On the thirty-first day of autumn, I cut my finger on a broken compact mirror, trying to pick the pieces up off the kitchen floor. I was invisible, but my blood was as bright and red as a camellia, so I had to get a tissue to wipe up the mess, and then a dustpan and brush to get what remained of the little thing off the floor - without slicing my hand open, again. It occurred to me, in the passing way of half-thought-out kitschy impulses, that the remains of the mirror's face were almost more beautiful than they'd been intact; the pieces were small, and jagged, and coloured in a mix of reflections and sparks of light and silvery-grey shadows. There were rather a lot of them. I did my best, to get them all, but Iida said, later, that people were picking up odd bits here and there for weeks, squeezed into the gap between the refrigerator and the wall, or tracked onto the carpet. It was lucky, then, that we were a nation that wore house-shoes inside; it meant the only person to catch any harm from my mistake was myself.
The cut wasn't particularly deep, and the severed blood vessel wasn't particularly important, so the wound healed quickly with nothing but sticking plasters and a bit of iodine. I wore one plaster, a plain one the colour of a wheat biscuit, until I needed to bathe myself that night, and then another one, a too-large one in a violent shade of blue, for all of the next day, and then I didn't wear one at all. The blue one, my classmates claimed, made it easier to see me in Heroics class, to track me and guess what I was doing - but, I thought, I was usually wearing gloves, so I supposed they were probably just teasing me.
The compact, of course, was beyond repair, no matter how cute its pastel pink bear-face, rounded ears, and pocket-size were; and it wasn't as if I'd gotten much use out of it, anyway, so I threw it into the bottom of the kitchen trash with only minor regrets, and reminded myself not to grab anyone else's mug, for fear of my apparent butterfingers.
"You should be more careful, Hagakure," Aoyama told me, when he saw me holding the dustpan. The sun had only just risen, its rays only recently enough to glint off the broken shards with the characteristic semi-precious fire of something broken, but he'd looked tired enough for it to be midnight already, clutching an empty coffee mug in a white-knuckled hand. He'd been stressed all week, I'd recall later - and the sight of me, knelt down on the tiles and scraping knife-edged dust into a cheerily-coloured plastic receptacle only seemed to make it worse. At the time, I thought he was only being superstitious. "It's bad luck to break a mirror, non?"
I'd never heard of such a thing in my life, and told him so - though not unkindly - and he just shrugged his shoulders, as if I'd asked him why the sky was blue, or the sun always chose the east to rise from. "C'est - what my mother always told me," he said to me. "If you break a mirror, you get seven years bad luck. It'd be terrible if something dulled your sparkle, mon amie."
I asked him, then, if it oughtn't to have been four years, instead of seven - since seven was meant to be a lucky number, and four very much wasn't - and he chuckled, genuinely, but quieter than the burgeoning daylight merited. "Four years, Hagakure? Eh. Perhaps," he said, and that was all.
It was, of course, too late to worry much about that sort of thing. I'd already broken the mirror, after all, and now I had to deal with the consequences, like the mess on the floor, or the cut on my finger, or the loss of something I'd once owned. In any case, the broken pieces were already sparkling enough for two, or so I figured. Aoyama offered to take the broken pieces outside for me, or help me crush them into smaller pieces, so I wouldn't have to deal with putting something so sharp in the bin, but I declined, and wrapped them up in old homework to stop them cutting through their trash bag. That was the end of it, as far as I was concerned.
It was a few days later, when my finger was properly healed and its everpresent smarting tingle had died down to a whisper on touch, that I first managed to get some proper use out of mirrors after all. The little sequence of events, I thought, was a terrible stroke of irony for my poor shattered compact mirror; all those months of sitting unused in my pocket, only taken out as a tool to peek around corners in exercises or to be used as a backup when one of my classmates managed to forget theirs, and before a hundred hours had passed since its demise it would have proven useful after all. Ashido called a terrible shame for the poor creature, as if it had turned away from the ocean too soon to see the dragon there; I had not known that it was supposed to have any feelings on the matter, or that I was much of a dragon myself, but I supposed that, having purchased it for me in a moment of well-meaning absent-mindedness, she would probably know best.
Our Heroics class had been slower than usual, though not so much that we were left with any true excess of energy upon being freed at the end of it. The task of the day had been some sort of group rescue exercise whose rules I couldn't quite parse, even before time washed away the memories of what even Midoriya would later admit was an unfortunately ill-thought-out practical. The class was left constantly on their feet but evermore stopping at odd moments, going up against each other in short spars that didn't seem quite logical enough to represent a real disaster situation, and by the end of it all most of us had learned more about ambushes and visibility than anything about teamwork or rescues. It would almost, I overhead Sensei grumbling a few afternoons later, have been a worthwhile lesson, if we'd all been on the Underground track and a little less preoccupied with hauling boatloads of training dummies. As it was, some of our class couldn't have become worse prospective Undergrounds if they'd put on neon safety vests and attached foghorns to their shoes, and thus any such learning was woefully overshadowed by yet another measure of our powerhouses' capacity for collateral damage, and several unfortunate injuries involving flying mannequin legs and falling tables.
I appreciated the lesson for what it was, though; an attempt at training, and a chance to unwind a little, without our homeroom teacher threatening us with various horrors or the pressure of assessment thrust upon us. I was separated from my group, partway through; we split up to scan an old building and I was left, after a while, with no idea where they were but for a vague understanding of "below" and no sound to track them by. I wasn't alone, of course; if the school's exaggerated whispers about our apparently omniscient principal hadn't tipped me off, then the many security cameras scattered around the cityscape would have. But nor was I in anyone's true presence, really, and so when I cast my eyes about I expected to see nothing living of note. And I didn't, in most of the ways that mattered. There was a plant in the corner, but it seemed, to me, to be made of plastic, and I thought I saw some sort of insect fly past. But in terms of sapient life, the room was empty, and without my comm, the closest thing I could get to human contact would have been to wave at the ceiling-mounted security camera and hope Nedzu happened to be watching it.
That would have been foolish, of course - I had a job to do, after all, and attracting his attention would have done nothing for it.
