The cracked phone lay abandoned on the floor. Emitting a dying light.
From behind the shattered web of glass, the hoarse voice of a father whimpering an apology echoed, slicing through the air. That plea sounded like rusted iron, slowly corroding sanity. Carrying a message that rational minds refused to accept.
Until the first minute, which felt like a century of torture, the small machine finally gave up. The device lost its connection to the signal from the other end.
A soft static sound closed the conversation forever. There were no more heart-wrenching sobs. No more echoes of despair bouncing off the concrete walls.
A deafening silence instantly descended upon the corridor. Empty. As if releasing the body from a curse that had been choking its neck since earlier. A second later, his rational brain tried to find a place to hide. Perhaps all this pain was just a terrible nightmare that had accidentally visited in broad daylight.
But the cold air piercing his pores served as a brutally silent witness. This emptiness instead slapped him hard, awakening his soul to the reality that he was now truly alone in the universe.
Pulled by sorrow, the head that usually stood tall, defying the world, slowly bowed.
The pair of red eyes that usually blazed with calculations now stared at the black screen below his feet with a completely hollow gaze. The cracked glass reflected his own face in a blur. That reflection no longer showed the face of a future number one hero. The face in the glass belonged to a young man whose will to live had been sucked dry, losing every reason to keep drawing breath.
Driven by the remnants of strength still clinging to his muscle fibers, the tall body finally slumped.
His long fingers reached downward, scooping up the dead object from the floor with an incredibly limp movement. There was no strength locking within his grip. The shattered smartphone was just held loosely, as if the object were ash that would fly away if squeezed too hard.
The body then turned around with slow movements, like a wooden puppet whose pull-strings had just been cut.
The dark red-haired young man began dragging his shoes along the long corridor. He kept walking in a silence that froze his bloodflow. His shoulders curved downward as if carrying a sky about to collapse. Every swing of his foot carried no clear purpose, just a reflex movement of a vessel that had lost its contents.
Finally, the end of the tunnel leading to the spectator area began to light his vision.
The noise of the crowd of thousands cheering erupted again, striking his eardrums like a hammer. The spectators' cheers exploded like waves crashing against a cliff without end.
However, that ocean of euphoria held no meaning for him anymore. He was not attracted to the festival's festivities in the slightest. The only thing he did was walk straight toward his row of seats in complete silence. His arrogant victorious smile had vanished.
Sitting frozen near the corridor entrance, two students from another class whom he had previously terrified jumped in surprise.
Their bodies, which had been relaxed enjoying the match, now trembled violently again. If before they feared his killer aura, now they shivered because they felt a terrifying emptiness. The emotionless, pale face that had just passed them felt far more threatening. The two of them could only swallow hard, holding their breath until the young man passed.
Ignoring every pair of eyes staring in horror, his limp hand quickly grabbed his bag and belongings left on the plastic chair.
Without caring about the strange stares from the students around him, he just walked away, leaving the spectator area. His grand stage now felt like nothing more than a worthless pile of trash. He walked back into the darkness of the corridor.
As the young man's back turned to walk away, in another row of seats not too far off, a group of eyes were watching closely.
Ochaco Uraraka, Denki Kaminari, Kyoka Jiro, Fumikage Tokoyami, and Eijiro Kirishima sat in a tight line. Their eyes stared intently at the figure of their friend, whose movements seemed so alien and empty. The long corridor slowly swallowed his back without a trace.
Exchanging glances full of question marks, the five teenagers felt that something was wrong. A massive question mark seemed to hang clearly above their heads.
"Isn't it his turn to fight after this match is over?" Jiro spoke up, breaking the silence among their small group. Her tone sounded confused. "Why is he grabbing his stuff and leaving instead?"
Leaning casually beside her, Kaminari could only raise both shoulders in an I don't know gesture. "Something sudden must have happened to him, huh?" The blond young man tilted his head, trying to guess the situation.
"Perhaps your guess is right," Tokoyami answered in his deep, hoarse voice. He folded both arms across his chest. "I just saw him walk away to answer a phone call."
"A phone call?" Uraraka repeated the word, tilting her head. The round-faced girl's expression instantly radiated genuine worry. "Did he just receive bad news?" Her gaze stayed locked on the back that was shrinking in the distance.
Kirishima raised a finger to rub his firm jaw. The red-haired young man nodded slowly. "Looking at how pale his face was earlier, it certainly seems that way."
The group fell silent again. They looked at each other, searching for an answer to the sudden confusion that had ambushed them.
"So, what do you guys think we should do now?" Jiro asked again. Her index finger tapped against her knee. Deep down, she was still haunted by the guilt over her sharp joke back in the classroom.
"I think, right now, his heart just needs time to be alone," Fumikage offered his wise opinion.
Staring at the floor, Kaminari looked restless and ran a hand through his hair. "But if we just leave him like that, it feels like... we're ignoring him. As his friends, I'd feel awful just sitting here doing nothing."
"You have a point," Uraraka agreed with a firm nod. Her empathy wrestled with the urge to help.
Driven by an unspoken mutual agreement, Tokoyami finally stood up from his plastic seat.
"And what are you going to do now?" Jiro looked up at the bird-headed boy, full of hope.
"Ask him directly. That's the only logical thing I can do right now," Tokoyami replied, pausing for a moment. His sharp gaze was fixed on the corridor where their friend had disappeared. "If I know why he's become like this, I might be able to think of a solution."
Hearing Tokoyami's plan, the other four students looked at each other briefly and nodded in unison. They simultaneously rose from their spectator seats, leaving the festival viewing for the sake of a friend.
Without wasting more time, they started walking quickly, following the same route.
