Misaki stared at the wall on the other side of her office in dismay. Projected across the expansive surface was all of the research she'd been conducting on the backgrounds of any currently identified Nomu DNA contributors over the past few months. She hadn't yet been able to establish any clear connections within their lives, so she'd decided to try looking into their deaths instead. She'd just recently concluded that they had all died at different times and places from the others. It was becoming clear to her that the deciding factor for what made someone a target of the Nomu creator had more to do with their quirks than anything else.
And it was that line of thinking that had led her on a manhunt for any incidents resulting in the deaths of anyone whose quirk even remotely resembled Kurogiri's warp quirk. They had been unable to successfully procure a DNA sample from the villain's fog-like body, which left her with only this ambiguous, analytical method of identifying who he really was. If he was in fact a Nomu, as the Task Force suspected, his quirk was likely an amalgamation of several individual quirks which gave it that particular effect. She'd identified three already that might have fit the profile before she'd stumbled upon the one she was currently researching.
Turned her eyes back to her computer screen, she read through the first line of the obituary displayed there aloud, "Shirakumo Oboro, hero name Loud Cloud, was killed while using his quirk, Cloud, to shelter a group of children from falling debris."
As she scrolled down to the bottom of the online article, she found an imbedded video link and navigated her mouse down to click on it. The grinning face of a teenage boy with an infectious smile and laughing eyes filled the screen. He was cuddling a small kitten while riding atop a fluffy orange cloud. His somewhat translucent blue hair flowed in the wind almost like a flickering flame and Misaki was struck by a sudden flashback to her brief encounter with Kurogiri in the alleyway in Hosu.
His hair... It moved the same way Kurogiri's fog did.
"Cloud..." She trailed off thoughtfully, closing both the video and the obituary before pulling up the Commission's registered quirk database. She typed her query into the search bar at the top and read through the description of the quirk that popped up on the screen a moment later.
Quirk: Cloud
Type: Emitter
User: Shirakumo Oboro (deceased)
Description: The ability to create clouds of varying sizes and densities that can carry several kilograms worth of weight and move at great speeds through the air.
It wasn't a perfect match, but it did fit the profile she'd developed about the possible component quirks that could have made up Kurogiri's Warp quirk. Biting her thumbnail, Misaki glanced down at her phone on top of the desk for a long moment before reaching out to pick it up. She tapped one of the numbers in her recent call list before bringing the phone up to her ear.
"Tsukauchi here," the voice of the lead detective on the League Task Force answered when the call connected after two rings.
"Detective, it's Torimodo Misaki. Do you have a second? I want to run something by you," Misaki asked, trying to keep the trepidation out of her voice as she spoke.
She heard the sound of a door closing in the background as he said, "Go ahead."
Taking a deep breath, Misaki hastily replied, "I have an idea about Kurogiri. I'm sending you over a news article. Let me know when you get it."
She quickly forwarded the link to Shirakumo Oboro's obituary to the detective's encrypted email.
"I got it. Shirakumo Oboro? You think he's connected to Kurogiri somehow?" Detective Tsukauchi asked, his tone taking on a cautious edge.
Misaki cringed at his reaction and nervously replied, "I think this kid might be Kurogiri. At least in part."
"Are you sure?" The detective's grave voice asked a long moment later.
She knew it would be a touchy subject. The kid had been in his second year at UA and had been killed during his work study assignment. She'd read through a few testimonials in his obituary from his teachers and classmates who had all expressed what a great loss his death had been. If it was true that part of this kid's body had been taken and used in a Nomu experiment, it would be the first instance of a hero's DNA showing up inside any of the recovered Nomu.
"I really hope not, but..." She trailed off dejectedly.
"Why do you think this kid is Kurogiri?" He asked.
She wasn't sure how much he knew about her involvement with the Kamino investigation, so she vaguely answered, "When I looked up the description of his quirk, it reminded me of Kurogiri's Warp quirk. It's not an exact match, but if it was combined with others... I don't know. I could be way off base here. I just thought it might warrant some deeper investigation."
"We'll look into it. Thanks for the heads up, Torimodo-san," the detective told her in a heavy sounding voice.
"Let me know if you find anything?" She asked, hoping that it was just a coincidence, and they'd end up proving her wrong.
"Will do," the detective's curt reply sounded in her ear before he ended the call.
"Thanks..." She trailed off, setting her phone down on her desk before dropping her head into her hands.
