MHA: Counterweight

The morning light came through the hole in the ceiling in a thin grey column, falling across the sleeping bag and the boy curled inside it. The rest of the room stayed in shadow. The walls were marked with old graffiti, faded tags and slogans that had meant something to someone once. Now they were just shapes in the dark.

Gou opened his eyes and did not move. He lay on his side, facing the hole in the wall that used to be a window. The air was cold enough to make his breath visible. Autumn had arrived in the South Ward without announcing itself, and the abandoned apartment building did nothing to keep it out. The sleeping bag trapped some of his body heat, but not enough. His toes were numb. His fingers felt stiff.

He waited for his heart to settle. Waking up was always the same. For a few seconds he did not know where he was. Then the smell of dust and mold and old smoke brought him back. This was the third floor. The room had been a living room once, before the fire that had gutted the building. Now it was his. No one else came here. The stairs had collapsed two years ago, and the only way up was the fire escape on the exterior wall. Most people saw the burned building and walked past. Gou had climbed up one night when he had nowhere else to go and never left.

He sat up slowly. The sleeping bag slipped down to his waist. He was wearing a grey hoodie that had been washed too many times, the fabric thin at the elbows, and a pair of dark sweatpants with a tear in the left knee. He had been wearing them for four days. He did not remember the last time he had washed them. The water in the building had been shut off long ago.

His backpack lay next to the sleeping bag, serving as a pillow. He reached for it and pulled it onto his lap. The zipper stuck halfway, and he had to work it back and forth before it opened. Inside was everything he owned. A change of clothes, another hoodie in a darker color, a pair of socks that did not have holes yet. A small knife with a plastic handle, good for cutting tape or opening packages, not for fighting. A plastic bag with a toothbrush, a half empty tube of toothpaste, and a bar of soap wrapped in a rag. A cheap smartphone with a cracked screen. The phone had no service, but the clock worked and he had downloaded music onto it months ago in a convenience store parking lot using their wifi. The battery was at forty percent. He would need to find an outlet to charge it today.

He checked the inner pocket of the backpack, where he kept his money. A small zipper pouch held a few folded bills and some coins. He pulled it out and counted. Two thousand yen, give or take a hundred. Enough for food for a week if he was careful. Not enough for anything else. He put the pouch back and closed the backpack.

His body was stiff from sleeping on the hard floor. The cardboard he had placed under the sleeping bag had flattened weeks ago and no longer cushioned anything. He stretched his arms over his head and felt his spine pop in three places. His shoulders ached. His knees ached. He was fourteen years old, but his body felt older. The dark circles under his eyes had been there for so long that he had stopped noticing them. They were just part of his face now, like the grey streak in his hair or the small scars on his knuckles.

He ran a hand through his hair. It was messy, unwashed, the black strands tangled with the mottled grey at the front. The grey had spread since last winter. He did not know why. He had heard that stress could turn hair white, but he was fourteen, not sixty. Maybe it was his Quirk. Maybe absorbing impacts did something to his body that no one had explained to him. He did not dwell on it. He had bigger problems than the color of his hair.

Gou crawled out of the sleeping bag and stood up. The floor creaked under his weight. He was careful to step near the walls, where the joists were stronger. The middle of the room had a visible sag, and he had learned not to test it. He walked to the corner where he kept a plastic bottle full of water. He had filled it two days ago at a public park bathroom. The water was still clean, or clean enough. He drank half of it in long swallows, then used the rest to wet a rag and wipe his face and neck. The cold water shocked his skin, but it woke him up.

He pulled his hoodie back on and checked the room one last time. The sleeping bag, the backpack, the water bottle, the small pile of stolen food he had not eaten yet. Three rice balls wrapped in plastic, still sealed. A package of crackers, half crushed. A bottle of tea that was probably warm by now. He grabbed one rice ball and put the rest in his backpack. He would eat as he walked.

The broken window was on the far side of the room, facing the alley. The glass had been gone when he moved in, and he had nailed a piece of cardboard over it to keep the wind out. The cardboard was soaked through and falling apart. He pushed it aside and climbed onto the sill. The drop was short. The fire escape landing was rusted and shaky, but it held.