In the absence of another's presence, then, I was surprised to see the reflection of someone's arm in the window. By all means, I ought to have missed her - she was barely a fifth of a body, her imprint faint and pale against the treated glass - but she was there, nevertheless, and when my eye caught on her, my gaze was stuck like a bug to fly-paper, because there was nobody to cast such a pattern, but for myself - and I'd always wanted to see my reflection, and there she was. And I knew she was me - knew it as much as I knew my body was my own, as well as the back of my hand - I daresay I would have even if I had been accompanied. I stared at her for as long as I could, taking in what my angle allowed me to see, too scared to move, to break the spell and frighten her away; my eyes took in the quiet curve of her bare shoulder, the teenaged beginnings of definition winding down her arms, the way her hand fit into its glove just-so, the slight shine of her skin where the light hit it. And then I blinked, and she was gone, and I lost the chance to see more of her, or to look down and finally see myself.
She followed me, that day; blurred legs on unpolished steel, flashes of gestures against varnished tables, the barest glimpses of not-quite a head in my communicator. I'd always been the sort of person to make myself known - or I had been since I got my quirk, I suppose, which was as long as it mattered to me. In the light of day, though, she shied away; I could scarcely move to get a better look at her without her flickering away like a candle snuffed out, and he always left the moment I took my eyes off her, even when it was only to blink. Her presence was more than I'd ever had, that much was clear; but try as I might - and I did try - I could never quite catch her face, and never coax her into someone else's view.
"I saw my reflection a few times today!" I bubbled as class ended, skipping close to a cluster of my peers and waving my hands around, and received my fair share of puzzled looks.
"Uhh... Hagakure, you're invisible. You don't have a reflection," Ojiro told me. "Or - were you looking at your costume, or something?"
"Nuh uh!" I put my hands on my hips. "I mean I saw my reflection. Me. Not all of it, but I know I'll get it eventually!"
Iida squinted at me, adjusting his glasses. "I don't mean to be rude, Hagakure, but you're as invisible as always! Are you sure you weren't seeing something else? We wouldn't want you to disappoint yourself!"
"What Glasses means," Bakugō said, with significantly less grace, "Is you should get your eyes checked in case they're bad as his."
"Boo!" I stuck my tongue out at him, even though he couldn't see it. "I know what I saw - and I'm gonna practice real hard! You'll see - all of you will see the reflection of Hagakure Tooru one day!"
There was a hanging pause. I got the sense that they weren't sure what to make of that. I didn't see why; it was a Plus-Ultra UA attitude, after all.
"Well," Ojiro said tentatively. "It would be nice to see your face, I guess."
Ashido rolled her eyes. "Man, you can't just say you guess, Ojiro." She wrapped an arm around my shoulder. "C'mon, Hagakure, let's get cleaned up. There's mirrors in the locker-room, maybe I'll see you there, huh?"
"Maybe," I agreed; but something told me the dice had been cast already. We talked about the exercise, and washed stray dirt from our faces. Ashido made a face at herself in the mirror, and looked at me next to her; but I couldn't call my reflection forwards, and so Ashido sent me a tentative smile, and failed to see me at all.
I was scheduled for intern patrol the next afternoon, so I didn't have much time to dwell on the issue during the daytime. I still had to attend school in the morning, and then scramble my way through some paperwork the sidekicks passed on to me, and after that I was left to chasing after my mentor and half-attacking, half-tripping petty villains as they fled the scenes of their crimes – and after that, the office was out of coffee, and I was out of caramels, and I was late to get back to school anyways, so I had to go without both, even if I could have detoured to a convenience store for either of them. So it was that by the time I stepped off the train and started the walk back to the school gates, I was frazzled enough that I'd almost forgot about my would-be-passing interest in my reflection.
It was likely because of my distraction that I ran into trouble in the first place. The dormitory system, as it stood, was a safeguard against a lot of things referred to vaguely as "incidents"; but as much as the school might have liked it, full-time monitoring would have been impractical for heroes in training. Internships, thus, left a blind spot between the school and the presence of our supervising heroes, when sidekicks were thin on the ground or regular travel had to be undertaken. Our schedules were kept as irregular as was practical, to make it harder for villains to track us, but the fact remained: opportunism was always a risk, when a space for it presented itself. That day, it did, and a five-minute walk between the train station and the school, I found myself assaulted by someone in a mask and full-body suit, like something out of a comic book. A hand caught my shoulder, and my eye was nearly taken out by a lucky swipe as I turned around; and after that it was all hands on deck to avoid getting skewered.
I was not, of course, by any means helpless; I'd not made the hero course for nothing, and Ojiro had coaxed me into enough sparring sessions that I was no stranger to quirkless fighting, either. Still, I was caught off guard, back in my day uniform and missing any tools that might have gotten me out of a jam. My opponent was tall, and fast, with arms that stretched like rubber and some sort of metal stake as long as a ruler. As I ducked beneath his blows I found myself wishing, not for the first time, for a capture weapon, or a rope, or even a knife like Sensei had - though, this time, I was thinking more of the situation, and not my woefully underprepared hero costume. In any case, the wish remained one, and I was forced to continue my dance and try to draw us both away from the civilians around us; not that they had many issues getting out of the way.
Still, I did my best to make sure they wouldn’t have any at all.
Step, step, duck. Don’t let them out of your sight.
The process of combat was monotonous, in way – or perhaps my opponent simply lacked much skill. It was odd, to fall into simple patterns, and still be left fearing for my health. My opponent made up for their evident inexperience with a brute strength unsuited for such a flexible frame, power and violence straining against the confines of their form like a rubber band pulled too tight.
Step, strike. See the metal glint at your left.
My favourite sparring partners had spoiled me. Ashido was light on her feet and snappy, but her frame barely weighed more than mine, and she moved like a dancer, even when she wasn’t trying to. Ojiro was stronger, but hardly a powerhouse, and loath to try for any blows that would do any significant damage. My opponent carried none of their skill, but easily as much strength as my class’s heavy hitters, and an obvious willingness to do real damage. Out of costume and without backup, there wasn’t much I could do to take them down.
Withdraw, twist, step again. Stay on your feet.
I guessed, then, that it was a game of endurance. Wait for them to tire – or for me to slip up. Either way, one of us would have to make a mistake.
I hoped it wouldn’t be me.
Block at the arm. Follow though.
I wondered if anyone had called in the fight, yet. Sending a teacher in to deal with the issue was standard practice, this close to UA – or so Sensei had told us, in a tone that suggested he thought it too logical to field questions over. All I had to do, then, was wait for a hero – and reduce the gap between us, if possible.
Press forwards, fall back. Don’t let them touch you.
Don’t let them touch you!
Bright steel flashed past my cheek, close enough to feel the wind it draw along with it. A hand grazed my sleeve, missing a proper grip by seconds. My footwork was sloppy, half-uprooted from the ground.
I really should have bought that coffee, I thought; then I wouldn’t be in this situation, and I probably could have bribed Sensei out of chewing me out, too.
