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There's an empty seat in class 2-A.
The classroom fills slowly, and even as the sounds of his classmates take over the silence, he can't make out a single word. Not that he'd want to. It's been harder to talk since…
This is his first day back, after.
After Garvey.
After a splash of blood on the edge of rubble.
After the fight of his life to make sure that no one would get hurt again, that he wouldn't fail his friend again.
Just to find that it was too late, there would never be a chance to fail him again, he was gone.
And wasn't it lucky enough that he lived, that he got to go on through life like it was still a gift?
Not really.
Not when he spent a frantic moment after the fight looking for his friend, knowing he'd seen the rubble hit him, yet hoping beyond hope that he'd tricked himself into seeing it. Just another deep rooted fear, knowing that your friend was about to die and there was nothing you could do to save them, a trick of the mind in a terrible situation.
But it wasn't.
How do you cope with that?
With sleepless nights because the nightmares come too easily, with refusing to believe that it's real right up until the funeral. That's how.
He's not so sure about this hero thing anymore.
He hears more than sees his teacher come into the room; he's still focused entirely on the empty desk. The empty desk that used to contain one of his best friends, someone he used to joke he'd die for. Funny, how life works out. How he'd died for nothing. How he wasn't fast enough to make a decision that would get him out of the way in time. Now he's stuck with the haunting memory of those last few seconds, knowing that there is nothing better he could have done but wishing he had.
Because it hurts.
That desk is empty because he wasn't good enough.
His classmates have to know it, by now. The few that showed up to the funeral gave him pitying looks that said as much. What a pathetic excuse for a funeral anyways. It had been way less than what he deserved. But what did he know?
It's funny, he thinks. Hizashi barely acknowledges the empty desk, but he can't stop staring at it. Like it will somehow bring his friend back.
Like he could close his eyes for just a bit and open them to see it filled again, and know that everything was going to be alright.
Even when his teacher tries to get his attention to make sure he knows what they're doing in class that day, he only spares him the briefest of glances before going back to the empty desk.
What does any of this hero stuff matter when there's no longer the three of them?
What does any of this hero stuff matter when he only had time to save those kids?
Oboro looks at the empty desk in class 2-A as his classmates go to grab their hero costumes and wishes he'd been able to save Shouta.
Just like the other million times since he realized Shouta was gone, after Garvey, the wish doesn't come true, and the desk remains cold and empty and completely devoid of the life that he failed to save.