happened until after I had been in school for a while already.

Sitting in class, I was starting to doze off. The teacher was going over Quirk laws, considering that some of us were still developing Quirks. It was something that happened every time that someone else developed and registered a Quirk. We had heard it too many times for me to really care about it. I made faces at Toshi. He hid snickers behind his hand. The teacher hadn’t noticed us yet. It was exhilarating to get away with that when you were a kid. I wish that that had been the end of it all.

There was a knock on the classroom door.

“Excuse me. I need to borrow Akahashi Aiko for a moment,” the woman said.

I stood up curiously. I looked at Toshi. He shrugged his shoulders. I followed the woman out of the classroom. I didn’t know where we were going, but I had a pretty good guess. The headmaster’s office. My heart dropped as we got closer and closer. Had I done something wrong? I went through everything that could possibly have gotten me sent to the office. There wasn’t anything. I had no idea. I didn’t know. I didn’t know what was going on. I hadn’t done anything wrong, so why were they taking me here? My legs were shaking.

When we arrived, I saw both of my parents sitting in front of the headmaster’s desk. My mother turned around. Her usually tightly wound bun was coming apart, streaks in her makeup from her tears. She… she never left the house if her makeup wasn’t perfect, if her look wasn’t spotless. Something had to be seriously wrong if she was here like that. It was just a part of who she was. The headmaster gestured for the woman who brought me here to leave. I stood between my parents. My mom was holding my hand with a tight grip. I thought that she was going to break my bones.

“Miss Akahashi, thank you for coming. Your parents have something they would like to tell you. I… I will give you a moment alone,” the headmaster left his office with a bow.

My parents exchanged glances. What was going on? My heart was pounding against my chest.

“Sweetie, t-there was an attack. At UA, this morning. You… your brother… he’s…” my dad began, but his voice trailed off as my mother tried to hold back tears. “Byakuya is one of the missing students. They still don’t know if he’s a casu- they still don’t know where he is, but they’re looking for him now-.”

My hand fell from my mothers. His lips were still moving but I could only hear the last words he said. <i>’Byakuya is one of the missing students.’</i> Byakuya was… missing? He was gone? My big brother was missing? How was that possible? What had happened? Missing. No. He wasn’t missing. This wasn’t true, was it? UA was one of the safest schools in the world. He couldn’t just be missing, even if there had been an attack. It just wasn’t possible. It didn’t happen. No, this was some kind of sick joke. It had to be. I had just seen him this morning. I watched him walk out the door and when I came home, Byakuya would be there like he always was. Before I knew what had happened, I was being caught by my dad. When had I fallen? My legs felt like jelly. Oh. I supposed that was what had happened.

My body started to shake with my sobs.

In a world where 70% of the population had powers, going missing wasn’t like it used to be. It almost certainly meant that you were dead and never going to be found. Even at that age, I knew that. Both of my parents moved to the floor with me, pulling me into a hug.

Allow for me to explain a little more about this event at UA. I didn’t even have the full story until I was able to look it up myself, much, much later than this event I have described. That day, while the students had been on a commute to an off-site facility, their bus was assumed to have been attacked by an as-of-then unnamed group of villains. The teacher was taken care of quickly, overpowered by the number of villains. Four students were killed, six more taken, leaving only ten survivors of the whole ordeal. Byakuya’s body wasn’t among the four students, so he was for sure taken. After reading the police reports made available to the public, it seemed that he had at least fought back as best he could. He was a second year there. He had training, but without his provisional license, there wasn’t much that he could legally do to stop the villains. It was a shitty law, but the law nonetheless. It was to protect people from untrained Quirks.

I was given time to gather my things from the class before my parents took me home. I remember the look that Toshinori had on his face. He wanted to know what was going on. I’m sure that I had a blank expression on my face. Byakuya had been my best friend. I was taken home in silence. Not even the car radio was on. I stared at the back of the passenger seat, my hands resting on either side of me. It felt like I couldn’t move. My arms were heavy like they were made of lead.

This wasn’t the first time that UA had been attacked. It was something that any school with a hero course boasting about pro hero teachers had to expect. It wasn’t even the first time that students had been hurt. It still hit hard. It still broke me. I was just a kid. How was I supposed to cope with that back then? I don’t think I ever really did in a healthy way.

I walked directly past the living room into my bedroom. I sat on the floor with my legs crossed, staring at the wall. He was gone. Byakuya was really gone.

I didn’t go back to that school ever again. Less than two months after the incident, my father accepted a new job on the opposite side of Japan. Surprisingly, being as young as I was, I didn’t care. I didn’t make any fuss or complain about leaving the people that I cared about. My mother walked me to the Yagi household. I knocked on the door. I heard footsteps approaching rapidly and Toshi yelling something I couldn’t understand. The door swung open. Toshinori was staring at me.

“Aiko! Where have you been?! I’ve been worried! You weren’t in school,” he said.

“I just…” I looked up at my mother. She nodded to me. “I came to tell you that we’re moving away tomorrow, and I wanted to say goodbye before we left.”

“What? You’re moving?”

“Dad got a job on the other side of the island, so we’re going there.”

“But… what about… you can’t just leave.”

“Goodbye, Toshi.”

He pulled me into a hug. I held on to him tightly. It was the first time that I started to truly feel the magnitude of what was happening. I was going to be leaving behind my best friend, and he didn’t even know the real reason why. At least, if he did know, it wasn’t because of something that I said. He never said anything to me. When I finally pulled away from him, I turned around and left with my hand in my mothers. I could feel tears stinging the back of my eyes. I wasn’t going to let myself cry over this. I wanted to be strong, like Byakuya.

Just like Byakuya.

The next day, all of our luggage was loaded into two cars. My aunt had come to help us move. My mom was hugging her sadly. I figured that she knew what had happened to Byakuya and was comforting my mom. My dad nodded solemnly as the last box was packed into the already stuffed cars. I shuffled into the back seat, leaning against the back with an action figure or something of the likes clutched to my chest. My parents got into the car, looking back at me once with smiles that I knew were fake. I leaned against the door, staring out the window at our old house. The house where Byakuya and I grew up. As we drove by, I saw Toshinori run out of his house. I watched sadly as he chased the car. My hand pressed up against the glass. I was never going to see him again.

Once on the west coast, I was enrolled in a new school. I had to do the whole new kid deal. I kept details about my life vague. I had to start over. I had to forget everything about what my life used to be because if I thought about Byakuya, I would go to a dark place. If I started to imagine what he must have gone through after being captured or kidnapped or whatever, then I doubted that I would ever be able to come back again. My nightmares were probably worse than whatever I could think up when I was awake, anyway.

At this new school, I had to learn all the same things I was learning before. It wasn’t different at all. Except Byakuya wasn’t there. Toshinori wasn’t there. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. Not in the way that mattered, anyway. I just wanted to get through this. I had a new goal. I had something to drive me forward.

I wanted to be a hero, just like my brother was going to be. I wanted to know what had happened to him. I needed to know. I had to stop anyone else from ever feeling this way. It hurt to lose someone. I knew that he was gone. Byakuya wasn’t coming back, but I wasn’t going to let what happened to him happen to anyone else. Going missing wasn’t going to be a death sentence anymore. I wouldn’t let it. I was going to find those in need and make sure that they felt safe. There was too much fear in the world. This was the best way to help get rid of it. I wanted to alleviate their fears. That was what I would do with this new chance at life.

#all might x oc #all might #all might x original character #original character #my hero academia oc #boku no hero academia #toshinori yagi #yagi toshinori #toshinori #one for all