She'd been working on digging up info on Kurogiri and the Nomu for almost two weeks now and she was still no closer to figuring out where they were being manufactured or who was making them than she had been at the beginning of the assignment. Her frustration level had almost reached the point where she was ready to start pulling her hair out. At least the nightly bath ritual she'd finally returned to consisted of her overthinking about work now instead of dwelling on her breakup with Hawks.
She still thought about him every so often. When she'd make herself pancakes for breakfast on Sunday mornings, or sometimes when she used the pen that he'd given her for Christmas. She'd stopped having the dreams as often, but she'd wake up every now and then with a sense of nostalgia clinging to her from the memory she'd been running through in her head while she slept. She still wore the necklace he'd given her when she wasn't at work. It wasn't with the intention of pining after him, she wore it more as a reminder of their time together and the feelings they'd shared. He'd told her when he'd given it to her that it was meant to be a memento, and she wanted to treasure it as such.
She liked to think that she was moving past her grief, but considering her behavior during the Christmas party, she had a feeling she was still a way's off from that yet. Her life had finally begun to get back to some semblance of normal, but she still felt the loss like a hole in her soul, and she was starting to seriously consider that feeling might never go away. So, when she started feeling the melancholy set in, like she was now courtesy of her wandering train of thought, she distracted herself with work instead. Sitting back up in her chair, Misaki gave her head a small shake and returned to her task of running down any information she could find on Kurogiri and the Nomu.
~*~
Misaki waved across the lawn at Eri who was building a snowman with her third-year aids in the yard across from the teacher's dorm. It was the first time she'd had an opportunity to visit since Christmas and she wouldn't be able to stay for very long. The visit itself had been somewhat impromptu, after she'd decided to take a much-needed break from her Nomu research. Eri had been excited to see her, but Misaki had urged her not to cancel her snowman building plans on her account. She was happy just to watch them from the porch of the dorm.
She turned her head when the door opened behind her, and Eraser walked out. He handed her a cup of hot coffee, which she accepted with a grateful smile as he moved to stand next to her. She cast him a forlorn, sidelong glance as she blew at the steaming coffee over the edge of the mug and murmured, "Sorry I haven't been by as much lately..."
"You've been pretty busy with work, huh?" He asked before taking a slow sip from his own coffee mug.
"Yeah..." She trailed off, thinking despondently about all of the work she'd left behind at the office.
Eraser lowered his mug and his head as he said, "Eri's doing well, all things considered. We've decided that it's about time to start training her to use her quirk. I'm sure she'd feel more comfortable if you were there to support her though."
"I really I wish I could," Misaki replied ruefully as she stared across the yard at the smiling girl. "But the work I'm doing right now is very important."
Until they uncovered the extent of the threat in concerns to the Liberation Army and the Nomu, she would have very little time to engage in any sort of personal pursuits. She felt a little bit guilty that she had even left the office to come to UA at all. After hitting yet another dead end with her Nomu research, she had been worried that she might have actually begun to start tearing her hair out if she didn't get out of the office for a while. Giran's cautiousness looked like a flashing neon sign compared to the meticulous manner in which the Nomu creator had covered his tracks over the years. From the way that several dead bodies had just gotten lost in the shuffle between hospital morgues to the filing of fictitious death certificates signed by doctors that didn't even exist, every thread she followed either led to nowhere or spiraled right back in on itself like a spiders web. Never in her life had she encountered a more frustrating conundrum, and she was starting to seriously doubt that she would ever be able to figure it all out.
"I've been meaning to congratulate you on your recent promotion," Eraser said, snapping her out of her negative train of thought.
"Oh, um, thank you," she sheepishly replied before lifting her coffee mug up to her lips to take a drink.
"I caught some of the press conference when they announced your appointment. Sounds like they're expecting a lot from you in the role. No wonder you've been so busy," he commented.
Misaki shrugged nonchalantly. "Yeah, it's been a bit of a rollercoaster ride. I'm kind of a perfectionist so I end up making a lot of extra work for myself sometimes. But in my experience, I've never run into an instance where it's hurt to be too thorough, especially when people's lives are involved. It's hard to see a clear picture of a puzzle if you don't have all of the pieces lined up, you know?"
He shot her a slightly reproving look as he told her, "Try not to overwork yourself too much. It's important to take breaks sometimes. To help you stay balanced."
She grimaced slightly and dropped her gaze. "Yeah, that's kinda why I came here today. To get away from the office for a little while."
He turned his head toward her and asked, "Have you told the Safety Commission that you're visiting Eri?"
