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The building was red before anything else. An imposing, windowless structure tapering up into the sky, its twin spires like bleeding incisions in the storm clouds. A set of six stairs led up to the entrance, the width of each successive step more narrow than the last. At the top, a pair of intricately carved columns framed a single set of double doors.
It was one of those places that everyone knew about, few had visited, and almost no one knew by its official name, because while ‘The Musutafu Museum of International Art and Culture’ was certainly a descriptive name, it wasn’t right. It was too mundane, too clunky, and above all, it failed to represent the museum’s place in the mind of the average person. To them, it was just… the red museum.
And so it became known.
Katsuki stuffed his hands into his pockets as he ascended the steps, mid-October chill biting with each gust of wind. He passed The Red almost every day on his way to class, but he’d never gone inside. Never planned to until today.
Let’s get this shit over with, he thought, as he yanked open the door and let it fall shut behind him. There was a small reception area just inside, and the woman at the front desk looked up with a smile.
“Welcome! One ticket?”
“Yeah.”
“That’ll be 2,000 yen, then.”
Fucking hell.
Katsuki grunted and swiped his card, and vaguely wondered if he could legally force the university to reimburse him.
“Would you like a tour today?”
“No. I’m fine.”
“Alright! We close at four. If you change your mind before then, just let me know.”
“Got it.” Katsuki glanced at his phone. 12 PM. His next class was at two. Plenty of time.
The woman handed him a pamphlet and waved as he walked away. As he turned the corner into the hallway up ahead, Katsuki folded it up and stuffed it into his back pocket.
And again, he thought, let’s get this shit over with.
The assignment was simple, but annoyingly involved. Visit an art museum, find a piece you like. Take a picture in front of it and write a few paragraphs, describing it in as much detail as possible. Easy, but time-consuming.
Of course, it wasn’t like Katsuki was surprised. It was an art appreciation class, after all. But Katsuki was not there to appreciate art; he was there to check a box on his degree plan. The less effort he needed to put into it, the better.
The same could not be said for Izuku.
Katsuki clenched his fist, his nails biting into his palm.
Izuku.
Izuku, Izuku, Izuku. When he saw him sitting there on the first day of class, Katsuki was almost as excited as he was horrified.
Excited, because he’d missed him, since they parted ways after middle school. He’d grown up enough to at least admit that much, at least to himself.
Horrified, because holy fucking shit, I was such an asshole to him. He never really thought of it as bullying back then. At fourteen, Katsuki was a ball of tangled up emotions he was too immature to understand. Izuku was selfless and sweet and looked like some sort of divine avatar of sunshine. Katsuki never knew what to do with his kindness, and that scared the shit out of him.
When the other kids started making fun of him, it was easy for Katsuki to do the same.
He regretted it, of course. He thought a lot about what he’d say to Izuku, if he ever saw him again, but when the day finally came, he found it difficult to say anything at all. He even thought about dropping the class, but he needed the credit.
Unlike Katsuki, Izuku was an active participant in the class. He wasn’t sure what his major was—the particular class was restricted to non-arts majors, but anyone who heard Izuku during discussion would’ve thought art was his passion in life.
Beyond the reception area was a long hallway with crimson walls and a high ceiling. Along the walls were a number of evenly spaced paintings. Katsuki made a beeline for the first one he saw, because frankly, he just wanted to be done with the assignment. But as he got closer, he stopped, frowning.
The painting didn’t really depict anything—at least not anything Katsuki could discern. As far as he could tell, it was just a collage of brushstrokes, leaving patches of red, black, and violet.
In other words, it wasn’t the kind of painting Katsuki could spend three paragraphs describing.
He looked at the next one and scowled when he saw it was similar. He knew he shouldn’t be surprised. They were most likely all from the same artist, after all, but it still irked him.
With a sigh, he continued down the hall until he reached the first proper room—a gallery of what looked to be pastel drawings. From a distance, the drawings looked fairly simple. It was only when he got closer that he realized how intricate they actually were. The one closest to him depicted a messy bedroom at night, where the shadows twisted and curled in an almost lace-like pattern. There was a small window above the bed, and when he leaned in, he realized the stars weren’t stars at all, but rather dozens of tiny eyes, suspended in the night sky.
Though it was a bit creepy, it had an entrancing quality to it. The longer he looked at it, the more details he noticed.
Katsuki pulled out his phone and took a picture for later, and then another one of himself with the drawing in the background. He slid his phone back into his pocket, and for a moment, he just stood there.
Technically, he had everything he needed to complete the assignment. There was no need for him to stay. And though he wasn’t especially interested, it felt wasteful to pay admission and leave before he’d seen everything.
It probably wouldn’t take more than a few minutes.
Shrugging, Katsuki decided he might as well get his money’s worth and continued on.
The next room was full of paintings, most of which were nothing to write home about. A couple of landscapes, portraits of rich assholes. There was no denying the artists’ technical skill, but that didn’t make the paintings interesting.
The room after that featured sculptures, mostly—the kind of pieces that were technically impressive but aesthetically unremarkable. Katsuki never really liked these sorts of sculptures. They tapped into something deep inside him that made him nervous to look away, as though his attention were the only thing keeping them from coming to life.
The next room housed more bland paintings, though it was unique in that it also featured a few tapestries which were actually pretty interesting to look at.
When he circled back to the room with the pastel drawings, Katsuki knew he’d seen it all. He checked his phone. Just over twenty minutes had passed.
He sighed, trying not to be pissed off about how underwhelming most of the museum was. He’d go take a piss, and then head home, maybe knock out a paragraph or two before his afternoon class.
He ducked out into the hallway, heading for the bathroom.