Step, step—
The stake caught against my sleeve, tearing through it like a knife through bread. Too slow. I’d always tried to focus on something other than the face of my opponent in a fight; it was a waste to let an enemy distract you, and with friends it made you pull your punches. Now, my gaze caught on the expression of the villain before me, the gleeful tilt to their mouth and bloodthirsty glint in their eye, and I found that I quite liked that policy.
Duck, step back—
My back touched concrete. I’d lost focus.
Dodge to the side—
My shoulder touched glass.
A misstep.
I glanced to the side, on the off chance that it wasn’t glass, after all, and saw a wide-eyed girl, long dark hair coming out of its ties, smudges of dust on her nose, cheeks pink with exertion. Saw a tall figure behind her, shadowy and sharp-edged.
I turned back. Prepared to fight through whatever blows I’d take.
Felt nothing come, and saw my opponent stop short, staring back at me.
They didn’t so much freeze as slow, their weapon hand dropping into a passive stance next to them. I tried to catch onto their arm, but they flicked me away with a frustrating ease. Their smile spread from ear to ear, too-wide and too-nice. Their gaze fixed itself over my shoulder, and I found myself grateful it wasn’t on me, instead.
“I’m sorry, little flower,” they said. Their voice was soft, amused; as if I were a kitten, prone to amusing bouts of clumsiness and petulance. “I didn’t know what you were. I’ll let you go, yeah?”
They stepped back; I shifted back into a fighting stance, and they only seemed to smile wide. “What – what do you mean, what I am?” I demanded, and they laughed – a sound like winter gales and fields of vegetation being pushed through a shredder.
“I’ll tell you when we meet again,” they said, mocking and cheerful. “Remember to say thanks when we do, won’t you?”
And then the stake was gone from their hand, and they were off into the crowd as if we’d done nothing but had a pleasant chat. I probably should have tried to apprehend them, in that moment; but I was too shocked, and by the time I’d collected my thoughts, they’d already taken off. I made to chase after them, throwing myself into motion; but it was too late, and before I could get too far, I was waylaid by a familiar voice, barking out my name.
“Hagakure!”
I stumbled; turned to face it. Sensei reached my side with the practiced ease of someone who spent more time than they appreciated wading through crowded places. “Back to the gate, now,” he said, words clipped, and I was too happy to obey as he hustled me away.
“I lost the villain,” I told him, and he let out a short huff of irritation.
“I know. Don’t worry about it. There’s an alert out. The school’s priority is keeping you safe.” He placed a certain stress on those final words and I winced.
“I didn’t mean to run into trouble,” I said, and glanced over at him nervously. He looked back at me for a second, before turning around, gaze scanning the space around us.
“Well, it’s here, now,” he told me. “Keep your eyes open, in case they come back.”
I did my best, even as the fuzz of the day’s work caught up to me. “Okay.”
My feet fell heavy against the pavement.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and he sighed, almost too faintly to hear.
“Don’t apologise,” he said – grumbled – and I didn’t say anything more on the way home.
That night, I looked into the bathroom mirror – half-sized and infuriatingly blank – and realised what my attacker had seen. It didn’t make me understand them any better; but it did stiffen my resolve to see for myself.
In the end, I obtained a full-sized mirror from the support labs. It was large enough to cover most of one of my dorm’s walls, and clear as any bathroom implement, and covered in soot; although I cleared up the final issue fairly easily. One of the teachers helped me move it into my room, which I appreciated immensely. He waved it off with a relief that was a little too telling of the average tendencies of UA’s prized students. Anything to distract them from researching lasers, I was told; anything to stop new holes appearing in the reinforced walls. I was glad to help, and said so.
The teacher seemed to find that amusing, though I didn’t see why. I asked if he wanted to see if it would catch my reflection; but he said he shouldn’t leave his students alone for so long. That didn’t bother me; I’d offered more out of a sense of politeness than anything else. I didn’t see anything the first time I stood in front of it, anyway – nor on the second, or the third. I almost gave up, a few times; but I had no reason to stop, really, and in the end my persistence paid off, though not like I’d thought it would.
I’d imagined, in the time between installing the mirror and finally seeing myself in it, that calling up my reflection would work like any other skill, clicking into place with practice. I spent hours making attempts, long enough for my friends to ask if I was okay - and I waved them off with cheerful assurance, knowing I was fine but for the lack of results – but they all seemed fruitless. I couldn’t even get a vague gleam to appear, let alone my whole body – let alone the face I’d seen for a moment, in the panicked haze of a fight not gone my way. At moments, I half-wondered if my classmates were right, and I really had been seeing things; but, without fail, the memory of my encounter in the streets would drift back to the forefront of my mind, and pull me back.
Hours of practice, dozens of frustrated sighs, and in the end, I saw her for the third time not on purpose, but as came back to my room to get ready for bed.
I put that plan on ice, of course.
The most fascinating thing, to me, was finally being able to see my face – or my reflections, as it was. As much as I’d told my classmates what I looked like, when they asked, I truly didn’t know anything about the topic. As long as I could remember, I’d been invisible; I couldn’t remember when I’d become so, but it was early enough that I’d been too young to recall a time when my skin wasn’t transparent, when I reflected colour as much as the rest of the world. I saw my reflection, sleepy and somewhat dishevelled, and I pressed up against the glass, greedy and excited, because she was me; and despite our mutual, vaguely mussed state, every moment of perceiving her presence was wonderful.
After I got over the sudden bloom in my chest, of shock and raw delight, I was vaguely gratified to see that I hadn’t imagined the long curtains of dark hair, or the deep, almond-shaped eyes. The nose was a surprise, straight and high-bridged as it was; it amused me in all the best ways, though. I’d spent long enough giving people fanciful examples of who I looked like, so it was, I thought, a pleasant treat to find my two favourites resembled so faithfully.
By the time I was done staring, and turning this way and that, and pulling faces, it was late. I could have woken my friends, really; I had no doubt that Ashido would have forgiven me, if I’d kicked her out of her bed. But, I realised, I was scared; scared that my reflection would leave again, if I left her alone, scared that nobody would care about it, really, scared of waking up, and finding it all to be a dream. I entertained leaving the room, truly, as I brushed my teeth and combed my hair; but in the end, the fear caught me tight, and I decided to sleep on the issue. And then, in the morning, it took me a try or two, to call her up again; so I shelved the idea of sharing my shadow, for the moment.