He turned back to look at the room one more time. It was nothing. A hole in a burned building. But it was his. No one bothered him here. No one asked him questions. No one told him to move along or threatened to call the police. The silence was not friendly, but it was not hostile either. It just was.

He unwrapped the rice ball and ate it in three bites as he climbed down the fire escape. The metal groaned under his feet. He moved quickly, not because he was afraid of falling, but because the noise carried in the morning quiet. The building next door was abandoned too, but the street below had a few shops that opened early. A convenience store on the corner. A vegetable seller who set up a cart at dawn. A pachinko parlor that never seemed to close. The people who lived in this part of the South Ward were used to strange sounds, but that did not mean Gou wanted to be seen.

He reached the ground and stepped into the alley. The pavement was cracked and stained. A stray cat watched him from a dumpster, then looked away. Gou pulled his hood up and shoved his hands into his pockets. The grey streak in his hair disappeared under the fabric. He looked like any other teenager in any other city, someone on his way to school or to meet friends. No one would guess that he had not been inside a classroom in three years. No one would guess that he had no friends. No one would guess that the last time someone had spoken to him with kindness was so long ago that he could not remember it clearly.

He walked to the end of the alley and stopped at the corner. The convenience store was open. The lights inside were bright and warm, and he could see the clerk behind the counter, a young man with his head down, scrolling through his phone. Gou had stolen from this store before. He would steal from it again. Not today, though. Today he had two thousand yen, and he wanted to save it.

He turned left and walked toward the train station. The streets were mostly empty at this hour. A few salarymen hurried past him, their faces blank with exhaustion. A woman walked her dog, a small white thing that yapped at Gou as he passed. He ignored it. He kept his head down and his pace steady.

His stomach was not full, but the rice ball had taken the edge off. He would find something else to eat later. There was always something. A bakery that threw out day old bread at closing time. A supermarket that discounted bento boxes after eight. A restaurant that left trash bags in the alley, sometimes with half eaten meals inside. He had learned not to be picky. Hunger was a good teacher.

He thought about his Quirk as he walked. The absorption was always there, humming beneath his skin like a second heartbeat. He could feel it when he landed wrong after a jump or when something hit him unexpectedly. The energy would flow into his chest and settle there, a warm pressure behind his ribs. The lashes were different. They came out when the impact was strong enough, invisible tendrils that struck back at whatever had hit him. He could not control them yet. They moved on their own, fast and angry, like something alive inside him that hated being hurt.

He had tried to practice. On the rooftop of the abandoned factory, he had punched the brick wall until his knuckles bled. The absorption had worked. The lashes had cracked the mortar. But he could not aim them. He could not turn them off. He could not make them do what he wanted. His Quirk was a tool he did not know how to use, and that scared him more than hunger or cold or the men who sometimes followed him at night.

Gou reached the train station and found a bench near the ticket machines. He sat down and watched the commuters flow past him. No one looked at him. No one ever looked at him. He was furniture, a shape in the background. That was good. Being invisible kept him safe.

He pulled out his phone and checked the time. Seven fifteen in the morning. He had the whole day ahead of him. No schedule. No obligations. No one waiting for him anywhere. The freedom was a kind of prison, but he had stopped caring about the difference.

He put the phone away and stood up. There was a pawn shop a few blocks from here, run by a man named Jirou who bought stolen goods and asked no questions. Gou had a few things to sell. Watches he had lifted from a department store last week. A wallet he had found on the train, already emptied of cash but still worth something if the cards were good. Jirou would give him a few thousand yen, and that would last him another week.

He started walking again. The sky was grey, the clouds low and heavy. It would rain later. He would need to find shelter before it started, somewhere dry where he could wait it out. The abandoned building was safe, but the roof leaked. The third floor room had a patch of ceiling that stayed dry, but the rest of it dripped. He had learned to sleep in the dry spot, curled against the wall with his backpack under his head.

