Four years is a long time when you are a kid.
When I was four I was still figuring out how to move in a body that felt like it belonged to someone else. By eight it felt like mine. Mostly. I had grown into it enough that I stopped thinking about it every time I crossed a room or climbed something or caught a ball. The quirk was still stronger than I knew what to do with sometimes, but I had gotten better at keeping a lid on it. FREYA had a lot to do with that. Four years of her watching my output, telling me when I was pushing too hard, running quiet corrections in the background while I trained in the backyard or at the park or wherever I could find enough open space.
I was not the same kid who fell sideways into a leaf pile and ran a course in five minutes.
I was still a kid though. Eight years old. And today was the first day of school.
* * *
Fukui Elementary was bigger than I expected.
I don't know why I expected it to be small. It was a regular public elementary school in a regular city. There were kids everywhere, streaming in through the front gate in groups and pairs and the occasional single kid walking fast with their head down. Backpacks in every color. Some kids with quirks that were already visible, a boy near the gate with small flame wisps coming off his fingertips, a girl whose hair floated like she was always slightly underwater. Normal stuff for this world. Still a little weird to see in person even after four years.
My mom walked me to the gate and crouched down and straightened my collar, which didn't need straightening.
"You know what to do," she said.
"I know," I said.
"Be kind. Pay attention. If anything feels wrong—"
"I come find you or a teacher, I know."
She smiled. Tucked my collar one more time even though she had already fixed it.
"Go on then."
I went.
* * *
My teacher's name was Ogawa-sensei. She was maybe forty, hair cut short, the kind of teacher who had been doing this long enough that the first day didn't rattle her at all. She got everyone seated, did the roll call, explained the rules in a calm and clear way without making it feel like a lecture, and then smiled at the class like she was genuinely happy to see all of us.
I liked her immediately.
She had us introduce ourselves one by one. Name, something you liked, your quirk if you wanted to share it. Most kids shared. A few didn't. When it got to me I stood up and said my name was Saionji Akira, I liked building things and running, and my quirk was a physical enhancement type.
A few kids looked interested. One boy in the back asked if that meant I was strong.
"Kind of," I said.
Ogawa-sensei moved on before it turned into a whole thing, which I appreciated.
After introductions she handed out the first worksheet. Basic stuff. Reading comprehension, some math, a short writing prompt. I looked at it and finished it in about ten minutes and then sat there.
[You are staring at the ceiling.]
I was not staring at the ceiling. I was looking slightly upward while thinking. There was a difference.
The kid next to me was still working on the first section, his pencil moving slow, his mouth pressed tight like the words were giving him trouble. He got to one question and stopped completely.
I leaned over a little.
"That one's asking what the main idea of the paragraph is," I said quietly. "Not what happened in it. Just what it's mainly about."
He looked at me. Then at the paper. Then he wrote something down.
"Oh," he said. "Thanks."
His name was Kenta. He sat next to me for the rest of the year.
* * *
The thing about being ahead of the work was that it gave me time.
Time to watch. Time to figure out who people were before they figured out who I was. I wasn't trying to be calculating about it, that was just what happened when you finished early and had nothing else to do. You looked around. You noticed things.
I noticed that the girl two rows over always finished second, right after me. She was careful about it though, like she was making sure she didn't finish too fast. Her name was Sato Mei and she was left handed and she chewed the end of her pencil when she was thinking hard.
I noticed that the boy by the window had a mutation quirk that made his fingers slightly longer than they should be, which he kept tucking under the desk when he thought people were looking.
I noticed that Ogawa-sensei always paused a half second before calling on someone, like she was deciding whether they were ready, which was a kind thing to do.
[For the record, I am noticing these things too.]
I knew. We had been sharing eyes for four years.
* * *
Last week I had wanted a cookie.
This sounds small. It was small. But it was also one of the more honest things that had happened recently so I think it deserves to be mentioned.
My sister Hina had a volleyball game and the whole family went to watch, which was normal, and the snack table at the gym had cookies on it, which was fine, and my mom said I could have one before the game started, which was great. And then I ate it and the game started and by halftime I wanted another one.
My mom said no.
She said it nicely. She said I had already had one and the cookies were for all the families and I should have water instead. This was completely reasonable. I knew it was reasonable. I was eight, not a baby. I understood the logic.
I still really wanted the cookie.
[If you ask me, I will tell you how to get it without her noticing. I want to be clear that I am not encouraging this. I am simply noting that the option exists.]
I thought about it for about thirty seconds.
