Red and blue lights danced across the broken glass.
The sirens were still going. Distant now, as more responders arrived. The air stank of smoke and ozone. A stretcher rolled past. Keiko sat beside Satoru on the curb, her legs scraped and arms limp at her sides.
Satoru clutched a foil blanket, but it wasn't warm.
Nothing felt warm.
The pro hero who saved them stood not far off, giving his report to the police. Satoru couldn't hear the words—just the weight of them. The calm confidence in his voice. The control.
The power.
He was everything Satoru wasn't.
---
"I didn't stop him," Satoru said quietly.
Keiko turned to look at him. "What?"
"I didn't fight. I didn't do anything."
She frowned. "You did something."
"I stood there. I cried."
"You stood in front of me."
The words hit like a slap.
He looked down at his scraped hands. The sting had faded. The trembling hadn't.
---
Later, when their mom arrived, she fell to her knees and wrapped them both up, shaking harder than either of them. She sobbed into their hair, repeating their names again and again.
She didn't care about the store. Not the windows. Not the walls.
Just them.
---
They went home. No questions asked. No lectures.
Just warm blankets, soft sobs, and silence.
---
That night, Satoru sat alone in his room, knees drawn to his chest. The lights were off. Outside the window, the flashing red had faded—but he could still see them behind his eyes.
He couldn't stop shaking.
The fear hadn't left.
He didn't feel brave.
But he remembered that moment.
Keiko, frozen.
The villain's fire.
And the sound of his own voice—cracking, raw, loud—
> "Don't hurt her!"
He had stood. Not to win. Not to fight. Just to protect.
Just to block the fire.
Just to say no.
---
He reached for his notebook.
The page where he'd written:
> "Heroes get scared. But they move anyway."
He stared at it.
Then, in slow, careful handwriting, he added a second line beneath it:
> "I want to become one."