Thursday.
Nothing special about Thursday.
She woke up at six. Made coffee. Stood in the kitchen in her underwear—the ones with the little stars on them, not the grenade ones, those were in the wash—and stared out the window.
The city was doing its morning thing.
Buses. People walking fast. Someone arguing on their phone on the sidewalk below. A convenience store worker pulling up the shutter outside their shop.
Normal.
Everything normal.
She drank her coffee.
Made toast.
Ate it over the sink.
Put her dishes in the basin she'd been meaning to wash for two days.
Got dressed.
Left.
The agency was at standard morning volume.
Not loud. Not quiet. Just the particular hum of a building that was operational. Dispatch running in the background. Keyboards. Someone's radio in the break room.
She checked in with Hana.
Zone 4 today. Solo patrol. Afternoon shift review.
Standard.
She changed. Grabbed her earpiece. Her coffee from the machine. Checked her right hand. The brace was off now. The tendonitis mostly gone. She flexed her fingers.
Fine.
Better than fine.
She went to her desk to check the morning incident logs before heading out.
Someone had left a packet of painkillers on her keyboard.
She looked at it.
No note.
She looked around.
Kamiko was at her own desk. Not looking at her.
Hana was on the phone.
Two sidekicks she didn't know well were talking near the coffee machine.
She picked up the painkillers.
Read the label.
The specific kind. The ones the doctor had recommended for inflammation. Not the standard issue ones from the first aid cabinet.
She looked around again.
Nobody was watching.
She put them in her utility belt.
Didn't think about it.
Thought about it the entire patrol.
Zone 4 was quiet.
Beautifully, boringly quiet.
She walked the route. Checked in every ninety minutes. Helped an elderly man with a cart that had a broken wheel. Redirected three tourists who were lost. Wrote one incident report about a noise complaint that resolved itself before she arrived.
That was it.
Four hours.
She ate her lunch on a bench. Convenience store onigiri. Two of them. And a canned coffee.
The park was almost empty. Just a few people. A mother with a small child throwing bread at pigeons. The pigeons were aggressively uninterested in the bread.
She watched them.
Her mind wandered.
Lemillion Agency. Mirio's grin. Tamaki's quiet voice. It gets better.
The photo on the hallway wall. Bakugo standing in the wreckage with blood on his costume.
The painkillers on her keyboard.
No note.
She finished her onigiri.
Watched the pigeons refuse the bread.
The child was delighted anyway.
She got back to the agency at four.
Changed. Wrote her report. Submitted it.
The afternoon briefing was at five. She went.
Bakugo ran it. He always ran it when he was in the building. Which was always because he was incapable of leaving.
She sat near the back.
He went through the standard stuff. Ongoing cases. A new operation in preliminary stages. Some administrative thing about expense reports that made everyone groan slightly.
He noticed.
"If you lot actually filed them on time I wouldn't have to bring it up," he said flatly.
Someone muttered something.
He ignored it.
The briefing ended.
She stayed to help Kamiko with some coordination paperwork. Small task. Thirty minutes.
By the time she was done the floor had mostly emptied.
She grabbed her bag.
Headed for the elevator.
Walked past his office.
The light was on under the door.
Of course it was.
She went home.
Changed into her comfort clothes.
The big grey sweatshirt that had a small hole in the left sleeve she kept meaning to fix. The shorts with the little ramen bowls printed on them. She'd bought them at the same time as the grenade underwear. Three AM online shopping was a specific kind of dangerous.
Made dinner.
Real dinner this time. Rice. Egg. Some vegetables she found in the fridge that were almost past their prime.
Ate at the table.
Her phone was next to her. Face down. She was trying a thing where she didn't look at her phone during meals.
It lasted about four minutes.
She flipped it over.
Fan club chat.
Nothing major. Some discussion about a press conference from last week. Someone had made a compilation video of every time Bakugo had said something that could technically be interpreted as a compliment if you squinted.
She watched it.
It was nine minutes long.
She watched it twice.
Then she got up. Washed her dishes. Actually washed them this time. Including the ones from the basin.
She felt very accomplished.
She deserved a reward.
She went to the bedroom. Grabbed the plushie off the pillow.
Came back to the couch.
Sat down.
Settled in.
"Okay," she said to it. "Today was fine."
The plushie said nothing.
"Zone 4. Nothing happened. I helped a man with a broken cart and watched pigeons refuse bread." She paused. "The child found it funny. I found it funny too. The pigeons were very committed to not caring."
Silence.
"Someone left painkillers on my desk. No note. It was probably Kamiko. She notices when people are struggling. She's good like that."
She adjusted the plushie against her knee.
"It wasn't Kamiko."
The plushie maintained its position.
"The specific kind. The ones the doctor recommended. Not the cabinet ones." She looked at the plushie's face. The little embroidered scowl. "You'd have to know which ones. You'd have to remember what the doctor said."