Misaki sighed and lowered her coffee mug to waist height before shaking her head. "I decided to help Eri for personal reasons. It didn't seem right to treat our meetings as a job. I'm not a social worker or a psychologist or a hero, even. I'm just a person. Someone who went through a similar experience in life, and just happened to be in a position where I could share that experience and offer guidance to a struggling child." She shrugged. "Nothing complicated."
Eraser huffed out a short breath before telling her, "A certain overbearing, former Number One Hero likes to say that giving help that's not asked for is the essence of a true hero."
Misaki's eyes widened as his words sunk in. She was suddenly transported back in her memory to a sunny day in the courtyard in front of Tythan Savings and Loan when someone else had told her something along those same lines.
"Only a real hero would stand up to a crew of bank robbers, and use a quirk she'd painstakingly been hiding from the world, to save a coworker whose face had been melted a month before her wedding day."
She lowered her gaze and smiled reminiscently into her coffee as she mumbled to herself under her breath, "Each and every one of you..."
What was it about heroes that made them so incredibly meddlesome sometimes?
"Huh?" Eraser asked at her side a moment later.
She shook her head and took a deep breath, lifting her head and her eyes up to the bright blue sky above them. "Nothing... Just thinking about something similar someone else said to me once. I can't really say I ever thought about being a hero. Even before what happened to my parents. I'd see heroes on TV or out on patrol around town. But I never really wanted to be one of them."
"For some people it's not a choice. It's just who they are," Eraser told her, staring out across the grounds with a faraway look in his eye as he lifted his coffee mug up to take a drink.
Again, Misaki was reminded of Hawks. After going almost three months with hardly any reminders, now all of a sudden it was like she couldn't turn around without running into a memory of him somehow. It almost seemed like some cosmic force was trying to tell her something. Whether it was fate or karma; whatever it was, it could mind its own damn business and leave hers alone. She was trying to stop thinking about him so much. She didn't need all of these subtle cues drudging up old feelings and memories that she would rather just leave buried right where they were at the moment.
She lifted her own coffee mug to her lips as she tossed the same question at Eraser that he'd asked her almost a month ago, "You sound like you're speaking from experience?"
It wasn't hard to recognize that look in his eye as he stared ahead of him at something only he could see. She'd been doing enough of her own reminiscing lately to recognize the look. Her question had been worded more to offer him an outlet, and less as an effort to pry into his past; much like he'd done for her before.
He dropped his head and stared at his feet for a long moment before his soft, dulcet toned voice drifted up to her, "I went to school with this kid. He had the kind of personality that let him get along with pretty much anyone. Always smiling. Always wore his heart on his sleeve. The type who'd give a stranger the shirt right off his back, or rescue a stray kitten that had been left out in the rain... He just couldn't leave anyone who needed help alone."
She couldn't help the soft pang of familiarity that shot through her at the description, yet again reminding her of her ex. She sighed softly, "I know the type."
Eraser lifted his head, his expression woefully contrite. "If there was anyone who was born to be a hero, it was him."
"You were close, weren't you?" She asked sympathetically.
He lowered his gaze again before replying, "Yeah. We were."
"Did something happen?" She asked carefully, lifting her mug to take a drink of her rapidly cooling coffee.
"He was killed during our work study assignment in our second year," he explained almost automatically, like he'd separated himself all of a sudden from his feelings about the situation.
"I'm so sorry," she replied remorsefully.
"That was the reason I became a teacher," he said, looking over at Eri and the third years playing in the snow. "So, I could try to guide kids with the same reckless, self-sacrificing attitude down a path that wouldn't lead them to the same fate."
"Paying it forward, huh?" Misaki said, looking down with a small grin.
He looked over at her quizzically.
She shrugged as she explained, "It just sounds to me like you're trying to honor his memory by making sure his legacy lives on through your students. So that they can help as many people as they can for as long as they can."
"Yeah..." Eraser trailed off, his countenance lightening a bit.
"What was his name?" She asked lightly as she lifted her mug back up to her lips.
His gaze softened with reminiscence as he replied, "He went by the hero name Loud Cloud."
Misaki suddenly choked on her coffee.
"Are you okay?" Eraser asked, reaching out to pat her on the back as she hunched over to hack out the liquid she'd just gasped into her lungs.
When she'd finally expelled all of it, she waved a hand at him and croaked out, "Yeah, sorry. Just went down the wrong pipe is all. I'm okay."
