Chapter 1 — The Alley of Forgotten Names
Rain sketches thin white lines across the world, stitching together rooftops, gutter water, and the hollow rectangles of distant windows. I move because the cold insists on it; the body I've borrowed demands calories, heat, movement. The storm hums under my skin like a caged animal. It wants to be more than a whisper. It wants to remember.
I let it remain a murmur.
The alley is long and narrow, boxed in by brick and mildew, lit by a single neon sign that blinks HERO BURGERS in exhausted red. Somewhere above, a train grinds along its rails and the noise scatters a flock of pigeons from the eaves. The smell is old oil and wet paper. There is a torn poster on the wall showing a smiling man in a cape, teeth immaculate, eyes Photoshopped to virtue.
HERO NUMBER SIX WELCOMES NEW STUDENTS AT U.A.
U.A. The letters mean nothing to the boy whose bones I'm wearing, but they mean something to the world. I've heard them twice already from people with plastic umbrellas and rushing feet: "U.A. entrance results"—"did you see the clip?"—"future number one."
If this world worships anything, it's symbols. The poster smiles, and I look away.
I find a door with a crooked tin awning and shelter beneath it. The rain slides past the edge like beads on a string. My hands are shaking—not from fear but from weakness. This body hasn't eaten in days. The ribs show. The cold favors the hungry.
I draw a slow breath. The air is heavy, wet, laden with the city's sigh. I taste iron. I count the beats of my heart and match my breathing to them until the trembling becomes an order, not a symptom.
Observation first. Movement later.
Footsteps approach, soft but practiced—someone used to landing lightly. A shadow inches along the mouth of the alley, pauses at the neon light, and steps into view: a woman in a raincoat the color of bruised pears, hair tied in a knot, umbrella still dripping. She holds a paper bag close to her chest like a secret.
Her eyes flick toward me. She keeps her distance, measuring.
"You look like death, boy," she says in a voice that used to be kind and learned not to be. "Hungry?"
The bag smells like rice and egg. The scent is a knife. I say nothing. Silence is a currency; spend it carefully.
She sighs, toes a dented milk crate with her shoe, and sets the bag on it. "It's not poison. Hiro left early today. Extra bentos." She looks me over harder. "You should be in school."
I follow the arc of a raindrop rolling down her umbrella to the concrete. "I don't have a school."
"Ah." Not pity. A cataloguing. She nods once and steps back. "There's a shelter two blocks down that way. If the Commission hasn't closed it again." She turns her umbrella to go, then hesitates. "What's your name?"
The world asks for names so it can label and own. Mine I carry like a blade under my coat.
"Kazen," I say. The word feels strange. It means wind—a coincidence, a joke, or fate. "Kazen Arashi."
Her eyes narrow. The name leaves a mark on her face. "Storm-boy," she murmurs. Then she goes, heels ticking a crisp rhythm into the rain.
I wait until the sound dissolves, then open the bag.
Rice, eggs, a slice of pickled radish, a folded paper crane taped to the lid with a messy hand. Keep breathing, the pen has written in childish loops. I eat, slow and mechanical, and think about generosity as an organism: fragile, hunted by larger creatures with teeth. In another world, gifts like this were bought with blood.
The storm inside me warms as calories return to the body. My limbs stop complaining. I can feel the edges of my control again—the place where my will touches the air like a palm against glass. I push, barely, and the rain at the alley's mouth curves, obedient, making a circle of dryness the size of my hand. I release, and it falls as rain again.
The city speaks in preparations: shutters sliding down over storefronts; the tired rattle of locks; the overlapping patrol routes of heroes and police. I watch two capes pass at the far end of the street—matching uniforms, bright boots, matching smiles for the passerby who thanks them for existing. Their radios crackle with codes. They don't look into the alley. Symbols rarely look into places that refuse to reflect them.
A cough interrupts the rain. It's small and deliberately muffled—the kind of cough that has learned to apologize for itself. I follow it to a pile of cardboard farther back where the alley bends. A child stares at me from a nest of blankets: muddy hair, eyes too large for a face that thin, a scar running from lip to chin like an old tear.
We regard each other. I don't move. The child doesn't either.
"Is it your alley?" I ask finally.
A shrug. "It's an alley."
"You live here?"
"Here, there." Another shrug. The rain gives them a sheen like fish scales. "You're new."
"I am."
"A hero'll come," the child says with the bleak certainty of weather. "They always do when a new one shows up."
"A new what?"
They pull an old candy wrapper between two fingers until it splits. "A thing. Power. Noise. Something the Commission doesn't like." The fingers lift to mime quotation marks. "An 'unlicensed variable.'"
I file the phrase away. Commissions are only as brave as their paperwork.
"What's your name?" I ask.
The child's eyes flash. "You first."
"Kazen."
"That a first or last name?"
"Both," I say.
They consider this, then nod as if it's acceptable. "I'm Neri," they say. "Short for something I hated. You got a quirk, Kazen?"
The word again. Quirk. This world's attempt to name miracles and crimes with the same syllable. "Something like that."
Neri's gaze sharpens. "People talk when the rain moves wrong. They'll call a hero. Some heroes are okay. Some are only heroes when people watch. You should go."