As it was, though, I was half-surprised that nobody caught on before I showed them. My reflection’s visibility, I learned, was in no way a sign of my own; she was around far too frequently for that, flickering across classroom windows and appearing in cups of juice. Once, I caught her, perched in Ojiro’s eyes as we sat studying – and that confirmed it, really, because inobservance was one thing, but for my classmate to have failed to see me while making direct eye contact would have gone beyond ridiculous and into the absurd.
She was capricious, though; her often was in no way an always, and some days I could go most of the day without seeing her. With time I did learn to call her, for a definition of the word – but it was never a sure thing, and she came without calling, too. Still, with time the novelty wore off, to an extent; I couldn’t help but appreciate her, whenever I saw her, but the fervour of the first days eventually faded, replaced by a quiet comfort. She could, after all, follow me anywhere. I noticed, in the early days, that she seemed unlucky enough to find herself with her head hidden; but I learned to work around her, eventually, and the issue faded.
In the lead-up to Hallowe’en, Ashido tried to convince the class to do something appropriately spirited. There was talk of ghosts, and exorcisms, and at least one serious inquiry to Tokoyami about demon-summoning; that final one, I thought, would probably have been actual fun, if it weren’t for our class’s abysmal luck. Said luck, though, was quite certainly there, and non-negotiable – it must have been, or else Midoriya would have opted out of whatever disaster he’d run into next – and so, with some regret, Ashido was left to figure out something less likely to go terribly, terribly wrong.
The answer to that, it seemed, was found in urban legends. Or – well, pre-quirk urban legends, because quirked ones were as likely to turn out to be true crime as not.
“She’s really old,” Ashido told us, as eagerly as if she’d been talking about her latest celebrity crush. “Like, pre-pre-quirk old. You know? Her name’s Blood-Stained Mari, cause – cause, you know, she’s covered in blood.”
“That’s freaking lame,” Bakugō said, because he was, all evidence considered, incapable of having a civil conversation about anything, ever. “What if I was called goddamn – Exploding Katsuki, because I explode?”
“You wanted to call yourself Lord Explodokill, shut up,” Ashido complained. “Let me talk about my girl, geez! Anyway, she’s like, a pre-quirk legend. You’re meant to summon her by saying her name into a mirror, in the dark, with nothing but a candle – and then she comes out of it, and tries to switch places with you.”
I oohed appreciatively. Iida, worrisome Class President that he was, yelled something across the classroom about not summoning malevolent spirits in public toilets. Bakugō looked disgruntled.
“If some lame-ass mirror spirit thought it could get close to me, I’d blow it up,” he barked, to assorted tired groans and lopsided grins from everyone near him. “But I wouldn’t have to, because I wouldn’t go summoning evil spirits in the first place, you idiot!”
Ashido crossed her arms, pouting. “It’s not meant to actually work, Blasty,” she said. “It’s something you do for fun. A test of courage. You know about all that, right? Having fun? Not being a weenie?”
In a move as predictable as the sun rising in the morning, Bakugō puffed up like an unusually spiky balloon. “Of course I f—”
“Good, now shhh,” Ashido said, putting one finger to his lips in a quiet-down gesture, and I wondered, admiringly, how she managed to do things like that without getting caught in the wake of a catastrophic explosion. Perhaps, I thought, it was one of those mysteries of the world you don’t get to find out. I resolved not to think about it, any longer; life was better, with little things like that.
“I guess you want us to try and summon her, then,” I said, and she beamed at me.
“Well, yeah! Won’t it be cool? We could do it as a class bonding activity, and everything!”
Iida coughed from his desk. “Ashido, I’d like to remind you again! Public bathrooms are not suitable for class bonding activities!”
“Meh,” she said, and waved a hand. “We’ll use my dorm. Might be a squeeze, but we’ll fit.”
Iida, it seemed, found no issue with that, although if his slight frown was any indicator, it wasn’t through lack of trying. I, for one, thought it was an excellent idea, and looked forward to it with as much eagerness as I did for any class activity – even if it was only a day away.
I smiled into the mirror that night, and went to bed; and then, to my deep frustration and puzzlement, I awoke the next morning with a face halfway numb and halfway tingling, and a tongue that refused to form sentences. It was, no matter how you looked at it, strange and abnormal; and when Sensei saw me struggling through basic greetings, I was firmly re-routed to Recovery Girl, with strict instructions not to come back until my condition had either cleared, or been identified with certainty.
I made a face into the window as I left, quite sure that I would miss out on everything to do with Blood-Stained Mari. My reflection made a face back; so, at least, I appreciated her input on the subject.
Recovery Girl, for her part, found precisely nothing wrong with me. There was not, she explained, any clear cause to the odd sensation on my face, or the lack thereof; no other issues with perception, no odd twitches, no sign of nerve damage or allergies. She spent an awfully long time, by any measure, poking and prodding me with various implements and muttering about my generation of hero students. It was, in all honesty, rather irritating, especially when, unknowing of the cause as I was, I had no clue how severe my condition might be. Luckily, the answer to that question seemed to be “not very”; there really was, it seemed, nothing truly wrong with me. In the end, the numbness cleared by the end of the day, and I was sent back to the dorms down several hours and up several pages of medical files; and when I arrived, I was greeted my a moderate case of what could politely be described as “pandemonium”.
I imagined, at the time, that Sensei would have described it less charitably as “hysterical teenagers”.
“She’s REAL,” Ashido shrieked, latching onto my arm as I walked in, and her voice was almost immediately followed by Bakugō yelling something in the negative, expletive-ridden and hoarse. “Oh my god, we actually SAW someone, Hagakure, you missed so much—”
The common room was a mess. Several of my classmates seemed to have left the common room in something of a hurry, judging by the belongings scattered around, and I wondered where they’d gone, considering that, as far as I knew, everyone had been crammed into Ashido’s bathroom for the event. On the couch, sprawled in something of a pile, I spotted Mineta, Kirishima, Kaminari and Sato, all looking somewhere between shell-shocked and plainly confused. Iida and Uraraka were standing in a corner and arguing something fierce - although, I noticed, both seemed less angry and more upset, and not particularly at each other. Midoriya was muttering – which wasn’t, in all honesty, something that was particularly unusual; but he’d left his everpresent notebooks behind, which was as strange as anything else I’d seen in the room. Yaoyorozu, from a perch atop the kitchen bench, was petting Jirō’s shoulder in an awkward action that would have fitted Todoroki far better than her, gazing vaguely off into the corner of the room. Todoroki himself was nowhere to be seen, but the air had an odd smell to it – like burning plastic and sugar mixed together. I figured that was his fault, as most fires usually were.