He took the mug from her and helped her stand back upright before taking her arm and guiding her carefully toward the door to the dorm. "I'll go get you some water."
She let him lead her without a fuss, swallowing heavily against her suddenly raw throat before rasping out a rough thanks while wondering to herself how she could have missed such an important detail. Eraser's name hadn't been mentioned anywhere in Shirakumo's obituary, nor had he been among the classmates who had been interviewed. Never in her life had she hoped to be wrong about something as much as she did in that moment. If Kurogiri actually had Shirakumo Oboro's quirk at his base, it was likely that the Nomu creator had used his body as well. She hoped, in the worst-case scenario that she did happen to be right about them, that Eraser would never have to know about it. It would just be too cruel.
Taking a seat in one of the chairs at the dining table, she smiled at Eraser in appreciation as she accepted the glass of water he brought over to her before taking his own seat on the other side of the table. "Sorry you didn't have much of an opportunity to visit with Eri."
Misaki softly shook her head. "No, it's my bad for crashing in so suddenly. I'm just glad I got to see her again after so long. It's probably about time for me to be heading back though," she said as she sat back and glanced down at her watch. After considering for a moment, she glanced back over at Eraser and said, "I know it might not be my place to say, but... I think your friend would be really proud of who you've become."
He stared across the table at her with an almost imploring look in his eye as he softly asked her, "How do you know?"
She smiled back at him warmly. "Because your students really look up to you. And they're his legacy, right?"
Eraser quickly dropped his gaze, but she didn't miss the flash of regret in his eyes just before his strained voice sounded out a moment later to say, "Thanks, Torimodo-san."
She got up from her seat at the table and shoved her hands into her coat pockets, shooting his hunched form a small, remorseful smile before turning to walk toward the door. If she tried to offer him any kind of sympathy, she had a feeling it would just make him uncomfortable. She understood the need to be alone with your emotions sometimes, and she recognized the body language. She hadn't meant to drudge up such painful memories for him, and she really did feel bad about it. The next time she stopped by maybe she'd bring him a condolence gift.
'Something cat related. He might actually accept that,' she thought to herself as she headed outside to say goodbye to Eri and the others.
~*~
The elevator dinged Hawks's arrival at the top floor of the headquarters of the Hero Public Safety Commission. Coming in through the front door avoided giving his constant companions access to the codes on the roof access locks, which was why he'd arrived by elevator instead of using his usual roof entry. As he walked out into the lobby, he almost came up short at the sight of someone who was clearly not Misaki sitting behind her desk. At least, what used to be her desk. He nodded to the man as he walked past before reaching up to knock on the President's door. The secretary barely acknowledged him, keeping his eyes focused on the screen as his fingers flew across the computer keyboard.
Hawks hadn't actually been by the building at all since they'd announced Misaki's promotion to Commissioner of Analytics a couple of weeks ago. He couldn't help but feel like the timing of her promotion was a little too perfect. She'd only been an employee of the company for a little over a year. But she was fresh and marketable; and expendable if anything went wrong. Considering the magnitude of the operation they were currently engaged in, and the backlash the Commission had been getting over their failure to deal with the League of Villains, he wouldn't be surprised if they'd given her the position under the pretense of making her a convenient scapegoat should things end up going south. Whatever their intentions were behind giving her the job, she was way too gifted to let that kind of opportunity become a pitfall in her path. Considering how well she'd handled herself during the press conference, he actually felt more proud than worried.
"Come in," the President's voice sounded out from behind the door and Hawks blinked, shaking himself out of his musings as he reached out to turn the handle and let himself into the office.
"Hey," he called out as he walked in and shut the door behind him.
The President and Shadou looked up at him in surprise as he entered and the President addressed him curtly, "Hawks. We weren't expecting you to stop by so soon."
"I was in the area," he shrugged as he slipped his hands into his pockets. "So what was the summons for?"
"We've been reaching out to all of the top heroes about participating in team-up missions with other hero agency trainees, in order to provide them with a more rounded practical training experience," the President answered.
"You've been rather difficult to get ahold of lately," Investigative Commissioner Shadou commented, baiting him into revealing the real reason why he was there.
"Yeah, sorry about that! I've been kinda busy! I've actually been flying around and giving a few of my fellow heroes a hand already. I'll make sure to submit a list of my team-ups to you guys later," he jovially replied as he reached up to rub the back of his head.