"Okay," I said quietly, low enough that my mom couldn't hear over the gym noise. "How."
[Wait until she is watching the game and your dad is talking to the other parents. Go to the snack table from the far side. Take one. Put a napkin over your hand on the way back.]
It worked perfectly.
The cookie was good. Chocolate chip. I ate it in four bites watching Hina spike the ball, and my mom never looked over.
I felt a little bad about it for maybe two minutes. Then Hina scored a point and everyone cheered and I forgot about it.
FREYA did not forget about it. She brought it up the next morning.
[I want to note that I told you how to do it, not that you should do it. Those are different things.]
"I know," I said.
[I am not your conscience. I will help you get what you want. What you want is your responsibility.]
That sat with me for a while. Still does, a little.
* * *
Recess was dodgeball.
The whole class voted on it and dodgeball won by a lot. We split into two teams in the gym and Ogawa-sensei gave a short speech about not throwing at the head and using reasonable power, which was clearly aimed at the kids with strength-type quirks and everyone knew it.
I assessed the field before the whistle.
The boy on the other team with the build of someone who ate well and trained, arms already thick for eight, stood near the back. He picked up one of the red balls and tossed it once in his hand and caught it and I could see the ball compress slightly under his grip. Strength quirk. Strong one.
The girl near the center of his team was small and already bouncing on her toes before the game started. Speed quirk probably, or something that enhanced agility. She had the kind of restless energy that didn't really switch off.
I was not going to win this.
I knew that before the whistle blew. The strength kid was stronger than me right now, and the speed girl was faster, and I could probably outmaneuver most of the rest but those two were the real competition and I didn't have enough control yet to push my output high enough to match them without risk.
So I played smart instead.
I threw hard enough to be fast but not hard enough to actually hurt anyone. I moved early, before the ball got to where I was, so I never had to dodge last second. I stayed out of the strength kid's throwing line and let other people deal with the speed girl. I picked off the easier targets carefully, never wasting a throw.
I got out eventually. The strength kid caught one of my throws and hurled it back before I could move and it hit me in the shoulder and I went to the side line.
Third place.
Strength kid won. Speed girl came in second.
[Your control is improving. You were consistent today. Third is an accurate result given the field.]
Third was fine. I was not upset about third. I was more interested in the strength kid, whose name I found out from the kid next to me on the sideline was Daichi, and the speed girl whose name was Ren. I filed both away.
* * *
After recess I ended up at a table with a girl named Yui Kodai.
We were doing a short classwork assignment, matching vocabulary words to definitions. I finished mine and looked over and she was two words behind, which was not because she was slow, I could tell that much already. She was reading each definition twice before she wrote anything down. Careful, not stuck.
She caught me looking.
I looked back at my paper.
A minute later she said, without looking up: "Hey, Akira. You're really nice."
I blinked.
"Thanks," I said.
She didn't say anything else. She finished the last two words and put her pencil down neatly at the top of the paper.
I wasn't totally sure what I had done to earn nice but I wasn't going to argue with it.
[You helped Kenta this morning without being asked and you have not made anyone feel bad about being slower than you. That is probably it.]
That made sense actually.
I snuck a look at Yui while she was packing up her pencil case. She was neat about everything, the pencil lined up straight, the case zipped evenly, her paper stacked with the corners matching. Her uniform was clean and pressed. Her hair was pulled back and not a piece of it was out of place.
[She stepped in mud during recess. Near the far side of the gym. She looked at her shoe for about two seconds and then kept walking and did not mention it to anyone. She did not like it but she was not going to make a scene about it either.]
I had noticed that too, actually. The small pause. The way she had looked at the mud like it had personally offended her and then just moved on.
During dodgeball she had been on my team. She didn't throw often but when she did she made the ball small first, tiny, like an orange, and threw it, and then right before it reached someone it snapped back to full size. Fast and hard and almost impossible to dodge because by the time you saw it coming it was already there.
She had gotten out Daichi with that.
The whole gym had gone quiet for about one second and then erupted.
Yui had just walked back to her position like nothing happened.
I thought that was extremely cool.
[She is interesting. Controlled. Observant. She notices more than she shows.]
"Yeah," I said quietly, under my breath while everyone packed up for the end of the day. "I got that."
Yui glanced at me. I don't know if she heard. She didn't say anything.
I picked up my backpack and headed for the door.
First day of school. New classroom. New people. One friend already, maybe two if Yui counted, which FREYA said was unclear but possible.
Not bad.