“I’m telling you, there was someone there,” Ashido told me, as I stared at the scene. “And she tried to attack us, Hagakure, really. We said the words, like we’re meant to, and we all thought it wasn’t working, and there was this girl, and she’s all transparent – like – like a ghost, and there’s blood all over her face, and she jumps at Ojiro –”
Bakugō groaned, crouching down on his knees. “Our class experienced a group hallucination, Raccoon Eyes,” he snapped, and I eyed him, vaguely fascinated, as he pressed the base of his palms to his eyes.
“I had to stop him exploding in the bathroom,” Ashido whispered to me, conspiratorial. “He would have blown up all the glass. And all my soap, and stuff. Bad news.”
I glanced from her, to him, to the rest of the room. Jirō made an upset noise, leaning into Yaoyorozu’s ineffective hand; Midoriya continued to mutter, the sound more feverish than usual. It was odd, to leave my classmates in their normal states, and come back to this.
"You really saw her in the mirror?” I asked.
Ashido nodded, fervently. “We really did,” she said. Her hand tightened on my arm. “She had green hair, and glowing eyes, and it was so freaky, like someone attacked her face right before we summoned her – and she kept banging on the mirror, too! You should have seen it, Hagakure!”
Bakugō made a pained noise. I glanced down at him. He hadn’t moved from his position.
“Maybe,” I acquiesced, because it suddenly didn’t seem like it would have been such an interesting idea, anymore.
The next day, Sensei gathered us all in the common room, and wearily informed us that attempts to summon ghosts were banned, and that ghosts were most definitely not real. That caused enough of a ruckus that some of our sister-class stuck their heads in, to investigate the noise – or laugh at us, as it was, sometimes – but no-one protested the rule.
I, for my part, figured that the contents of my own mirror was better than any of this “Mari” business. I told her so, the next time I saw her, and imagined that she appreciated it.
Eventually, the ill-fated attempt at keeping up with the season’s spirit faded into the background, superseded by more successful games and the ever-present pressures of UA High’s coursework. My reflection remained a constant companion throughout it all, appearing more consistently the more time went on. I did manage to show her to a few people, with good timing and a pinch of luck. Ashido, I told because she was my favourite girl-friend; she squealed, and hugged me, and chattered about how I really did look like I’d said, with as much enthusiasm as I’d expected and more, pointing excitedly at my reflection’s face on the home-room window. Ojiro, I told because he was my favourite boy-friend. He stared into my room’s mirror for several seconds, and then turned to me, and smiled, and told me I was beautiful; and it took me a bit to recover, after that, and my reflection took longer, rosy red blooming across her cheeks in a way I’d never had to worry about.
Midoriya, I had to admit, I picked out because he was so very enthusiastic about quirks; and he barely commented on my reflection at all, except to congratulate me, and speculate about light refraction, and insist that everyone else had to find it cool – why wouldn’t they?
Still, despite how often I caught my reflection’s eye across a room, I found myself devoid of much opportunity to show her to anyone else. Her ubiquity, I eventually learned, did not translate to any sort of convenience. It was a disappointment, for sure, but also, in some ways, a relief; I’d worried, after all, about how my friends would react to seeing a real after-image of me, and this gave me an excuse not to find out.
I settled, then, into an easier routine, not worrying so much about her comings and goings now that I’d at least shown someone. I waved to her, when I left my room in the morning and came back at night, and high-fived her when I saw her shadow flash into being on the battlefield; that much, at least, was fun, and escaped most of my peers’ notice with a smoothness that was almost amusing. I learned to tie my hair in more elaborate shapes, too; working with a mirror was unusual, for sure, and I tripped over my hands more than once, but I enjoyed it as much as any other pursuit.
A change came, though, as I settled more comfortably into this relationship with my reflected shadow; one I couldn’t have guessed, if I’d been asked to, but one that felt right, in the end.
It was late afternoon, when it happened; late afternoon, and we had been sent away from class with more than enough homework for the week. I could have procrastinated, if I’d wanted; I’d received invites to do so, to sit and play games and watch television for the day, before finishing those least-favourite of student duties. Even my stationery seemed to be conspiring against me; as I looked around, I seemed to find all manner of pencils, and erasers, and highlighters in all colours; but I couldn’t find a pen anywhere, not even the one I’d used last. I was feeling responsible, though; an odd little impulse, that drove me to politely decline to accept my classmate’s cajoling, and left me turning my room upside down in search of writing implements. On an offhand whim, I glanced over at the mirror, and
my reflection didn’t glance back.
She wasn’t, I realised dazedly as I took in the scene, even in the same spot as me. She was sat back at her desk, the pen I’d been searching for was in her hands, and she was idly clicking the button at the top as she looked down at her paper, face set in a pensive expression. It was a terribly familiar scene, from the slight twist of the mouth to the pattern her thumb clicked out – just like looking in a mirror. I wondered, then, if this was what flowers felt, when their neighbours fell from the tree before they did.
I stared at her, for a moment; raised a hand, and waved it. Nothing; she continued to stare down at her page, apparently deep in thought. This was real, then – she was real, and completely uncoupled from me, in the moment. I could scarcely think of how to take it; I’d become so used to seeing her, mimicking me, that the scene before me seemed even stranger than the impossibility of an invisible girl casting a reflection. I attempted to arrange my thoughts – failed – attempted again, and this time succeeded in bringing myself some semblance of calm. My reflection was acting independently; and there was nothing I could really do about it, except for watch.
So watch I did; and after a moment, she glanced up, and her eyes widened as she saw me, and then she smiled, sheepish, and made an odd little gesture with her hands. It took me a moment to realise it was the one I used when I wanted to surprise my friends – a motion well-worn with time, one I’d never managed to see myself. She shuffled around in her chair, still watching me with that rueful expression – and then her eyes flickered from the mess I’d made of my bag, to my desk with my homework on it, and her expression brightened. She wiggled the pen in her hand, smiling properly, now, and then she bent down, and tapped a spot beneath my desk, nestled up against the wall. I watched her for a moment – an irrational part of me wanted, somehow, to be suspicious, to doubt the veracity of an unknown on the critical subject of stationery – but I walked over, after a moment, and crouched down, feeling along the seam between the ground and the wall; and there, lo and behold, was my pen. On another day, I would have wondered how it had gotten all the way under there; today, the thought was discarded from my mind almost before it could form, and I straightened up, fascinated and mildly thankful all at once. It made sense, I supposed – that she would know things that I should, and that I might know things she should. It was odd to think of, though.
