Chapter Text
“Walking alone with a friend in the dark
Is better than
Walking alone in the light.”
START
Digitally-Equipped Kinesics Unit (or DEKU, for short) was the new communication device that took the world by storm due to its rather groundbreaking features.
Some of DEKU’s most notable features include: It could be charged with body heat alone. It could also be folded over and over again until it became so small, it looked like an ice cube.
Arguably, its most important feature was that in times of emergency, DEKU users could use its Messenger app to connect with users that were within a ten-mile range. Signal was not an issue if you’re stuck in an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. DEKU had its own personal signal and didn't rely on cellular towers alone.
Midoriya Izuku, the nerd that he was, had lived off instant cup noodles for three months straight just so he could buy a DEKU on the day of its release.
After lining up for five hours in front of the Plus Ultra! Electronic Store, pushing and grappling with other patrons so that he could get that one box on the rightmost side because ‘It looks newer, and the box is in pristine condition!’, he was finally back in his dorm room at U.A. University, where he was currently taking up Computer Science—which he believed to be the nerdiest degree of them all. And he was super proud of it!
Izuku belly-flopped on his bed and moaned in ecstasy at the smooth and fluffy texture of the comforter. He wanted to lie there and spend the rest of his one week break lying on the soft, bouncy mattress, but he had something important—no, VERY important to do.
With a groan, Izuku sluggishly crawled to the edge of his bed. He blindly reached for the gaudy yellow, blue, and red paper bag which encased DEKU—his most prized possession aside from his limited edition All Might: United States of Smash figurine.
Izuku lied back down on his side, gingerly cradling the sleek, black box that had a tasteful, holographic-like ‘DEKU’ embossed on it like he would his All Might merchandise.
Izuku slowly opened the lid, and there, sitting idly under the instructional manual and sheets upon sheets of bubble wrap (he set the bubble wrap aside so he could pop them all later) was an all-black, rectangular device as thin as a toothpick.
“Holy Mother of All Might! It's even more beautiful in person!”
With shaky hands, Izuku spread out the box's contents on his bed. He grabbed the charger and hastily plugged in his shiny, expensive-as-hell, new phone to the socket by his nightstand. Even if the phone could be charged with body heat, it still needed to be plugged in every once in a while.
Izuku spent the next hour bonding with DEKU. He lovingly tweaked with the device and kept on oohing and aahing at every new feature he discovered.
Just as Izuku was about to take a quick selfie to test if he would really see his pores just like how it was advertised, a shrill beeping noise resounded repeatedly from his phone. In his shock, Izuku almost threw the device off the bed. He hugged the phone to his chest and uttered a quick apology before checking what in the world had just happened.
Thinking that the one calling may be someone in need—Izuku could never ever turn away anyone who needed his help—he hurriedly tapped the notification. It sent him to DEKU’s Messenger app, where nothing but a lone button at the middle of the black screen could be seen:
CONNECT WITH DEKU
Izuku took in a huge lungful of air before clicking on it.
“What in All Might’s name is happening?”
The text that kept on popping on the screen looked like something hackers would type. Yes, Izuku was a nerd. But right now, all he was seeing was gibberish.
The phone screen glitched and flashed white. Then, nothing. Izuku heaved a heavy sigh upon seeing his screen turn black.
“Eraserhead’s stinky toe socks! Looks like this one is defective. I might have to return this to Plus Ul—”
At the same time that the message from the unknown number popped up on the screen, Izuku could have sworn that he also heard a gruff, unmistakably male voice saying the exact same thing.
Izuku immediately dropped the phone down onto the bed and scrambled back to the headboard, not once looking away from the cursed device.
“What was that?! Was Tokoyami right about the dorms being haunted? Is DEKU being possessed by an evil spirit? Or maybe, hearing things is just a side effect of eating too much instant cup noodles? Yeah, that must be i—”
“There it is again!”
And this time, the male voice sounded much clearer, more alive. The guy sounded like he was catching his breath, and seriously frustrated with whatever it was he was busying himself with.
Now that Izuku thought about it, it certainly didn’t sound like a ghost. Do ghosts even get tired? Or swear? With renewed resolve, Izuku slowly crawled towards the abandoned device.
Sighing to himself, he gingerly picked the phone up with both hands that were embarrassingly drenched in cold sweat, before typing out a response. He should have read the instructional manual first so he wouldn’t have cowered from his phone like a moron.
