Chapter 9: Between Peaks and People
The mountains of Nikkō breathed a quiet Aoi wasn't used to.
Unlike the ceaseless clamor of the city, there were no honking horns, no rumble of construction, no flood of bodies brushing past each other on narrow sidewalks. Just wind through the pines. The distant murmur of a stream. The occasional thump of sneakers on wood decking as classmates wandered between the cabin and the trails beyond.
The cabin itself was older than expected—wide, wooden, and sturdy, with a lofted second floor and a deep porch that wrapped around the front. Inside, heat from the central fireplace combated the mountain chill, but the scent of pine and dust clung to the beams like a memory.
Most of the students had split into groups by the first evening. Some took to card games. Others wandered out with sketchpads or portable gaming consoles. The few that were particularly ambitious tried making a campfire—though it had ended with a very flustered chaperone extinguishing a flaming marshmallow from the roof of the toolshed.
Aoi watched it all unfold from the edge of the porch, sipping from a thermos his mother had packed with barley tea. The laughter, the movement, the easy rhythm of it all—it wasn't something he was naturally part of. But he didn't mind watching.
Until someone else sat down beside him.
"I thought you were gonna float there like a shadow the whole trip," said Kazu, a boy from 3-C with a wind-based Quirk and a lopsided grin that always looked like he knew a joke no one else had heard yet.
Aoi blinked. "Didn't realize I had an audience."
"You're easy to spot," Kazu replied, tipping his head toward the forest trail. "You always stand like you're trying not to touch the floor. Makes you look like a ghost."
Aoi snorted softly into his tea. "Maybe I am."
"Bet ghosts don't carry spare gloves everywhere."
Aoi gave a thin smile but didn't correct him. The truth wasn't far off.
After the alleyway incident, he hadn't let his hands stay bare for more than a minute at a time. The gloves he wore now weren't the same as the ones he'd bought after the city encounter—these were newer, reinforced at the knuckles, with slight paneling over the fingertips to keep splintering at bay. He'd even stitched in an extra binding strap himself.
"People still scared of your Quirk?" Kazu asked after a pause.
Aoi looked down. "They're not scared. Just… careful."
"Well, yeah," Kazu said. "Careful's smart. But it doesn't mean they hate you. Y'know, people keep their distance from me when I sneeze. I blew over a bike rack last spring. Doesn't mean I'm radioactive."
Aoi huffed. "You didn't almost shard anyone with a staircase."
Kazu raised a brow. "True. But you didn't mean to. And hey—if it helps, I think your Quirk's pretty cool."
Aoi gave him a glance, uncertain. "You do?"
"Sure. It's like—alchemy or something. You touch stuff and boom. Art. Weapon. Trap. Defense. It's versatile."
Aoi didn't say anything for a while. Then: "It's dangerous."
"Lots of Quirks are. Fire's dangerous. Ice is dangerous. Sound's dangerous. Doesn't mean we stop using them. It means we learn control."
Control. That word again.
"I'm trying," Aoi murmured.
Kazu nudged him with an elbow. "Good. Keep trying. Anyway—come inside when you're done brooding. Everyone's setting up for board games. You can't keep dodging forever."
Aoi considered that. Then nodded.
"I'll join in a bit."
Inside, the room had been rearranged into controlled chaos.
Blankets and sleeping bags created a loose sprawl in the common area, where card games overlapped with snack-sharing and someone's Bluetooth speaker was playing an old pop song none of them wanted to admit still liked. Several students from 3-B were huddled near the fireplace telling scary stories, complete with shadow puppets thrown onto the back wall.
"—and then," said the girl telling the current tale, voice rising with dramatic flair, "the hero looked up and realized…the mirror didn't reflect him anymore!"
Half the group laughed. The other half playfully groaned. Someone tossed a popcorn kernel at her forehead.
"Alright, alright," she said, grinning. "Your turn then, Ayumu!"
Ayumu, a quiet girl with long bangs and a floral-patterned notebook, blushed and shrank into her sweater. "I-I don't have a story…"
"Sure you do! You're always drawing creepy stuff."
"I draw plants."
"They're creepy plants!"
"Okay but—"
Aoi watched from the archway, not quite ready to join in, but not entirely outside the moment either.
"Hey," said a voice near his shoulder.
He turned to see Reina, a classmate he vaguely knew from science club. Her Quirk was light-based, and she wore a star pin in her hair.
"You want to play?" she asked. "We're setting up Elemental Chess."
"Elemental… what?"
"It's like regular chess but each piece has a Quirk and can 'attack' in a different way. You roll dice to activate abilities. It's kinda dumb. Kinda fun."
Aoi hesitated. "I don't really know the rules."
"Then I'll teach you."
She said it so simply. No judgment. No pity. Just a quiet invitation.
