AM N. NOT.
The sunlight filtering through the blinds of the Kayama condo wasn't enough to stir the mountain of blankets on the bed.
"Hey, Maki. Wake up. You're going to be late."
Nemuri Kayama stood in the doorway, tapping her foot. Silence was her only answer. With a weary sigh, she pushed the door fully open.
Maki was a literal cocoon, buried under a red comforter, curled around it with the stubbornness of a cat refusing to leave a sunbeam on a winter morning. All that was visible was a chaotic nest of raven-black hair.
Nemuri clicked her tongue. Unbelievable. She didn't do "gentle" mornings. In one fluid, practiced motion, she grabbed the edge of the fabric and wrenched it away.
"I said wake up, you sleepyhead!"
The blanket took flight, billowing across the room like a discarded cape. Maki didn't so much as twitch. He remained in his curled position, perfectly still, as if the air itself were a substitute for the wool.
A vein throbbed in Nemuri's temple. Her right hand curled into a fist.
Baaam!
The strike landed squarely on the crown of his head. It wasn't a blow meant to injure—more of a physical punctuation mark. Maki felt the impact, but to him, it was merely a familiar rhythm, the tolling of a bell that signaled the end of a dream. His consciousness dragged itself upward through layers of heavy sleep.
Slowly, his eyelids drifted open.
His eyes were a deep, unsettling crimson. They adjusted to the dim light with a lazy, predatory grace before tracking upward to the woman towering over him.
"Oh… good morning, Nemuri," he murmured, his voice thick and gravelly. "Why'd you wake me up?"
Nemuri—known to the screaming masses as the R-Rated Hero, Midnight—looked like a woman who had exhausted her daily quota of patience before breakfast.
"What do you mean why?" she snapped. "Today is the U.A. entrance exam. Did you filter out everything I told you yesterday?"
"U… A…?"
Maki scratched the back of his head, the gears of his memory turning with audible lethargy. Then, a spark of recognition flickered in those red depths.
"Oh. The exam." He unleashed a yawn that seemed to vibrate in his chest. "I forgot."
Nemuri stared at him, genuinely floored. The boy sat up and stretched, treating the most prestigious day of his life like a bothersome chore.
In the light, he was a study in contrasts. His hair, unlike Nemuri's wild, gravity-defying spikes, was a silken waterfall of black that reached his waist. His skin was the color of bleached bone, making his sharp, mature features pop with an intensity that felt far beyond his years.
But it was always the eyes that held people. Dark red. Calm. A stillness that felt less like peace and more like the eye of a hurricane.
This kid is going to break hearts—if he doesn't break bones first, Nemuri thought with a sigh.
Maki stood up.
And he kept standing.
And standing.
Nemuri had to tilt her head back, her neck craning until she was looking nearly straight up. Even after years of living with him, the sheer scale of the boy was jarring. At nearly seven-and-a-half feet tall, he was a literal giant, a 2.3-meter pillar of teenage apathy looming over her bedroom floor.
She folded her arms, her mind drifting back to the night her life had veered off its planned trajectory.
( ´_ゝ`)
It had been a standard, grueling day at U.A. High—the kind involving too many faculty meetings and enough paperwork to drown a Pro Hero. By the time Nemuri climbed into her sleek Porsche electric SUV, the sky was bruised with the purples and oranges of a dying sunset.
She was halfway home, the radio humming a low jazz tune, when the world exploded.
BAAAANG!
The roof of the Porsche buckled. The sound was like a sledgehammer hitting an empty oil drum. Nemuri's instincts took over; she gripped the wheel, stabilized the skid, and slammed on the brakes.
She stepped out into the quiet street, her eyes immediately finding the massive, crater-like dent in the center of her roof.
"Who the hell throws something at a car?" she hissed, scanning the shadows.
The street was hauntingly silent. Then, a faint groan drifted down from above.
Nemuri hoisted herself up onto the door frame to look at the roof. Her breath hitched. A child was sprawled across the mangled metal, right in the center of the impact zone.
"What…?" she whispered. "Did he fall from the sky?"
"Hey! Kid!" she shouted. "Are you alright?"
The boy didn't look at her. His crimson eyes were fixed on the darkening clouds above, wide and vacant.
"You really… literally dropped me…" he muttered, the words barely a thread of sound. Then, his eyes rolled back, and he went limp.
The hospital was a blur of sterile white and hushed voices. Nemuri stayed through the night, tethered to the mystery by a sense of responsibility she hadn't known she possessed.
The medical reports were impossible. No broken bones. No internal bleeding. Not even a bruise. The boy had dented a reinforced vehicle with his body and come away unscathed.
"Must be a physical enhancement Quirk," the doctors whispered.
Nemuri called Principal Nezu to explain her absence. The chimera-like educator had simply listened, his voice deceptively calm. "I see. Please, take care of our fallen child."
When the boy finally woke the next morning, he didn't cry or ask for his mother. He simply walked to the window and stared. He watched the parade of the "super-normal"—men with scales, women with extra limbs, a pedestrian who looked like a bipedal goldfish.
"So this is one of those cartoons…" he muttered, a small frown creasing his brow. "What did that girl call it? Anim-ite?"
"So. You're awake."
He turned. Nemuri stood in the doorway, her presence commanding and statuesque. The boy didn't look away with the typical shyness of a child; he dissected her with his gaze, analytical and cold.
"Don't look at me like that," Nemuri remarked, crossing her arms. "I'm not interested in kids. You'll need to wait about ten years."
The boy's lips quirked into a smirk.
"Cheeky brat," she chuckled.
"Where am I?" he asked.
"That's my question. Why did you fall out of the sky and ruin my car?"
The boy shrugged, the motion fluid. "How should I know? I was sleeping. Then someone picked me up and dropped me."
He said it with such flat, matter-of-fact sincerity that Nemuri couldn't even find the energy to argue.
"Parents? Relatives?"
"None," he said, turning back to the window. "They left."
There was no bitterness in his voice. No trauma. Just a statement of fact, as if he were describing the weather. He looked six, maybe seven, but he stood with the weight of an ancient soul.
"Where will you go?" Nemuri asked.
He was silent for a long beat. "Do you know where the sea is? Just leave me there. I can take care of myself."
Nemuri felt a pang of something sharp in her chest. She rubbed the back of her neck, exhaling a long, weary breath.
"Don't bother. Just come with me. I'll adopt you or something."
The silence stretched. Then, the boy looked at her over his shoulder.
"Well, if you're single, that's fine. If you're raising your future husband, I'll gladly accept."
Nemuri Kayama, the woman who made a living flustering the entire nation, found herself utterly speechless. She stared at the pint-sized giant, and then, a slow, dangerous grin spread across her face.
"Fufufu… you're a dangerous kid, Maki."
!!ヽ(ﾟдﾟヽ)(ﾉﾟдﾟ)ﾉ!!
AM N. NOT