Izuku figured that there must be a hidden feature somewhere that made it possible for the guy to transform what he was saying into text messages.
Izuku could hear the angry guy’s breath hitch the moment he sent the message, all movement from the other side instantly ceasing.
Izuku immediately pressed the red dot and cleared his throat before replying. With his voice, this time.
Izuku huffed indignantly at that. Yes, he was a nerd. And yes, there’s nothing wrong about being a nerd. But for the guy to instantly know that he was a nerd after just hearing him say two sentences?
Endeavor’s beard! He must have been spending too much time reading All Might comic books lately.
Izuku clicked on the information icon on the top left side of the screen. According to the instructional manual, the other device’s current coordinates would show up there. And there wasn’t. The space where it would usually be at had a taunting
[ERROR]
emblazoned on it.
Izuku sighed before roughly pulling at his hair in frustration, which made it even messier than it already was.
The guy sounded rather steady and calm. It seemed like he wasn’t afraid of whatever it was lurking out there. Still, Izuku could still hear a slight tremor in his low, gruff voice.
Izuku may not be there with the guy, but he was terrified for him. He wanted to help him, but how? Sure, the dude was able to connect with Izuku’s messenger, so that meant he was within a ten-mile range from Izuku’s dorm.
Still, it would be difficult to find him since for some reason, his coordinates weren’t showing up. The guy sounded quite young, too. Just around Izuku’s age. How did a guy that young ended up in this predicament?
Izuku clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white. He felt so helpless. And useless. Here he was, just sitting on his bed and hoping that the guy could make it out alive.
Right now, the only thing Izuku could do was stay strong for the guy. And he would do just that.
Izuku could hear the guy grunting and heaving as he began sprinting away from there. A tense silence befell on Izuku’s dorm room.
What on earth was even happening? He was just enjoying his bonding time with his new phone. Then suddenly, something straight out of a horror movie bamboozled him right in the face.
The guy sounded panicked. Izuku could hear his breathing getting even more labored with the new, marginally faster pace he had set.
Izuku couldn’t do anything but dumbly stare at his phone. His hair was practically a bird’s nest with how much he had anxiously pulled at his green hair by now.
After what seemed like hours, Izuku could hear the guy’s pace winding down until he was walking at a snail’s pace. He could hear the guy trying to catch his breath.
As much as Izuku was curious as to how the other was faring, he kept his mouth shut. He couldn’t risk it! What if that creepy guy was still around and was just waiting for the right time to stri—
Izuku could hear the guy’s ugly snort all the way from wherever he was. Izuku just rolled his eyes in response even if the dude couldn’t see him do it.
Izuku could hear the guy on the other line sigh so heavily, it’s as if he was shouldering the whole world.
The dude abruptly trailed off. A minute of tense silence had passed. It seemed like he wasn’t going to be continuing what he was saying.
The guy fell silent after that. It seemed like he was contemplating about something. The silence this time was not tense, unlike the previous ones when the guy was running for his life.
And Izuku couldn’t hear anything else aside from the gravel underneath the guy’s feet and his labored breathing.
The guy let out a harsh, derisive snort. He seemed done with the whole ordeal, and angry with the whole world. Izuku would definitely feel the same if he was in this guy’s shoes.
No memories, stuck in the middle of nowhere, a creepy guy possibly out there to kill him... Yeah, he would scream to the heavens above if that happened to him.
A what now? The reception suddenly became a bit choppy. Izuku stared at his phone, baffled at what he just heard. Was it Kachanganka? Kachanka? Kacchan?
‘Yes,’ Izuku thought, all the while nodding to himself seriously with his chin resting on his hand. ‘I believe he said Kacchan.’
Izuku stretched his arm that was holding his phone as far as humanly possible to protect his precious eardrums from Katsuki’s (Or was it Kacchan’s?) explosive yelling of extremely long strings of obscenities. They sounded so complicated and out of this world that Inko, Izuku’s mom, would faint if she caught her son trying to copy Katsuki’s (Kacchan’s?) vulgar tirade.
With an amused chuckle bubbling up his lips, Izuku pulled up Katsuki’s contact information and changed the name from Unknown to Kacchan.
‘Much better.’
Izuku tried his hardest to not let Katsuki hear him cackling like a hyena. The dude was scary. His voice alone would be enough to make a lesser man wet his pants.
Izuku could hear a faint clinking of metal on the background. It sounded like Katsuki was fiddling with the lighter.