Half of the reason he'd come all the way to headquarters was to give the Liberation leaders a firsthand account of the Commission's bogus status on the Deika investigation. The other half was to relay the current status of his undercover assignment. The bit about the team-up missions was probably just a way for him to update them on his status. They knew he'd been handing out the book to heroes, and now that they'd made the visits somewhat mandatory, it wouldn't be odd for him to submit a list to them every so often of the heroes he'd cleared to be uninvolved with the Liberation Front.
The President nodded to him. "That's all for now, Hawks. We appreciate you stopping by."
"No problem!" He grinned and offered a mock salute before heading back to the door. As he opened it, he called out over his shoulder, "Good luck with the investigation!"
As he stepped out of the office, he nearly collided with someone coming around the corner from the opposite direction. The sound of an intimately familiar gasp resonated through his auditory nerves like a shot as an intoxicatingly sweet and spicy scent suddenly invaded his senses. He sharply cut his gaze down to Misaki's startled cherry blossom colored eyes a split second before he noticed that she'd just dropped a bunch of files she'd been holding. He immediately sent several feathers out to catch them before they hit the ground and gently floated all of them back up into her arms.
"That was a close one," he said, his voice sounding a bit deeper to him than he expected, and he swallowed reflexively to clear his throat.
"Thanks..." She trailed off, dropping her eyes suddenly and adjusting her hold on the files in her arms.
"Yeah, no problem," he said, shifting out of her way as she moved to walk past him.
He had to consciously stop himself from turning his head to watch her walk off down the hall. That was a bad idea. A very, very bad idea. He forced his feet to move him in the direction of the elevator when another, even more awful idea suddenly occurred to him. He stopped his finger from pushing the button to call the elevator, staring down at it for what seemed like hours but had probably only been about a second as he waffled through the pros and cons of acting on the sudden, super, incredibly bad idea he had just thought of.
He knew that Misaki was aware of his assignment. The President had told him that she'd informed her about it right after they'd broken up. He also knew that she'd been the one they'd assigned to decode his messages. He'd caught onto the subtle references to cherry blossoms in a few of the messages he'd received after he'd given the Commission a copy of the book. Misaki would have recognized the threat that Shigaraki and the Nomu represented, almost more than all of the Liberation Army combined. If there was anyone in the upper ranks of the Commission who would be able to put together the pieces of the puzzle about the Nomu and the doctor, it would be her.
It was a bit of a gamble, and it would take some crafty finesse on his part. He'd probably have to put both of them in a pretty uncomfortable position. But at the moment, the potential reward was too great not to take the risk. Before he could stop himself, he'd already turned around to follow after her.
"Torimodo Misaki-san, was it?" He asked while leaning around her right side.
She jumped a bit and shot him a confused look before stuttering, "Uh, yeah..."
He clasped his hands behind his head and fell into step next to her, glancing down at her from the corner of his eye as he said, "I heard about your promotion recently. Congratulations!"
Her confusion gave way to suspicion just before she cautiously replied, "Thank you. And you can drop the honorific. Pretty sure I'm younger than you."
He breathed an inner sigh of relief that she seemed to have caught on to his act and was playing along.
"No way! You seem so mature," he drawled as he gave her a slightly vulgar once over with his eyes. He was being overly zealous on purpose, hoping to clue her in that his intentions weren't genuine.
In response to the blatantly suggestive tone of his comment, Misaki shifted uncomfortably and turned away from him to walk into the office while calling out over her shoulder, "I should get back to work. You probably should too."
He shoved his hands into his pockets and leaned against the doorway, watching her walk across the room to her desk with rapt attention while nonchalantly replying, "Nah! Seems like these days most of my work consists of helping old ladies cross the street and saving cats from trees."
Her hands suddenly slipped, and she dropped the armful of files onto the desk with a loud thud. Well, she'd definitely caught the hint. Now how would she respond to it?
She turned her head slightly to address him over her shoulder, "Seems pretty laid back for the Number Two Hero."
"I'm not complaining! It's nice to have some free time every once in a while." He walked into the office and leaned back against the desk next to her before catching her eye and pinning her with another blatantly suggestive stare. "Thought I might like to spend some of it with you. Or am I barking up the wrong tree?"
She stared back into his eyes with the same expression he remembered seeing in them when they'd first met at the bank over a year ago. Apprehension.
"What did you have in mind?" She cautiously asked.
Taking note of her obvious wariness, he intentionally lightened his tone with his next query. "You like pancakes?"
She blinked back up him, clearly taken aback by the sudden shift. "Pancakes? Really?"