“Thanks,” I told her, and she tilted her head; tapped her ears, and mouthed something at me. Or perhaps she said it aloud; that felt more likely, really. The message was clear, anyway – I couldn’t hear her, and she couldn’t hear me. I thought of writing out a message, drawing out the characters backwards so she could read them; but that sounded like it would work terribly, so I settled for bowing, briefly, and she bobbed a bow back, still sat twisted around in her chair and smiling cheekily. I sat down on my own chair, careful and watchful, and she re-adjusted her position, accordingly, clicking her pen one last time; and then, as we both leant over our papers, something seemed to snap into place, between us. A moment later, as I looked over at her, so too did she – perfectly in sync, without a difference between us. I held her gaze, for a moment, wondering if we were stuck like this, again.
One heartbeat, then the next – and then I saw the corner of her mouth twitch, where mine was still.
I went back to my homework in a much better mood than I had been in when I’d first thought to start it. That night I wondered, aloud, if I’d be showing my friends my reflection a second time, now. She seemed to shrink at the idea, eyes darting around and refusing to settle. I didn’t bring it up again.
My reflection continued in her duties, sometimes matching mine, sometimes not. I gave up on the idea of ever showing her true self to someone else, as time went on; they'd not seen, the first time, and she seemed shy, anyway. Alone, we spent hours together, as housemates do, and flickers more from across panes of glass and the surface of water. Something inside me, idly, remarked that I probably knew her better than any of my peers knew their own. It was an odd sort of thing to think about.
The stress of schooling seemed to wear my reflection down as much as it did me. Sometimes, I thought she might be taking it harder than I was. I would glance up, in the bathroom, and pull her into visibility, and comb down my hair into something neater; and she would droop a moment later, and her hair would fall out of its style again. She took it in her stride, though; her gait was determined, when I caught her busy and away, and once or twice I even saw her shooting me a sidelong glance, all speculative grin and lidded eyes.
Mid-autumn approached in a flurry of fallen leaves, brief rains and pumpkin-flavoured everything. The days were short enough that it would be past sunset when I got back from internships, now, the sky blue-violet with the final traces of the sun's goodbyes. I would greet my reflection with news of my day, and sometimes her mouth would mirror mine; and sometimes it wouldn't, and she would say something to me, silent and smiling, before our hands met across the glass, and we fell into sync with each other again. It was custom, by then - to say hello to Ashido in the front hall, and hand off whatever spiced concoction she'd begged off me, to sneak into the kitchen and be chased out again by Bakugō, to pass Ojiro on his way out for his evening run and give him a hug, to go upstairs and greet my reflection. It spurred me on, as the weather grew colder, and the world fell into the sleepy haze that comes before the biting cold of winter. She was always there, smiling. I did my best to smile back at her; it made her eyes glitter a little brighter, and I liked that.
Once, I found myself standing in front of her with a packet of melon bread, trying to press it through the surface. In the moment, I couldn't recall what my thought process had been, really; only that it had seemed like a good idea, after I'd already eaten my fill. In any case, I found myself there, in front of the barrier that separated us, with her peering at me, her customary smile mixed with a faint furrowing of her brow. I must have blushed - even if I couldn't see it with my eyes, her being detached from me. We looked at each other for a moment, and then she tilted her head, in a motion that made her hair sway in a dark curtain, and reached her hand into her pocket. It stayed there for a moment, and then came back out, holding a packet of bread identical to mine. Her expression, when I looked back up to it in shock, was cheeky, for the brief moments we remained separate; and then she dropped into a stance to match mine, and we clicked back into sync. I didn't ever find out where she got the bread; in some sense, it didn't seem to matter.
The next day in training, Midoriya broke a mirror.
It was an accident, on his part; I'd been given the task of keeping him away from an objective, trying to waste away time while the rest of my team figured out a way to hand it off without someone swooping in and grabbing it. Ground Beta was as realistic as always; so when one of his punches went wide of me, the shopfront mirror cracked lengthways at the pressure change, before splitting in half like an opened orange, the top part hitting the floor and shattering in a spray of shards. I cried out in surprise at the pieces exploded across my bare legs, and Midoriya made an alarmed noise as heat burst open, low on my calf.
"Ah! I'm sorry, Hagakure, that - that's a lot of blood! Are you alright?" he asked, pausing in his quest to get past me, and I glanced down. The mirror had done a good job; the cut was broad, but clean, and blood was rapidly welling up and spilling over the edge, a trail already marked from the injury to the ground. I'd lost more blood, I thought; but not usually all at once, and I wasn't exactly done bleeding, yet. The injury burned sharply, now that I noticed it properly; but I was able to twist my leg around to get a better look at it, and it didn't hurt when I stood on it, which I took as a win.
"I don't think it's too urgent," I told him. "I probably shouldn't make it worse, though. It's kind of big, and I can't tell if it's close to anything important." I paused. "Did it get you, Midoriya?"
He examined himself, shaking his arms and legs as if to check they were still there. "I don't think so," he said. "I don't - feel anything, and I can't see any blood. I guess my suit protected me."
I wrinkled my nose at the admission. "That's not really fair," I complained, and he pulled an awkward half-smile, half-grimace at me.
"I - I guess not," he said, sheepishly, and picked up his comm as I leant down to press on the injury - I knew to do that, at least. "Uh, Sensei? Hagakure's been - been injured, and there's a lot of - a lot of blood. And neither of us - we aren't sure how bad it is, I mean." He paused for a moment, as both of us listened for a reply; when our teacher's voice came through, telling Midoriya to bring me back outside, he mumbled.a quick affirmative and stepped over, offering me an arm. "Come on, let's find somewhere you can sit down. You should probably, um, elevate your leg as soon as possible, with that - bleeding."
I glanced down at it again; the puddle on the ground had grown significantly - to a vaguely uncomfortable size - and the stream flowed as merrily red as ever. "Okay," I said, and took the offered help, leaning into him like a makeshift crutch. "Gosh, I have bad luck with mirrors, huh?"
He made a puzzled noise as we half-walked, half-hopped away, trailing pieces underfoot and red drips as we did so. "Bad luck with - with mirrors? I thought you were doing well, lately. We all saw your reflection in the - in the common room, right? I thought that was pretty cool!"
What he said was genuine, at least; something told me Midoriya would have found me and my quirk cool even if I'd never been able to summon my reflection at all. I must have seemed to be doing well from his perspective, though, so I told him about the incident with the compact.