Silence.
"It was probably Kamiko."
She pulled the plushie into her lap.
Lay down on the couch.
Stared at the ceiling.
"I went to Lemillion Agency yesterday. Did I tell you that? I probably told you that."
She hadn't told the plushie that.
But that was fine.
"Mirio Togata is enormous. Like. I knew he was tall but in person it's different. He hugged Mina and she actually lifted off the ground slightly." She paused. "He's very... sunny. Like being near him makes you feel like things are probably going to be okay."
She thought about it.
"You're not like that," she told the plushie. "You're the opposite of that. Being near you makes me feel like I need to be better or you'll notice I'm not."
She looked at the embroidered scowl.
"Which also makes me feel like things are going to be okay. Just differently."
Outside the window the city was doing its evening thing. Quieter than morning. Warmer somehow. Yellow lights from other apartments. Someone cooking something that smelled good.
"Mina knows," Amaya said.
Flat.
To the ceiling.
"She doesn't know. But she... suspects? She has that look. The one people get when they're watching a situation and have already concluded something but are waiting to see if you'll figure it out yourself."
She closed her eyes.
"I've been at the agency for six weeks. I'm rank 87. I'm going to break 80 by end of month apparently. He said so. Not as a question."
Her hand was absently stroking the plushie's head.
She didn't stop.
"He said above average. To Mirio. About my work." She paused. "That's what Mirio said he said. I don't know exactly what he said. Could've been different. Could've been more." She paused again. "Could've been less."
She was aware she was catastrophizing.
Or the opposite of catastrophizing.
Manufacturing significance.
She opened her eyes.
"I found a gray hair this morning," she said to the ceiling. "In my eyebrow. Just one. I pulled it out."
The plushie had no comment.
"I'm twenty three. Is that normal? Is that stress? Am I stress-growing gray hairs because of you?" She looked at the plushie. "Because of your real life equivalent. Who is not you. Who is an actual human man who runs my agency and leaves painkillers on desks and drinks terrible coffee and yells at people for filing expense reports late."
She sat up slightly.
Looked at the plushie properly.
"He also wore the coffee-stained shirt for like a week," she said. "I checked. The fan account photos confirm it. Same stain. Multiple days."
She pointed at the plushie.
"What does that mean?"
Silence.
"It means nothing. It means he doesn't care about clothing. It means he has more important things to think about. It means I'm reading something into a laundry situation that has no subtext."
She lay back down.
The neighbor's TV was on through the wall.
Some drama.
Someone crying.
"You know what the worst part is?" she asked the ceiling.
The ceiling knew.
"It's not even the wanting him. I can live with the wanting. I've been wanting him since I was fourteen. I'm used to it." She adjusted the plushie on her chest. "It's that now I actually know him. Sort of. Know him as a person not a poster."
She pressed the plushie lightly.
"And he's—" She stopped.
Started again.
"He's exactly what I thought he was. Just more complicated. Like the loudness is on top of something quieter. And the meanness is on top of something that notices when your hand hurts."
She was quiet for a moment.
"And that's so much worse. That's genuinely so much worse. Because now I can't even blame it on being delusional."
The neighbor's drama continued.
More crying.
She turned her head and looked at the plushie.
The embroidered face. The tiny scowl. The little costume.
Fifteen thousand yen.
Best money she'd ever spent.
"I'm going to be fine," she told it.
Firmly.
"I'm going to keep doing the work. And climbing. And being professional. And eventually—" She stopped. Thought about it genuinely. "Eventually either it'll pass or something will happen or I'll turn eighty and it'll just be a thing that defined my twenties."
The plushie said nothing.
"I'm going to be fine."
Her phone buzzed.
She grabbed it.
Unknown number.
She opened it.
Report looked good. The Lemillion angle is worth pursuing. We'll talk tomorrow. - Bakugo
She stared at the message.
Put her phone down.
Picked up the plushie.
Held it over her face.
Pressed it into her cheeks.
"I'm not fine," she told it. Muffled. Into the soft fabric. "I'm not fine at all."
The plushie absorbed this information.
"He texted me about the report. For work. That's a work text. About work. That is a man doing his job."
She lowered the plushie.
Stared at the screen again.
Report looked good.
She had four words.
She was going to live in those four words for the next forty eight hours.
She typed back: Copy. See you tomorrow.
Sent it.
Put the phone down.
Looked at the plushie.
"Don't look at me like that."
It looked at her like that.
She turned over on the couch. Face into the cushion. The plushie clutched to her chest.
The neighbor's drama continued.
Someone had stopped crying.
Started laughing instead.
Amaya lay there.
In her ramen shorts.
In her holey sweatshirt.
Holding her Dynamight plushie.
Rank 87.
Four words from a work text living rent-free in her chest.
Gray hair in her eyebrow.
Genuinely completely fine.
...
Absolutely fine.