So he nodded.
And to his surprise, he actually started to enjoy himself.
The evening stretched long and comfortable. Lantern light flickered. Someone broke out a harmonica. A pair of classmates tried roasting mochi over the fireplace and ended up gluing one to the ceiling. No one got too mad.
Later, Aoi stepped out again onto the porch. The night was deep blue, the stars fractured in the reflection of the lake beyond the trees.
Footsteps padded up behind him. He didn't turn, but he recognized them.
"You're getting better at being around people," Kazu said lightly.
"I'm trying," Aoi echoed.
A beat of silence passed.
Then Kazu asked, quieter: "You ever afraid you'll mess up again?"
Aoi didn't answer right away. Instead, he pulled off his right glove and let the cold air bite his skin. He touched the wooden railing of the porch—just briefly—and nothing happened.
"I'm always afraid," he said.
"But that's not the same as stopping."
The next morning brought golden sunlight and a chorus of cicadas. Most of the class was up early, bleary-eyed but excited for the day's hike. The teachers had mapped out a short trail that looped around a series of hot springs and scenic overlooks. Aoi packed water, spare gloves, and a first-aid kit into his backpack, then joined the slow shuffle of students filing out.
The trail was peaceful—moss-covered rocks, bursts of wildflowers, the distant sound of birdsong. They passed a weathered shrine along the way, its faded torii gate standing like a silent sentinel. A few students left coins and clapped politely. Others just took pictures.
Near one of the lookouts, Aoi found himself walking beside Ayumu. She held her sketchbook protectively to her chest, but after a while, offered a glance in his direction.
"…Do you like mountains?" she asked.
Aoi thought about it. "They're quiet."
"That's a yes?"
"Kind of."
Ayumu nodded. "I like quiet too."
It wasn't exactly conversation, but it wasn't silence either. And for once, Aoi didn't mind.
Later that afternoon, the group returned to the cabin for a scavenger hunt. Teams were assigned randomly, and Aoi was grouped with Reina, a boy from Class 3-D named Renta who had a pebble-magnetism Quirk, and Kazu—who declared himself team captain and immediately tried climbing a tree.
"Leaves don't count!" Reina yelled from below.
"They're forest items!" Kazu insisted, upside-down and clinging to a branch like a squirrel. "The sheet says 'found in nature'!"
"We need specific items, not half the tree!"
"Semantics!"
Renta sighed and handed Aoi a checklist. "We need: river stone, feather, something reflective, pinecone, moss patch, and a lucky charm."
Aoi raised an eyebrow. "Lucky charm?"
"Yeah, like, something someone lost. Or something that feels lucky. It's vague on purpose."
They managed to gather everything except the lucky charm. On the way back, Reina spotted something glinting beside the old toolshed—a silver coin embedded in the dirt.
Aoi reached for it instinctively—but froze.
It was half-buried under a rusted fence post. The metal was corroded and flaking—just like the railing from years ago.
Kazu noticed his hesitation. "You okay?"
"…It's nothing."
Still gloved, Aoi crouched down, carefully used a stick to pry the coin free, and slipped it into his pouch. Nothing transformed. Nothing broke.
But his heartbeat stayed high until they got back to the cabin.
That night, their class celebrated the last full day with an outdoor dinner. The teachers had rented a small grill pit, and students rotated between flipping skewers, burning marshmallows, and running in circles to dodge mosquito bites. Laughter came easily now—even Aoi found himself chuckling when Renta accidentally sat on a ketchup packet and panicked like he'd been shot.
Someone pulled out sparklers as the sun dipped behind the mountains.
Aoi stood near the outer edge, watching the others trace shapes into the dark. Reina drew a star. Kazu drew a fart cloud. Ayumu tried writing her name but misspelled it halfway through.
Aoi hesitated. Then, slowly, he took a sparkler too.
He didn't draw anything fancy. Just a circle.
But the embers reflected in his eyes, and for the first time in a while, he didn't feel like glass on the edge of shattering.
Later That Night
Back in the cabin, after lights-out, Aoi sat on his futon with a flashlight and notebook. The day had gone better than expected—but something still gnawed at the back of his mind.
That rusted coin. The memory it pulled up. The unspoken tension in his bones.
He turned the coin over in his gloved hand.
Lucky charm, he thought. Maybe. Or maybe it's a reminder.
With a sigh, he turned to the last page of his notebook and sketched out a design.
It wasn't for a weapon. Or a shield. Or even a trap.
It was a puzzle. A complex structure of interlocking panes—each labeled for weight distribution, curvature, and potential fracture points. It was an idea for something he hadn't tested before: a glass construct with flexibility. Something that could bend instead of break.
He stared at the diagram for a long time.
Then, beneath it, he scribbled one word:
Control.