"Oh," he said. "That's... unlucky, I guess, yeah." He paused. "Um. It sort of - sort of sounds like the mirrors are unlucky to be around you, though."
I glanced at him. "Ah, Midoriya... I know what you mean, but..."
He looked back at me, a vague look of confusion covering his face for a second or two before it flushed at a rate that was, frankly, quite funny, his eyes darting away as if I'd become visible right then and there. "Ah! N-no, Hagakure, I didn't - I don't -"
I laughed. He seemed to take it as a good sign, letting his stammering subside. He still wasn't able to look my way, though, until we caught up to Sensei. Aoyama was there too, holding an icepack to his face, beatific expression marred by what looked to be the beginning of a spectacular black eye.
"Kirishima has a sparkling fist," he said, when Midoriya asked about it. I wondered whether Aoyama was complimenting our classmate's technique, or if he'd actually seen stars on impact; I figured I probably wouldn't find out, either way.
"I broke a mirror," Midoriya said, as I settled into a sitting position, and Sensei checked over my injury as best as he could. "It got Hagakure."
Sensei just grunted something about sending me to Recovery Girl, once the bleeding subsided a little; Aoyama, on the other hand, made an odd, cut-off sound, like he said something caught in his throat. "Midoriya? You - c'est - you broke one?"
A puzzled look came over Midoriya's face as he glanced over at our classmate. "Um... yeah? It's not really hard. I just - missed a punch, and boom."
Aoyama's eyes flickered in their sockets. It made it hard to tell is his pupils were lopsided, or if it was just the shadow across his face. "You should - euh - you should be more careful, Midoriya. You know, if you break a mirror, you get -"
"-seven years' bad luck," I finished for him, and his gaze skittered over to me. His mouth twitched.
"Oui."
Midoriya tilted his head like a confused rabbit. "S-seven years? Isn't seven supposed to be - lucky?"
"That's what I said," I told him, and yelped when Sensei came over, muttering into his communicator, and unceremoniously dropped an ice-pack onto my lap before wandering off again. "I said - shouldn't it be four years?"
The question hung in the air, for a moment, and Aoyama looked at me, unblinking. He had always been a little prone to staring, even at the best of times; his blunt gaze had sharpened to a point, now.
Sometime between that moment and the one in which we'd met him, he'd stopped smiling.
"No," he said, quietly. His mouth formed the word with a delicate care I'd never seen before, and he turned his head, slowly, to face Midoriya. "No. It's definitely... if you're not careful... seven's bad luck."
"O-oh." Midoriya flexed his fingers, jerky and slow. "Um. I - I guess I'll try not to break any more mirrors?" He laughed, the sound quavering slightly. "Just like bones, I guess..."
"Aw, but you're already doing better than me," I complained. "My luck's determined to make me visible, violent or not. All your blood stays inside where it belongs!"
Midoriya attempted to splutter out something about how prone he was, really, to injuries that resulted in his blood escaping, in a tone of mixed anxiety and confusion that betrayed how little he understood why, exactly, he was speaking in the first place. Aoyama muttered something under his breath, half-French and wholly incomprehensible, and stared off into nowhere. I pressed harder against my injury, icepack in hand, and ignored the way my vision was suddenly dancing with static in favour of watching the pair of them. After a moment, Sensei came back over, with an explosion-singed Ashido trailing behind him, and the conversation moved on to better places.
Later that day, when I arrived back at my room, my reflection wasn't waiting for me. I'd skipped internships for the afternoon - Recovery Girl's orders, and I didn’t dare disobey them - but I was as exhausted as if I'd been run around the city for coffees and crooks alike. Perhaps the healing had taken more out of me than we’d thought it would, or perhaps I really had lost a little too much blood. Whatever the cause, I barely noticed the discrepancy when I first stepped into the room, and dumped my things in a corner.
Eventually, though, my eyes passed over a figure beneath the bed of the mirror-room, glassy-skinned and green haired and tied-up and bloody; and I did notice her. Distinctly.
I might have screamed, when I registered what I was seeing – or I might not have. I could never quite recall exactly how those few moments played out, between my heart beating at my sternum and my brain trying to process its surroundings. I’d seen a lot of girls in my life, and more bloody ones than was strictly necessary – but something about her put me off, instinctively, unease unfurling in my chest the longer I looked at her. The evening dark burned through most of her body as she lay there, staring at me, and it almost hid the red, dashed as it was through her hair and scattered across her skin like the torn-off petals of an unlucky flower. But it was an almost, crushed by the barest flickers of evening-glow reflecting off liquid droplets and the opacity of a white uniform-blouse, and somehow, my subconscious connected the dots as easily as breathing – this girl was already dead.
Not in the sense that her chest lacked its rise and fall, or in that her translucence leant her a ghostly quality, or even in that her eyes welled up, teary, as they saw me, and her throat twitched with the subtle motions of terror, and yet she failed to move; no, it was a simple certainty. The sort, I imagined, that comes to the old at the end of their lives, and drives them to sort their affairs and visit their favourite places – the sensation of knowing, like you know how to breathe, that you soon won’t.
And then I looked to the other side of the mirror, and saw my reflection standing there, with a bruise on her face and one half of a pair of secateurs clutched in a white-knuckled hand, frozen in shock as I had been moments ago. And I understood why I’d known the girl was good as gone.
“What are you doing?” I asked, and received no answer, because neither of us could hear a thing the other said – neither of us could do so much as touch each other, properly. She just looked at me, my immaterial twin, empty-eyed and blank-faced, and I half-wondered if she could even see me; surely, surely she could, but if I could be visible and her not, then perhaps, then perhaps –
And then she sighed, and set the unused blade on the table – unused, unused, I didn’t know if they were, but I’d not seen them moved to fight, yet – and stepped over to where I was crouched, pressing her fingers against the barrier between us. I echoed the motion, instinctively, leaning closer so my breath fogged the glass, and she looked away, a sort of resignation on her features. Then she drew away from me, and tapped her wrist, once, twice.
It was an odd moment. We’d never tried to communicate with each other, like this – parallel existence and basic gestures had always sufficed for affection.
“Two?” I asked; paused. “No. Time?”
She just stared at me, deaf as a silent film. I thought about saying the words slower, clearer – and then, discarded the idea as quickly as I’d thought of it, fumbling instead for my phone. I clicked open the lock screen, held it up to reflect its backwards reading onto the mirror’s surface, and pointed to the numbers printed across the top. Her head tilted, almost curiously, before she nodded. Then, she pointed behind her to the figure beneath the bed, the motion slow and deliberate – and then made a short, sharp stabbing gesture with her arm.