He thought about his parents sometimes. Not every day. Not even every week. But sometimes, in the quiet moments, the memories came back. His mother’s laugh. His father’s hands, large and warm, lifting him onto his shoulders. The sound of the explosion. The dust and the screaming and the weight of the debris pressing down on him. He had been five years old. He had survived. They had not.

He did not cry about it anymore. He had cried for the first year, alone in alleys and under bridges, until the tears stopped coming. Now there was just a hollow place inside him where the grief used to be. He did not know if that made him strong or broken. He suspected it was both.

Gou reached the shopping street where Jirou’s shop was located. The stores were still closed, their metal shutters down. He had an hour to kill. He found a doorway and sat down, his back against the cold metal, and waited.

A truck drove past. A pigeon landed on the pavement and pecked at something invisible. The wind picked up, carrying the smell of diesel and rain.

Gou pulled his hood lower and closed his eyes.

He did not sleep. He never slept in the open. But he rested, his body still, his mind drifting somewhere between waking and dreaming. The world moved around him, and he did not move with it. He was a stone in the river, letting the water flow past.

When he opened his eyes again, the metal shutters on Jirou’s shop were rolling up. It was time to work.

The metal shutters groaned as they rolled up, revealing the cluttered front window of Jirou’s Secondhand. Gou stood up from the doorway and stretched his legs. His joints popped again. He had been sitting for almost an hour, and the cold had seeped into his bones. He pulled his hood lower and walked to the entrance.

The shop smelled like old paper and dust and something sweet that Gou had never identified. Jirou was behind the counter, already lighting a cigarette. The man looked up as the bell on the door rang, and his face settled into its usual expression of cautious greed.

“You’re early, boy,” Jirou said. He sniffed once, twice. The nervous tic was automatic, like a heartbeat.

Gou did not answer. He walked to the counter and pulled the stolen watches from his hoodie pocket. Three of them, all cheap department store brands, but they looked decent enough. He set them on the glass counter without a word.

Jirou picked up the first watch and turned it over in his yellowed fingers. He held it close to his face, squinting. Then he sniffed and set it down. He did the same with the other two.

“Five thousand for the lot,” Jirou said.

Gou stared at him.

“Six,” Jirou amended, already pulling bills from a drawer. “Take it or leave it.”

Gou took it. He pocketed the money and turned to leave.

“You look worse than last week,” Jirou called after him. “You sleeping in that building still? You’re going to freeze when winter hits.”

Gou paused at the door. He did not look back.

“None of my business,” Jirou muttered, mostly to himself. He sniffed again and stubbed out his cigarette. “Just saying.”

Gou left. The bell chimed behind him.

The morning had grown brighter, but the sun stayed hidden behind the grey clouds. The shopping street was waking up. A woman unlocked the door to her vegetable shop and started arranging crates of daikon and cabbage. An old man swept the pavement in front of his pharmacy. A delivery truck idled at the corner, the driver smoking and scrolling through his phone.

Gou walked toward the train station. The money in his pocket brought his total to eight thousand yen. Enough for food for two weeks if he was careful. But he wanted more. There was always something else he needed. A warmer jacket. A better sleeping bag. A new pair of shoes before his current ones fell apart completely.

The station plaza was crowded now. Commuters streamed through the gates, businessmen in suits, students in uniforms, mothers pushing strollers. Gou found a spot near the ticket machines and leaned against the wall. He watched the flow of people, his eyes scanning for targets.

He had learned how to pick pockets by watching videos on his phone. The videos had been made by magicians, not thieves, but the principles were the same. Distraction. Misdirection. Light fingers. He had practiced on mannequins in department stores before trying it on real people. He had been caught twice, both times by old women who had shouted at him but not called the police. He had learned from those mistakes.

Now he was good at it. Not perfect, but good enough.

He spotted a woman near the ticket gate. She was in her forties, well dressed in a grey coat and heels, carrying a leather handbag. Her phone was in one hand, pressed to her ear, and her wallet was in the other, half tucked into her bag’s outer pocket as she searched for her train pass. She was distracted. She was in a hurry. She was perfect.

