Heroes, Vigilantes, and Villains

Chapter seven

"Remember Sine is the opposite side length from theta over the hypotenuse of the triangle."

We had moved to the ground sometime ago, while working through the geometry problems. We needed more room to spread out all of the notes and papers that Shinso seemed to have an endless supply of. The boy apparently has a cumulative exam coming up on Tuesday over the last three units... the only problem with that is that he keeps forgetting it all as soon as he seems to learn it. He's not dumb by any means, but he hardly seems to sleep, which makes focusing hard.

"So this would be tangent then, right?"

"Correct." I nodded my head lightly, still being careful of the almost healed wound on my neck.

I watched the purple haired boy smirk seemingly triumphantly as he stretched his arms above his head. We'd been working on this for a while now, him taking pride in his accomplishment was something that was allowed in times like this.

Seeing the other boy stretch, I thought about doing the same, but that took too much effort. In the end, I decided that the ground was much more appealing, flopping down onto it instead. It wasn't long before I heard another small thud at my side. When I looked to my left, purple eyes burrowed into mine, a proud yet tired smile still on the other boy's face.

We laid there for a few long moments, neither of us truly wanting to move as we let the exhaustion take over our bodies instead of getting up.

"You look like you're dead," I commented, not really caring if it was rude or not. The other boy knew nothing about me, he had no reason to hate me just yet. He didn't know that I'm quirkless. I'm sure once he does, his eyes will never be this soft when looking at me again, if I ever see him again after today. The other boy had dark eyebags pulling his eyes down, with skin pale enough to make him share a closer resemblance with a vampire than a middle school boy.

Shinso's body shook slightly in what should have been laughter had we both lived different lives, ones that didn't manage to turn our hearts cold. "You can't talk, broccoli, your eyebags are worse than mine."

I rolled my eyes at the other boy. I know that my sleep schedule has never been the best, but there's no way that my eyebags are worse than his. I was about to respond when the office door opened, making us both pause.

"...What exactly is going on in here, boys?"

We glanced at the source of the noise, barley pulling our heads off the ground to do so. I put my finger to my lips, making a small shushing noise while laying my head back down. "We're corpses," I told Shinso's mother, just loud enough for her to hear. I saw Shinso's body shake lightly again out of the corner of my eye as her laughter drifted through the room.

Her voice was light when Shinso's mother responded. "The corpses need to go back to their tombs, we're closing up."

We dragged our bodies up from the comfortable ground before collecting all of the paper that were piled up around us. I handed the purple haired boy my stack of loose papers, letting him clip them back into his school binder while I went to grab his text book.

"Corpse one," Mrs. Shinso said, I glanced up slightly to see the woman looking at her son while he was trying to cram the book back into his bag," why don't you walk Corpse two over here home?"

I looked at the two, realizing that she meant me. I couldn't help but shake slightly at the idea. We're safe here, where no one else knows who we are, knows the shames that we keep tucked away. If we went back into the real world together, Shinso was sure to find out and there'd be nothing that I could do. He'd think that I tricked him into being nice to me.

"There's no need for that-" I started to say. I don't want to be alone again. I don't want to get attached to another friend only for them to hate me.

Maybe it's just better to be alone from the start. To not get your hopes up.