“She’s… killing time?” I tried, and for a moment I thought I saw my reflection’s brow twitch, the soft shape of her face tightening for a half-second; but when I looked again, it was gone, and she was just sitting there. It was a terrible guess, anyway; I kept trying. “She’s – it’s time for her to stab someone. She – she’s going to stab someone? It takes time for her to stab someone?”
I wasn’t getting anywhere. My reflection was unhelpful.
As much as I disliked it, I found my gaze drifting back to my reflection’s captive. As much as I thought her doom had little to do with ghostliness, her hair held an unmistakeable green glow to it, spun through with an almost-magical shade of pink. Her eyes, large and watery, were sulphurous at the core, almost alight of their own and a little too knowing – as if she could have recalled more about me than I could myself. My gaze drifted over an inconsistency in the translucent hues of the glass-ornament skin of her face, and a memory clicked into place. My classmates’ voices rang in my ears, clear as day.
“Oh,” I said, aloud, and this time it was only for my benefit. “You’re the one that attacked Ashido in the mirror. You’re Blood-Stained Mari.”
I looked back at my reflection. She smiled at me, knowingly, and clapped her hands, soft and pleased. She glanced at the table.
Horror bloomed in my chest, and across my face.
“What have you gotten into?” I breathed, and she understood perfectly – as if we really were twins, and not just mirror-images, separated by years alone and all the space in the world, beyond the boundaries of glossy surfaces. Her shrug was too casual to be resigned – almost perfunctory in its blasé execution. It is what it is, she seemed to say.
“You wouldn’t do this without a reason,” I said – paused, tried again. “I wouldn’t do this without a reason. But we’re heroes, we don’t – this isn’t what we’re meant to do!”
She frowned at me – at some understanding of what I meant, or merely my panicked state, I wasn’t sure. She made a circle with her thumb and forefinger, holding it out. Yes, it said – or maybe just, it’s okay.
Her back was straight as a rod. Her face was not blank – I was unsure if ours could be blank, truly – but it didn’t twitch – didn’t betray fear nor remorse.
I pulled out my phone again – pointed to the camera. I stared into my own eyes, dark and steady, pleading with them to understand. You’re at school. You’ll get in trouble. Someone will find out.
Her gaze softened, just barely. She pointed carefully to herself, and then to me; and then she crossed her wrists, the motion delicate as a spring breeze.
It’s me, she said. Not you.
I didn’t know what to say to that.
The light switch clicked sharply when I flicked it off, that night, and the threads of moonlight sneaking through the gaps in my curtain were barely enough to make out my reflection. Usually, my reflection would follow me to bed, though I never knew if she actually fell asleep when I did, or if it was only her custom. That final night, though, she simply stood there, watching me, as I crossed the room and jumped into bed, pulling the covers tight over myself. The sight made me feel wrong all over, even if I didn't quite understand what it meant, yet. A hollowness - that was the best way to describe the feeling, that crept under my skin and burrowed into my heart. I watched the barest flecks of appropriated moonlight glint in her eyes, the way her hands twitched as they lay folded in her laps, the care as she stepped around the space beneath the bed, pulling her feet up with a suppressed urgency as if she was frightened the girl beneath would drag her beneath. She seemed reluctant to act, even in the dark, and I found myself unable to blame her, between the silvery gleam of the blade on the table and the wide eyes of the prism-ghost curled up on the ground. In the end, I found I couldn't bear to look either, to see her act or go, so I rolled over onto my other side, and shut my eyes tight. It made my chest hurt, a shallow stabbing like a knife. But I was already tired, and the odd grief-melancholy only served to make me more-so. I'd meant to stay awake for longer, but in the end, sleep welled up and dragged me under into a purer sort of dark, and my consciousness slipped away into the night as easily as a flower closes its petals.
When I awoke, just before sunrise, the girl in the mirror was gone from its confines. Her captive was, likewise, nowhere to be seen. I checked my room from top to bottom, just in case; but it was pristine at every turn, not even marred by dust. The mirror's surface was smooth as ever, and the image within it neat as the room I stood in, down to the absence of human interference in the perfectly-printed picture. It glinted, in the sun's first rays. Silvery. Empty. I stood there for a long time, in the minutes before the world woke up, staring into nothing, looking for the faintest sign of movement, the faintest sigh of life. In the end, I let my fingers touch the glass, and came to the conclusion; the girl had vanished from the looking-glass for good. It was, I thought, for the best.
I fastidiously ignored the darkening red dawn-colour smeared across the bed-shadow of my room's mirror image.
On the sixty-second day of autumn, I cut my finger on one of Bakugō's favourite kitchen knives, hurrying to slice up cabbage for dinner. The flesh split open a little too easily, and something glinted iridescent inside, like a thorn growing from within, so I grabbed a pair of tweezers to pluck it out, and then dropped both the shard of colour and the tweezers in the sink - well away, I thought, from anything to contaminate. I was confused, at first, at how something so shiny and sharp could have found itself within me, its presence obvious even against the roughly-polished steel of the sink and its edges jagged; then I remembered how my finger had tingled oddly when I cut it, and how I'd rushed in to pick up and throw away the mess. I understood, then, how it had happened. It was simple, to clean the wound out, to inspect it for more shards, and it didn't take long for me to be completely clear, my finger wrapped up tight and safe in a new bandage, and the last piece of the mirror thrown away. It was a shame, really, that it had gotten me injured again - and all the wrong way around, too, it within me, rather than me within it. It wasn't like I'd broken something again, though, so I just wrapped the shard up in tissue and threw it away, and kept on cooking. I was distracted, and my onions, more carefully sliced after my accident, were half-caramelised before I realised what I was doing. But it was a good day, so I appreciated them, irritating sweetness and all.
It was dark out, by the time I'd finished in the kitchen and eaten my fill; and I had homework to do, anyway, so I made my excuses to the common room and stepped out into the hall to go back to my dorm. I met Midoriya in front of the elevator, there, dishevelled and bushy-haired from a run and carrying a water bottle. It was uncharacteristically wet - or, at least, the water wasn't exactly where it should have been.
"Oh," he said, when I asked about it. "I dropped it in a puddle."
And then,
"Ah, Hagakure? Do you ever - I mean, did you ever - did you ever not recognise yourself? In water, I mean, or - or in the dark. Things like that."
"Nope!" I looked at him; tilted my head. "I've never had a doubt about it. I'm me, and so's my reflection. Why do you ask?"
He looked away. "Never mind," he said, and didn't ask me about it again.