Gou pushed off from the wall and walked toward her. His heart rate did not change. He had stopped feeling nervous about this months ago.

He timed his approach. The woman dropped her phone into her bag and pulled out her train pass. She waved it at the gate and started walking. Gou followed, close enough to reach her bag but not so close that she would notice. He waited for the crowd to thicken. A group of students pushed past, laughing and shoving each other. The woman stepped to the side to avoid them.

That was the moment.

Gou’s hand slipped into her bag. His fingers found the wallet and pulled it free in one smooth motion. He tucked it into his hoodie pocket and kept walking, angling away from the woman, toward the stairs. She did not look up. She was already through the gate, heading to her platform.

He descended the stairs to the lower level, where the shops were. The wallet was thin and leather, expensive. He did not open it yet. He walked past a bakery and a newsstand, then turned into a hallway that led to the public restrooms. The hallway was empty. He stopped near a vending machine and pulled out the wallet.

He opened it. A few thousand yen in cash, not as much as he had hoped. Three credit cards. A driver’s license with the woman’s name and address. A train pass. A photo of a young girl, probably her daughter. Gou pulled out the cash and counted it. Four thousand, six hundred yen. He stuffed the bills into his pocket and looked at the rest of the wallet’s contents.

He did not need the cards. He could not use them without getting caught. The license and the photo and the train pass were useless to him. He shoved the wallet into his hoodie pocket and walked to the end of the hallway, where a storm drain sat under a grate in the floor. He crouched down, slipped the wallet through the gaps in the grate, and let it fall into the darkness below. He heard it splash somewhere deep.

The photo of the girl would get wet and ruined. The cards would be canceled. The license would have to be replaced. The woman would have a bad day, but she would survive. That was how Gou justified it to himself. He was not hurting anyone. He was just taking what he needed from people who had more than enough.

He knew it was a lie. He told it to himself anyway.

He stood up and walked back toward the station plaza. The crowd was thinning now, the morning rush almost over. He had eight thousand yen in his pocket from the watches and the wallet combined. Twelve thousand six hundred if he counted the money he already had. He could buy a new jacket today. A good one, warm and thick, with a hood that would keep the rain off.

He stopped near the entrance to the station and looked out at the street. A bus pulled away from the curb. A man on a bicycle rang his bell at a pedestrian. The grey sky pressed down on everything, low and heavy.

“Not bad for one morning,” Gou muttered to himself. His voice was quiet, rough from disuse. He cleared his throat and said nothing else.

He started walking toward the shopping district where the clothing stores were. He would buy a jacket and then find somewhere to eat. A hot meal, not stolen food from a convenience store. Something real. A bowl of ramen, maybe, or a tray of curry rice from the cafeteria in the department store basement. He deserved it, he told himself. He had worked for it.

The streets grew busier as he walked. Office workers hurried past him, their faces blank with purpose. A group of schoolchildren crossed the street in a loose formation, their backpacks bouncing. A woman in a green apron stood outside a pachinko parlor, handing out tissues to passersby. Gou took a tissue packet without slowing down and shoved it into his pocket.

He thought about the woman whose wallet he had taken. She would not notice until she needed to pay for something. Maybe on the train, when the ticket collector came through. Maybe at a coffee shop, when she tried to buy a drink. She would open her bag and feel around, and her face would change. First confusion, then concern, then panic. She would retrace her steps. She would call the police. She would cancel her cards. She would cry, maybe, if the photo of her daughter was important to her.

Gou felt something twist in his chest. Not guilt, exactly. Something smaller. A reminder that the people he stole from were real, with lives and families and problems of their own. He pushed the feeling down. He had learned to do that too.

The shopping district was crowded. Gou wove between bodies, his eyes scanning for a clothing store that sold cheap jackets. He found one near the end of the street, a cramped shop with racks of clothes spilling onto the sidewalk. The prices were written on handwritten signs taped to the glass. Winter jackets, three thousand yen. Not great quality, but good enough.