"And you?" I ask.
They roll their eyes at the question. "I live here," they repeat. "Going would be work."
I set the paper bag down and push the lid toward them. "There's still half."
They hesitate, calculation flickering fast across their face: trap, debt, pity, hunger. Hunger wins. Neri shuffles closer and takes the food without thanks, which is the only honest way to take a gift in a place like this.
"Thanks," they say after three hurried bites, mouth already betraying loyalty to the body's demands. "There's a metal shop back a street. The old guy there lets people use the heat when it's cold if you sweep after. You look like you could sweep."
"I can," I say.
Neri gestures with their chin toward my coat. "You carrying?"
"A memory," I say. "Of a blade."
"Cool." They shovel more rice. "Don't let the heroes see the memory."
Footsteps again—heavier, sloppier, braided with laughter. Not heroes. The laughter comes first; the smell of beer comes second; the intention comes third, tripping over itself to get to me. I don't need observation to know this is a pattern repeated nightly: entry, threat, small extortions, violence if boredom demands it.
Neri's body folds into the cardboard and becomes part of the wall.
Three men appear at the turn of the alley. Their jackets are cheap leather, their hair cut to look like smaller versions of a lion's mane, their eyes already convinced. One carries a stick wrapped in tape, another a chain, the third nothing but confidence.
"New rat," Lion One announces. Rain beads on the shoulders of his jacket like a decoration he thinks he earned. "You pay to sleep here."
"I pay the sky," I say.
He grins. "That's a good joke. You a comedian?"
"No." I let the word cut. "I'm tired."
Chain-Man swings it once, theatrical. "No one sleeps for free in our alley."
I don't feel fear, only a distant annoyance that someone has set an obstacle where I should be allowed to pass. "Your alley?" I ask, genuinely curious. "You built it?"
"It's ours because we say so," the confident one says, stepping closer, breath sour. "Because no one made us stop saying it."
"Then I'm the first," I say.
I allow the storm to move.
Not much. The rain thickens around my shoulders, gathers into a spiral that lifts cigarette butts from the ground and spins them like small planets. The chain rotates mid-air in a lazy circle as its owner's arm forgets what gravity is. The taped stick bends as if the air around it is syrup. Lion One blinks, then blinks again. Confidence stops smiling.
"I'm trying not to be seen," I tell them. Calm. Instructional. "Turn around. Walk away. Don't come back."
The confident one laughs because he doesn't have another script. He reaches for my coat.
The wind obliges him by arriving first.
It's a simple pressure—gentle as a hand on a shoulder—applied all at once across the body. He staggers as if a wall grew where nothing was, plants a foot, and tries again. I give him a little more. His leg folds. His face meets wet concrete with a sound that silences jokes.
Chain-Man swears. The chain whips toward me; I let the wind take it, curving its path like a ribbon around a pole. It wraps the man's wrist instead and kisses his throat in a loop that promises worse if he argues. The stick swings too slow. I push; the air hardens. The stick stops an inch from my face and stays there, its owner frozen in the grammar of violence, unsure how to conjugate failure.
"We're done," I say.
Behind them, at the alley's mouth, a woman stares with a paper bag clutched to her chest, the rain drawing a curtain between us. Her umbrella drips rhythmically. Her eyes say she will talk because humans are river mouths for stories. I meet her gaze with a flat line and she flinches, turns, and becomes footsteps.
Lion One makes a small sound that would like to become a plea if given more time. I don't give him time. I lower the chain, let the stick down, release the pressure in the air. They collapse into panting men again, afraid of the truth they saw and the math they can't do. They look at me for permission to run.
"Go," I say.
They go.
Neri uncurls from cardboard like a street cat. Their eyes are wide but not worshipful. "You said you didn't want to be seen."
"I don't," I say. The rain returns to being rain. "But sometimes you have to choose which story they tell."
"Which story did you pick?"
"That three drunks tripped," I say. "And I'm nobody."
Neri considers. "Nobody has a name," they say.
"Sometimes," I answer, and look toward the open end of the alley where the city waits with its shining teeth. "Sometimes nobody has several."
We walk. The rain grows finer, then thicker again as if distracted by its own purpose. Neri leads me along a narrow route of broken fences and rusted pipes to a shuttered storefront with a metal sign—TACHIBANA METALS—half burnt out. The door is cracked, light pooling in a wedge across wet sidewalk.
"Old man's cranky," Neri says. "But he likes honest sweeping."
"Honest sweeping is a rare profession," I say.
Neri grins for the first time, quick and small, like a match struck in wind. "Don't make jokes. He'll think you're trying to sell him something."
Inside, heat and the smell of iron. Shelves of rods and plates, a counter with a battered register, a small TV showing a news anchor with hair so perfect it looks carved. Their mouth moves around words about hero patrol density and "recent unlicensed Quirk activity." A stopwatch graphic counts days to the U.A. sports festival. Symbols gild themselves.
The old man behind the counter is made of bones and work. His eyebrows are a single thoughtful line. He peers at me as if I am a misdelivered package he might keep anyway.
"Neri," he says, voice like a chair dragged across floorboards. "Brought me a broom with legs, did you?"