Katsuki’s tone was somber. He sounded so tired, as if all his pent up anger and energy had been zapped out of him. Izuku bit his lip. He had never felt so useless in his life.
Katsuki stopped walking. Only the sound of the trees rustling against the wind could be heard through Izuku’s phone. It was a normally soothing sound. Izuku used to play a lot in the woods behind his childhood home. But now? It sounded ominous to him.
The oppressive silence stretched into several minutes, and Izuku was starting to get antsy.
Katsuki started walking again, albeit in a sluggish pace—like a cat on a night prowl.
Katsuki continued to walk a bit more for a few minutes before halting on his tracks. He hummed thoughtfully under his breath. That made Izuku curious. What did he see?
This might be the hardest decision Izuku’s going to make. He leaned back against the headboard and gently bumped his head against it several times to jumpstart his brain. Katsuki’s in luck. Izuku’s specialty was overthinking.
Izuku glanced up to the time. It was quarter to five.
Izuku internally rejoiced at his solid plan. It seemed like having a marathon of the first one hundred episodes of Detective Conan the other day was finally paying off. The only problem now was what trail would they choose?
The trail heading to south was obviously out of question. That was where Katsuki came from. That creepy guy might not be there anymore, but Katsuki would probably still throw the nastiest hissy fit if Izuku would try to suggest that.
The other three paths? Well, Izuku had no clue. Would he just do the classic ‘eeny, meeny, miny, moe’ to choose? Oh no. He was screwed, wasn’t h—
Izuku’s thought process abruptly skidded to the gutter when he heard the familiar sound of leaves crunching on the other line. Katsuki must have started walking.
Katsuki continued walking. By now, his footsteps sounded harried. He was almost dragging his feet through the ground.
Izuku leaned forward, straining to hear Katsuki. The line was starting to get choppy.
The screen glitched for a moment, then the messenger crashed. Izuku dumbly stared at his phone’s homescreen for what seemed like hours. His hands were shaking, and his heart was rattling wildly against his ribcage.
What just happened? And Katsuki... He needed to know if Katsuki was okay! Izuku hastily clicked on the messenger icon, and clicked the lone green button that seemed to be taunting him.
CONNECT WITH DEKU
Izuku tapped the call button beside Katsuki’s name to try connecting with him again. Something wrong must have happened to him!
Izuku reopened the messenger again and again. And again. He lost count how many times he did it, but the outcome was always the same—it kept on disconnecting. After what seemed to be the hundredth time, Izuku dropped his phone on the bed and pulled at his hair with both hands.
“Oh my god. Oh no. Holy Mother of All Might, this is not happening right now. We shouldn’t have picked west! I should have disagreed! I will never forgive myself if something bad happened to hi—”
A familiar, deafening beeping noise echoed around the room. Izuku practically flung himself to his phone and hastily opened it. He whooped gleefully when he saw the notification from the messenger that Katsuki was trying to connect with him.
“Oh yes!” With both hands, Izuku triumphantly raised his phone above his head.
Katsuki dissolved into a fit of hysterics. He was cackling so hard, he was gasping for breath once he calmed down. Katsuki’s tone was both playful and sarcastic when he replied.
Katsuki was guffawing again, and Izuku was mortified.
It was a long day, okay? He had lined up for five hours under the heat of the sun. His brain wasn’t back to normal. It completely slipped his mind that Katsuki didn’t have any equipment to rappel down the cliff.
While waiting, Izuku opened Dekoogle to try and search for Katsuki’s name. There were thousands upon thousands of results—after all, Katsuki was a pretty common name, but there was no news about anyone being abducted.
Darn it! He needed more to go on than just a measly first name. Katsuki must have just gone missing early today if there was still no news about him in social media.
The real kicker here, though, was that there was no classes this week. After all, it was the Golden Week. And Katsuki sounded just about the same age as Izuku. That might mean he was also spending his break in the dorms. People might not notice immediately that he had gone missing.
The distinct shrill beeping of DEKU’s messenger abruptly interrupted Izuku’s mumbling galore. He launched the app, impatiently drumming his fingers against the bed.
Izuku closed his eyes as he listened to Katsuki describe the cabin in detail with his low, gruff baritone voice. He could totally do an ASMR with that kind of voice.
Izuku could hear old, withered wood groaning under Katsuki’s weight as he walked up the steps to the front door. The door creaked loudly when Katsuki pushed it open.
Katsuki fumbled blindly to open his lighter.