He stepped inside. The shop was warm and smelled like polyester. A bored looking teenager behind the counter glanced at him and looked away. Gou walked to the rack of jackets and started flipping through them. Black, navy, olive. He found a black one in his size and checked the seams. They held together when he pulled on them. The hood was lined with a thin layer of fleece. It would keep the wind out.

He brought it to the counter and paid with a five thousand yen bill. The teenager gave him change without a word. Gou left the shop with the jacket folded under his arm.

He found an alley a few blocks away and took off his old hoodie. The air bit at his bare arms, but only for a moment. He pulled on the new jacket and zipped it up to his chin. The fleece lining was warm against his neck. He tucked his old hoodie into his backpack and stood still for a moment, just feeling the warmth settle around him.

It was the first new piece of clothing he had bought in over a year. Everything else had been stolen or found in donation bins or pulled from dumpsters behind secondhand shops. The jacket was his. He had paid for it with money he had taken from people who would not miss it. That was the world he lived in. He had stopped expecting it to make sense.

He left the alley and walked toward the department store. The cafeteria would be open now, serving lunch to the old women and young mothers who had nowhere else to go. He could get a tray of curry rice for four hundred yen. He could sit in a corner and eat it slowly, savoring the taste of something that was not stolen from a convenience store.

The department store was warm. Gou took the escalator down to the basement floor, where the cafeteria was. The smell of cooking food hit him before he reached the bottom. He felt his stomach tighten with hunger. He had only eaten one rice ball today, and that was hours ago.

He got in line, grabbed a tray, and pointed at the curry rice. The woman behind the counter spooned it onto a plate and handed it to him. He paid and carried the tray to a table in the corner, away from the other customers. He sat with his back to the wall, facing the entrance. Old habit.

The curry was warm and spicy. The rice was slightly over cooked. It was the best thing Gou had eaten in weeks.

He ate slowly, each bite a small victory. When he finished, he scraped the tray clean and took it to the return station. He walked back through the department store and out onto the street.

The rain had started while he was inside. A light drizzle, not heavy enough to soak through his new jacket. He pulled up his hood and started walking back toward the abandoned building. The day was half over. He had money in his pocket, a new jacket on his back, and a full stomach.

That was more than he had yesterday.

The rain had settled into a steady drizzle by the time Gou reached the abandoned building. His new jacket shed the water well enough, but his pants were soaked from the knees down, and his sneakers squelched with every step. The alley behind the building was dark, the light from the streetlamps failing to reach this far. He knew the way by memory. The dumpster on the left, the broken fence, the rusted fire escape ladder hanging just low enough for him to grab.

He pulled himself up onto the first landing. The metal groaned under his weight, a familiar complaint. He climbed slowly, careful not to slip on the wet grates. The third floor landing was even more rusted than the lower levels, the railing loose where it had pulled away from the brick wall. Gou stepped over the gap and pushed aside the cardboard covering the broken window. He crawled through and landed on the floor of his room.

The space felt colder than when he had left that morning. The hole in the ceiling let in not just grey light but also a thin stream of water, dripping onto the floor in a steady rhythm. Gou had positioned his sleeping bag away from the drips, but the dampness spread across the room anyway, soaking into the old carpet and the crumbling drywall.

He stood still for a moment, listening. The building was silent except for the rain on the roof and the drip in the corner. No footsteps. No voices. He was alone.

He unzipped his new jacket and shook it out. The outside was wet, but the fleece lining had kept his torso dry. He hung the jacket on a nail he had hammered into the wall near the window, where a faint draft helped with drying. His hoodie, the old one he had worn under the jacket, was only slightly damp. He pulled it off and hung it next to the jacket.

His backpack came next. He set it on the floor near his sleeping bag and unzipped it. The contents were dry. The plastic bag with his toiletries, the spare socks, the small knife, the phone. He pulled out the phone and checked the battery. Thirty two percent. He had not charged it today. He would need to find an outlet tomorrow.

He sat down on the sleeping bag and pulled off his sneakers. Water poured out of the left one. He set both shoes near the window, hoping they would dry overnight. His socks were soaked through. He peeled them off and tossed them into a corner where the other damp socks lived. He would wash them when he found soap and water. Or he would steal new ones. Whichever came first.