The sound of their footsteps echoed clearly, bouncing off the corridor walls. The further they walked into the tunnel, the bright noise of the stadium gradually began to fade. Darkness and cold air slowly enveloped their bodies.
It didn't take long for their eyes to finally find the silhouette they were looking for. In the distance ahead, Fuse's back could be seen walking, cleaving through the shadows.
The young man looked incredibly limp. His head was continuously bowed toward the floor, as if his neck could no longer support his skull. The fire of spirit that usually blazed bright and ignited the people around him now seemed to have been doused with ice water, extinguished without a trace. He looked like a broken kite string, ready to fall.
Right at the second when the five teenagers intended to quicken their pace to catch up, the figure ahead suddenly stopped moving altogether.
His friends, who were approaching with a slight jog, also reflexively slammed on the brakes. They stopped at a safe distance behind Fuse. Wiping a quick sweat from their foreheads and taking a deep breath, they prepared to call out the young man's name.
However, before their lips could part to utter a single word of greeting.
"Leave."
A single, short word slid flatly from the class rep's mouth. His voice echoed off the narrow concrete walls of the corridor.
The tone he used didn't radiate anger or explosive irritation. The voice sounded very cold, dead, and completely hollow, like a bottomless abyss. Like a block of ice pressed against skin, that single word made the blood of anyone who heard it feel as if it had stopped flowing.
Hearing that piercing rejection, all five of his friends instantly looked at each other with wide, startled eyes. They were forced to swallow hard, feeling the unpleasant atmosphere that suddenly choked the air around them.
"What exactly just happened to you?" Fumikage, who always took the role of the mediator, finally forced himself to ask. His voice tried to penetrate the ice wall of defense.
The corridor's atmosphere fell back into an abyss of silence. There was no wind blowing, no ragged breath.
Standing frozen, Fuse didn't bother to string together a single word as a reply.
With movements that were very slow and stiff, like a machine lacking lubricant, he slowly rotated the axis of his body. He turned around and faced his five friends. Both of his eyes were truly empty. There wasn't a single ray of life in them. His eyes looked like cracked mirrors, only reflecting absolute emptiness.
"I want to be alone." Fuse paused his sentence for a moment, letting the air around him grow cold before he reaffirmed his request with the same dead tone. "Leave."
After uttering that word of rejection, he turned his body back around and began dragging his feet again, walking away.
The five of them could only stand helpless, staring at Fuse's back growing more and more distant, swallowed by the darkness of the corridor. The back that in previous times always radiated an unshakeable pillar of self-confidence now looked very small, lonely, and completely devoid of a compass to guide its direction.
"What do we do now?" Kaminari asked aloud, breaking the silence. His face was confused, but his eyes clearly sought an answer from Fumikage.
Tokoyami stood still, staring intently at the back of his childhood friend, who seemed to be hunching under an invisible, heavy burden of sorrow. The longer it went on, the distance between the two of them grew further apart, unreachable.
Tokoyami's pupils couldn't help but tremble as he tried to fathom the depth of his friend's suffering. His heart ached looking at the fragile sight before him.
At this moment, Tokoyami's mouth opened slightly as if to call out, then quickly shut tight. A fierce tug-of-war raged inside him. Finally, his lips parted again, and he turned his face away toward the wall with an expression full of hesitation.
"Just leave him alone for now," Tokoyami said with a very heavy voice.
This isn't the right time for us to step in and get too involved in his problem.
"Time will be what heals his wound later."
…
In a corner of the corridor that grew darker and further from the bustling humans, the light from the neon lamps on the ceiling flickered softly.
The sound of dragged footsteps continued to scrape against the floor. The noise sounded incredibly weak, slow, and devoid of rhythm.
The young man kept forcing his legs to step forward, as if his body no longer had a reason to even stand upright. Truly alone in there, accompanied only by his own shadow stretching across the floor.
Until a certain point in the middle of the empty corridor, his footsteps stopped entirely.
His body stood frozen like a stone pillar. His trembling hands slowly rose. His long fingers moved roughly, then covered the entire surface of his face, hiding both eyes from the world.
At this moment, something warm and wet began to slide down from between his fingers. The tears he had been holding back with all his might were now flowing freely, soaking his cheeks as cold as marble. An incredibly deep sorrow embraced his body from behind, crushing his ribs from the inside without mercy.
With a very faint and hopeless whimper, a sob broke the silence. "Mom..."
A small cry began to shake his broad shoulders. Like an ocean of glass shattering into a million sharp fragments of dust. "Mom..."
At this moment, all the iron and steel elements embedded in the corridor's walls and ceiling around him felt like they were vibrating softly.
At first, the magnetic vibration was just a tiny ripple, barely perceptible. Moving gently like a dry leaf shivering in the night wind.
However, from that gentle movement, the vibration changed, growing faster and harder as time passed. The air around him began to ring harshly. The iron water pipes groaned in agony, creating a resonance that tortured the eardrums as if they, too, were feeling his rage.
Until, at the peak of the most ear-splitting vibration, all the raucous noise suddenly died in the blink of an eye. A lethal silence descended upon the corridor.
A fraction of a second after that silence was created, all the metal around the corridor suddenly dented inward! The hard iron crumpled and twisted, as if they had just been crushed fiercely by a giant, blind rampaging fist.
Slowly, Fuse lowered both hands from his face. His head, which had been bowed to the floor, was lifted back up, staring straight at the emptiness of the corridor ahead of him.
Now, there were no more tears flowing down his face. The sorrow had evaporated into nowhere. Instead, there was only a pair of eyes staring with an extraordinarily sharp, freezing gaze, completely devoid of the light of life.
…
A/N: No excuses. Moving forward, I will update as usual. I'm sorry. Even though I'm busy with IRL matters, that shouldn't be an excuse for not writing on schedule.