The house was exactly the way Shinwa had left it.
That was the problem.
The front door opened to silence—not the calm kind, but the hollow, settled kind that had learned the shape of absence. Shoes lined the entryway with no reason to be there anymore. A jacket still hung on the hook by the door, untouched, unmoving, as if time had agreed to stop out of politeness.
Shinwa stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
The lock clicked louder than it should have.
He stood there for a moment, bag still slung over his shoulder, listening. No voices from the kitchen. No radio humming in the background. No footsteps approaching to ask how school went.
Both of his parents had gone down with their ship three years ago.
Lost at sea.
That was the phrase everyone used. As if the ocean had simply misplaced them.
Shinwa exhaled slowly and slipped off his shoes. The house accepted him without reaction. It always did.
He moved through the rooms on habit alone—kitchen, living room, hallway—checking nothing, touching nothing. He didn't need reminders. They were already everywhere.
When he reached his room, he closed the door and sat on the edge of his bed.
Only then did the day catch up with him.
The looks.
The silence.
The way the air had listened to him.
Shinwa stared down at his hands.
"They were watching," he murmured.
At school, dozens of eyes. Fear and awe mixing before anyone had words for either. That feeling—recognition—still lingered faintly, like an afterimage burned into his nerves.
If that was his Quirk…
He swallowed.
"…Then do it again."
Shinwa stood and planted his feet on the floor, shoulders squared the way he'd seen heroes do on television. He focused—not on the room, but on the idea of what had happened. The pressure. The stillness. The way everything had leaned toward him.
Nothing happened.
No shifting air.
No weight pressing outward.
No instinctive hush.
The room remained stubbornly ordinary.
His brow furrowed. He clenched his fists, jaw tightening as he pushed harder—remembering the stares, the fear, the moment the world had paused for him.
Something answered.
Not much.
A faint tension settled into his muscles, like his body had been tuned a fraction tighter than usual. His grip strengthened. The floorboard beneath his foot creaked as he shifted his weight—not from pressure, but from slightly increased force.
"That's it?" he whispered.
Shinwa flexed his fingers. The enhancement was real, but modest. No aura. No presence. Just a subtle reinforcement, like his body had learned to brace itself better.
It felt… incomplete.
He released the tension and sank back onto the bed, shoulders slumping.
At school, people had been watching.
Here, there was no one.
No witnesses.
No belief.
No narrative forming around him.
The weight had nowhere to come from.
Shinwa leaned back and stared at the ceiling. The light fixture hummed softly, indifferent to his thoughts. He wondered, not for the first time, whether losing his parents had hollowed something out of the world—or out of him.
If his Quirk needed people…
…then being alone might be the safest place he could be.
Outside, the evening news played faintly from a neighbor's apartment. A reporter's voice drifted through the open window, talking about rising tensions, about heroes, about threats yet unnamed.
Shinwa closed his eyes.
Unaware that somewhere, far above him in sealed offices and guarded rooms, people were already beginning to fear what would happen when he was no longer alone