He pulled on the dry socks from his backpack and wiggled his toes. The warmth was minimal, but it was something. He lay back on the sleeping bag and stared at the ceiling. The drip had found a new path, landing now near his backpack. He would need to move before he slept.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the money he had collected today. The bills were damp but still usable. He counted them. Eight thousand yen from the watches and the wallet. Twelve thousand six hundred total after adding what he had saved from before. He had spent three thousand on the jacket and four hundred on the curry rice. That left nine thousand two hundred yen. He folded the bills and tucked them into the inner pouch of his backpack.

The rain picked up, drumming harder against the roof. Gou closed his eyes and listened. There was a rhythm to it, a pattern of heavy drops and light ones, like a song with no melody. He had learned to find comfort in the sound. When the rain fell hard enough, it drowned out the noises of the city. The traffic, the shouting, the sirens. All of it faded into the white noise of water on old wood.

He thought about the woman whose wallet he had taken. He had tried not to, but the image of the photo came back to him. A girl, maybe eight or nine, smiling at the camera with a gap toothed grin. The woman had kept that photo in her wallet, close to her money and her cards. It had mattered to her. And now it was at the bottom of a storm drain, ruined by water and filth.

He told himself that the woman would get another photo. She would print a new one from her phone. She would put it in a new wallet, and in a week she would forget about the old one. People forgot things. People moved on. He had moved on from worse.

But he had not moved on, not really. He still remembered his mother’s face. He still remembered the sound of her voice. He still remembered the way she had smiled at him, the same way the woman in the photo had smiled at her daughter. That was why the image had stuck. It was a mirror, and he did not like what it showed him.

He sat up and shook his head, as if the motion could dislodge the thoughts. They stayed. They always stayed.

He needed to eat again. The curry rice had been hours ago, and his stomach was starting to make noise. He reached into his backpack and pulled out the package of crackers, the one that was half crushed. He opened the plastic and ate them one by one, small salty squares that stuck to his teeth. He finished the package and drank some water from the bottle in the corner. The water was low. He would need to refill it tomorrow.

The rain continued. The light coming through the hole in the ceiling faded as the afternoon turned to evening. Gou did not bother turning on his phone. There was nothing to see in the dark. He knew every crack in the walls, every stain on the floor, every shadow in the corners. The darkness was not threatening. It was familiar.

He lay back down and pulled the sleeping bag up to his chin. The new jacket was still hanging by the window, but he did not need it. The sleeping bag, thin as it was, held enough warmth if he curled his body tight. He had learned to sleep like a cat, small and compact, conserving heat.

He was almost asleep when he heard it. A sound that did not belong.

Footsteps. On the fire escape. Metal groaning under weight.

Gou’s eyes opened wide. His body tensed, every muscle going still. He held his breath and listened.

The footsteps were slow, careful. Whoever was out there knew the fire escape was old and loud. They were trying to be quiet. But the metal betrayed them, each step a soft clang that echoed in the stairwell.

Gou sat up slowly, without noise. He reached for his backpack and pulled out the small knife. The plastic handle was cold in his hand. He did not flick the blade open. Not yet. The sound would give him away.

He looked toward the broken window. The cardboard covering was still in place, but the rain had soaked it through, making it sag. Through the gaps, he could see movement. A shadow passing by. Someone was climbing up to the third floor.

The footsteps stopped at the landing just outside the window. Gou heard breathing, heavy and wet. Whoever it was, they had been out in the rain for a while.

There was a pause. Then a hand pushed the cardboard aside.

Gou flicked the knife open. The blade clicked into place.

The cardboard fell away, and a face appeared in the gap. A boy, younger than Gou, maybe twelve or thirteen. His hair was plastered to his forehead, dark and dripping. His eyes were wide, not with malice but with fear. He was shivering, his lips blue with cold.

The boy saw the knife. He saw Gou’s face, pale and shadowed in the dark. He did not run. He did not scream. He just stared.

And then he spoke, his voice barely a whisper.

“Please.”