He followed after her as she turned and began making her way back toward the door while continuing his line of questioning. "If you don't have a sweet tooth, there's this place back in my hometown I could take you to called the Sky Lounge. Heard of it?"
"That's the restaurant in the tower, right?" She asked him from over her shoulder, her tone slightly inquisitive.
He grinned, feeling her become more comfortable as their interaction continued. "That's it! Interested?"
She walked over to the vending machine and inserted a coin before pressing the button for the sweetened coffee. "Fukuoka is a long way to travel for a first date. Why don't we start with something a little closer?"
"Where's that?" He asked somewhat distractedly, unable to stop himself from staring at her backside when she bent over to retrieve her purchase.
She stood back up and held out the can she'd just bought to him. "Coffee?"
He looked down at it for a second before lifting his dubious gaze back up to hers as he reached out to take it from her. "Is this your subtle way of turning me down?"
"I have to get back to work. Next time," she said with a polite smile as she walked around him and headed back toward her office.
"Yeah, sure..." He trailed off as he turned his head to watch her walk away.
Well, that had gone a lot better than he'd expected.
He had no doubt that she'd caught on to most, if not all of the code words he'd thrown into their brief conversation. The can of sweetened coffee she'd just handed him was a dead giveaway that she'd at least picked up on his intentions with the impromptu encounter. He'd informed the Commission right after his meeting with Dabi about the coordinates on the card he'd been given. In the days following the big meeting at the villa, he'd made sure to make himself conspicuous while buying a can of coffee from a vending machine in a neighboring town, which just so happened to be right around the corner from one of the many Liberation base locations he'd discovered that they had scattered all over the country.
The Liberation Front wasn't the only organization that was surveilling his movements and communications after all. The coffee machines were one of several mediums he'd been using to inconspicuously send signals to the Safety Commission, informing them about the enemy's locations and movements. His options were pretty limited, so he wasn't able to transmit a lot of the finer details, but he figured that the message from the book would have been enough to impress upon them the severity of the threat. Whether he agreed with the idea or not, the fact that the Commission was suddenly pushing for more student training in the field was proof of that.
After he'd found out about the doctor's plan to give Shigaraki a power boost over the next four months, not to mention the lucky break he'd caught about the possible location of their secret base in Kyoto, he'd been working on figuring out a way to pass that intel on to the top brass at the Commission without alerting his watchers to his intentions. Considering that Twice had just come right out and told him about the location in front of the cameras, doing or saying anything that might hint at him possibly investigating the area would have looked way too suspicious. The fact that he'd literally stumbled into Misaki walking out of the President's office had been too perfect of an opportunity to let pass by.
Of course, that didn't absolve the fact that he had just taken a huge risk in calling out to her so suddenly, hoping that she would play along and not give away his act for the cameras. He cringed slightly as he stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the main floor. He really wasn't a fan of using those kinds of insinuation tactics. But it wasn't like he had much of a choice, considering how closely he was being watched at the moment. Hopefully Misaki would be able to put together the pieces of the puzzle he'd laid out for her with the references he'd used throughout their conversation. Considering how personal most of them had been, he had faith that she'd be able to figure it out.
Unfortunately, that meant that she'd have to dive back into all of her memories of their past relationship. He would rather have avoided asking her to do that. If the information he'd needed to relay hadn't been so important, he never would have done something so tactless. It had already been more than three months since their breakup, and Misaki appeared to have been doing a pretty good job of moving on recently; until he'd just gone and ripped out all of the stitches from her healing wound with his terrible judgement. He dropped his head and blew out a haggard sigh. There was nothing he could do about it now. He just hoped she wouldn't hold it against him too badly once all of this was finally over.
~*~
Preview of next week's chapter:
"Don't you have some old lady to help across the street, or a cat to rescue from a tree somewhere..."
The first time Misaki had said those words to Hawks had been the day after they'd met, while he'd been in his persistent stalking phase. She'd been more than a little fed up with his constant interruptions into her daily life when she'd tossed that condescending question at him. He'd told her then that only having jobs like those to do every day was like a dream to him. He'd said much the same when referencing that line a few months later; that those kinds of calls represented a sense of peace. Which was the complete opposite of what was going on in society at the moment.
~*~
AN:
Things are about to get very complicated for Misaki and Hawks... Will she be able to figure out his coded message? You'll have to wait till next week to find out! (But, I mean, it's Misa-chan. Come on...)
Thank you so much for reading! ❤️
LOLSAT