Katsuki suddenly sounded like he was in the verge of tears. He gasped loudly, and Izuku heard him running out of the cabin. The winds rustling against the trees grew louder compared to when they were inside the cabin.
Izuku gripped his phone tightly, worried about Katsuki. In just a short amount of time that he had known the angry guy, Katsuki seemed to be someone who wasn’t easily swayed by his emotions. That made Izuku curious as to what Katsuki had seen that made him react that way.
Izuku’s eyes widened in worry and apprehension. He couldn’t do anything but stare at his phone in concern.
It was left unsaid, but Izuku understood clearly what Katsuki wanted to say.
‘Thank you.’
Izuku found himself unconsciously smiling like an idiot at his phone.
Izuku gazed up the ceiling and hummed thoughtfully. What would they do?
With the way Katsuki sarcastically mimicked Izuku’s voice making it sound all high-pitched and whiny, it seemed like the dude was back to his usual cranky, sarcastic self. Izuku was glad for Katsuki even if his eyebrows were kind of twitching in irritation.
With that, Katsuki pushed the cabin’s front door open bit by bit, every single creak deafening in the noiseless night.
Katsuki’s voice sound muffled after he wore the gas mask. It reminded Izuku of the astronauts in ‘All Might: Hero of the Moon’, one of his all time favorite films, which was about All Might and his band of allies flying to space to rescue a group of astronauts stranded in the moon.
Izuku scrunched up his nose upon realizing that what he was hearing being dragged across the floor were, in fact, corpses. Man, that was indeed disgusting. Izuku would probably vomit all over the floor if he was there. But he needed to stay strong for Katsuki.
Katsuki fell silent after that as he got to work. All Izuku could hear was the sounds of corpses being dragged and Katsuki’s heavy panting and grunts.
While waiting for Katsuki to be done, Izuku cut his toenails, swept the floor, opened up his Math homework that he kept on delaying until the night before classes resume.
Izuku grabbed the plastic bag from the desk and placed it beside him on the bed. It contained his dinner and midnight snacks (he was supposed to watch the next one hundred episodes of Detective Conan tonight)—a bunch of protein bars, junk food and a microwaveable bento.
Katsuki abruptly stopped talking when a loud, rumbling noise resounded through the cabin. A brief moment of silence. Then Izuku burst into a fit of laughter.
‘Was that Kacchan’s stomach?’
Izuku neared his phone to his ears, trying to make out what Katsuki was talking about. All he was hearing was static, though.
Izuku shoved his phone to his ears and closed his eyes in concentration. He inhaled for 4 seconds, held it in for 7 seconds, and exhaled for 8 seconds. There. Just like what Aoyama, his yoga-obsessed friend, had taught him.
‘That breathing exercise didn’t work! I still don’t hear anythi... Wait.’
Izuku heard the cabin’s front door shut behind Katsuki with a dull thud. The winds were harsher and the surroundings quieter now that it was really nighttime. It spooked Izuku hearing those sounds. They made him imagine what it was like being alone in such a place.
Katsuki began walking. It was so quiet in Izuku’s room, he almost started dozing off if it weren’t for Katsuki whooping like an idiot all of a sudden.
Katsuki was leisurely walking towards the pot when without warning, he dashed off like a lunatic. Izuku could hear him muttering ‘Oh shit.’ over and over again. The potful of water kept on clanking with his every step and probably in danger of spilling.
Katsuki let out a relieved sigh once he was back in the cabin. Izuku heard him slumped against the door in exhaustion.
If possible, the winds grew even stronger as they violently gusted through the trees. Izuku shivered even if he was encased in his toasty dorm room. Katsuki, on the other hand, must be feeling the opposite. It sounded like the apocalypse out there.
Izuku didn’t know how long he sat there listening to Katsuki curse under his breath and threatening to kill everyone as he tried to open the ‘damned can’. But he was really entertained by the dude’s colorful vocabulary. He had never heard anything like it. Katsuki made it sound like an art form.
Izuku had one more idea, and it’s as freaking disgusting as Eraserhead’s stinky toe socks. He didn’t know how Katsuki would react to it. He ruffled his hair in frustration. He couldn’t think of anything else! There was no other way to make fire other than that.
Izuku could hear Katsuki walking out of the cabin to where he must have dragged the corpses to.
Izuku’s heart was hurting for Katsuki. His eyes welled up at the corners but he valiantly stifled his tears. He needed to be strong for Katsuki. He needed Katsuki to survive.
END OF CHAPTER 1