"Broom that can sweep and keep his mouth shut," Neri says. "You always complain you don't have enough hands."
"Hnh." The old man's gaze settles on my coat, on my eyes, on the tired posture of a body that's learning me. "You cause trouble?"
"I remove it," I say.
"Hnh," he says again, which is a philosophy condensed into a syllable. He jerks his chin at a back room. "Stove's on. Heat yourself, then sweep."
The stove is an old iron belly with a chipped enamel door, its heat a hand on the cold parts of me. I stand in front of it and let the warmth creep into my fingers. The storm curls close, content; I draw it tighter. Control is easier when the body isn't negotiating with death.
In the glass of a cracked display case, I catch my reflection: black hair with ragged silver at the ends like frost; storm-gray eyes that hold a color the world didn't teach them; a face without a history this city recognizes. Kazen Arashi. The name fits the mirror the way a blade fits a sheath: imperfect but serviceable. I could cut truth with it.
On the TV, the anchor's voice raises a notch. Someone has posted a blurry video. The screen fills with grain and rain and an alley where cigarettes spin in a spiral before vanishing. A caption blooms: UNREGISTERED QUIRK USER IN MUSUTAFU? COMMISSION TO INVESTIGATE.
Neri's eyes cut to me. The old man's eyebrows lift half a millimeter.
I study the footage. The angle is bad. The rain is good camouflage. My face is a smudge. Still, symbols don't need clarity to act. They only need an excuse.
Outside, a siren complains. The pitch tells me police, not heroes. The rhythm tells me curiosity, not certainty. The storm inside me opens one eye and watches the door.
"You can stay tonight," Tachibana says without looking away from the TV. "If you sweep and if you don't bring me capes."
"I never bring capes," I say.
"Good. They make everything loud."
I take the broom Neri fetches and sweep. There is a ritual peace to it. Dust goes where I tell it; the floor shines in dull squares; the rhythm answers my heart. Neri hums something tuneless as they scrub a counter with an ancient rag. Tachibana mutters about prices, idiots, and the art of sharpening that died when everyone learned to press a button.
As the night settles deeper, I feel the city's patrol grid shift. A heavier presence turns down our street: confident footfalls, the hush of cloth against cloth, the absence of siren that says authority without apology. The door's bell is old; I hear its spring swallow before it rings.
It rings.
A man steps through the doorway with rain on his shoulders and patience in his eyes. His hair is the kind that refuses to be tidy; his face is tired in a way that implies a choice. He is not wearing a smile. He doesn't need to. The capture scarf draped loose around his neck whispers its own introduction to anyone who has lived near rumor.
The air changes, quiet in a new way. Neri freezes; Tachibana's broom stops mid-scratch.
"Evening," the man says to no one in particular. His gaze slides over shelves, finds the TV, glances at the frozen thumbnail of rain made strange, then returns to me as if it had already been there, waiting. Nothing in his posture is frightened. Nothing in it is cruel.
"I'm looking for someone," he says, voice low enough to respect the room. "Storm moved wrong nearby. People talk."
Symbols have entered the building. Not the loud ones with teeth; the thoughtful one with a scarf.
I set the broom against the counter. The storm inside of me measures the distance to the door, the width of the room, the weight of everything that could be wind.
"Kazen," Neri whispers, almost soundless. Stay. Go. Choose.
I choose to stand.
The man's eyes narrow the way a blade narrows as it leaves its sheath. "Name?"
I could lie. Lies are cheap until they aren't.
"Kazen Arashi," I say.
He nods once, as if a thought he'd been entertaining gets permission to continue. The scarf shifts, lazy, like a cat stretching.
"People call me Aizawa," he says. "I'm not here to make a mess. I'm here to ask a question."
His eyes move like observation turned into a creed. I let the rain on my coat drip into a small, obedient circle on the floor and lift my chin a fraction.
"Then ask," I say.
Aizawa studies my hands, my stance, the dust that still clings to the broom, the empty paper bag near the stove, the child who has become wall, the old man pretending to be furniture, and the TV with its hungry speculation. He weighs all of it.
"Do you want to be a villain?" he asks.
The room is very quiet. Rain tries to answer but isn't allowed to.
I let the question sit. Freedom isn't peace; it's the right to answer for yourself.
"No," I say. "I want to be left alone."
Aizawa's gaze doesn't move, but something in it does. He breathes once, slow, ancestral, and then—
The bell rings again.
This time the doorway fills with yellow jackets and corporate smiles, umbrellas branded with an emblem I don't recognize but my instincts do: neat authority, outsourced conscience, the practiced brightness of people who shape stories for a living. The air tastes like printed press releases. Two agents step in with clipboards that could be shields. Behind them, the rain pauses, listening for orders.
"Hero Public Safety Commission," the first one announces, already smiling at the camera that isn't here yet. "We'll take it from here."
Aizawa's eyes cut toward them without turning his head. The scarf lifts a single inch.
Neri inhales sharply. Tachibana's hand tightens on the counter and turns his knuckles into stones.
The storm inside me opens both eyes.
Outside, thunder counts to three.
And then the lights flicker.