As he walked down the corridor, the sound of his shoes hitting the marble floor reverberated in the open space. The ceilings in this building were higher than most, almost as though it were a warehouse rather than a museum. It reminded Katsuki of when he was a kid, when everything seemed enormous because he was so small.
He found the bathroom at the end of the hall, but froze upon opening the door. There were five urinals all lined up along the wall to Katsuki’s right, and it took him a moment to realize that they were supposed to be shaped like flowers. Katsuki cringed.
Ah yes, pissing on flowers. Exactly what I want to do.
He sighed as he unzipped his pants. It was weird, but it was an art museum. What did he expect?
When he was done, he shuffled over to the sink, the knob squeaking when he twisted it on, and begun to wash his hands, drying them off with a paper towel. Katsuki checked his phone again. 12:25 PM. He couldn’t wait to get out.
He glanced up at the mirror, quickly fixing his hair, and froze. He could see the door behind him in his reflection, right next to the urinals.
Was there a second door he didn’t notice?
Katsuki glanced at the adjacent wall, where he’d thought he’d entered from. There was nothing there. But… that wasn’t right. He looked back at the urinals, and then at the door. He thought he remembered seeing them. That they were, in fact, the first thing he saw. If that was the door he came through, he’d have entered facing the sinks.
Or maybe he just felt like they were, because they were so weird. The sinks were ordinary. The bathroom in general was, everything except the urinals. That must be it. Katsuki was tired and bored, and his mind just latched onto the first notable thing he saw.
He swallowed.
The fluorescent lights buzzed over head. They didn’t flicker, but the output of light seemed to waver slightly, the kind of thing you wouldn’t notice unless you were paying attention, but which left you with a headache all the same.
Katsuki shook his head and turned to leave. Whatever.
He passed the entrance to one of the rooms and tensed.
“Deku?”
Izuku was standing in front of one of the other pastel drawings, scribbling away in his notebook. He jumped about a foot in the air when Katsuki called out, and spun around to face him.
“Kacchan!” He said, eyes still wide. “I didn’t expect to… ah, you’re probably here for the assignment, right?”
Katsuki nodded, but made no move to approach him. He just stood there, gawking at him. This was the first time he’d been alone with Izuku since they parted ways after middle school, and Katsuki had no clue what to do or say. He should apologize. He knew that, but this was just a chance meeting in some shitty museum. They were alone, not by choice, but by coincidence. Would it even be appropriate? It didn’t feel like it.
Izuku shuffled awkwardly beneath Katsuki’s attention, and it was then that he realized how fucking creepy he must look. Katsuki cleared his throat.
“Right, uh. Yeah. I just finished, so uhh. Good luck. Sorry for…” being such a fucking asshole in middle school, “for bothering you, I mean. Uhh, see you in class.”
Katsuki’s body moved in this jerky, robotic sort of way as he turned to head down the hallway.
“Ah, wait!”
Katsuki stopped in his tracks, his body going tense. Izuku’s footsteps reverberated in the vast room as he jogged over to him.
“Which piece did you pick?”
“What’re you—oh.” His eyes widened, and he bit his tongue before the reflexive ‘why?’ could escape. Don’t jinx it. Katsuki grabbed his phone and pulled up the picture, briefly glancing at his other recent photos, just to make sure there wasn’t anything weird Izuku could see if he accidentally tapped the screen, or whatever. He then handed it to Izuku.
“Oh wow, that’s so cool!”
“Yeah,” Katsuki cleared his throat. “Uh, you should zoom in. It’s super detailed.”
Izuku did as he suggested, his eyes lighting up as he took in the intricacies of the drawing.
“Wow,” he said again, “this must’ve taken forever to complete…”
“No kidding. And there’s probably a lot more you can’t see with my phone’s shitty camera.”
“I can’t believe I missed it,” Izuku said, smiling as he looked up and handed his phone back. “Which room was it in?”
Katsuki blinked. “Uhh, pretty sure it was the one just across the hall.”
Izuku frowned. “Wait, really? That’s weird. I just came from there.”
“C’mere, I’ll show you,” Katsuki said, and then led the way to the opposite room.
Except it wasn’t there. Katsuki took three steps into the gallery and stopped, frowning. The room was full of classical paintings, like the ones he’d seen earlier. He didn’t really recognize any of them, but then, none of them were particularly memorable.
“The fuck…?”
“Eh? It’s not here?”
“It… should be.” Katsuki glanced over his shoulder, into the corridor behind them. It was the first room he’d seen. It was on his left. Katsuki stared down the hallway, in the direction he’d entered from. Abstract paintings hung upon the walls, just like the ones he saw earlier. He thought.
“Well, the layout of this place is a bit confusing. I guess you must be mistaken.”
“I’m not,” he muttered absently, still staring into the long corridor. For some reason, he didn’t want to stop.
There was a beat of silence, and then Izuku huffed a sort of awkward laugh. “Well, the only alternative is that they somehow switched out all the paintings when you weren’t looking.”
That broke him out of his trance, and he shook his head, blinking hard.
“Fuck. Okay, yeah, you’re right. That’s… yeah.” Katsuki turned toward him again, taking a deep breath and sighing. “Maybe it was the next one.”
Katsuki strode across the room, a headache beginning to set in, and entered the next exhibit, only to find himself surrounded by sculptures and a handful of pottery pieces. He groaned, avoiding eye contact with Izuku as he doubled back. With Izuku trailing behind, they crossed the hall again and made their way to the fourth and final—or so he thought—room. More traditional style paintings. But where’s the tapestry? It’s gotta be here somewhere. Why—?
“Oh, Kacchan, look!” Izuku touched his arm and pointed. He followed the gesture until his eyes fell upon something that made him equal parts annoyed and relieved. There was another hallway, separate from the one they’d just passed through. It didn’t explain how he’d ended up all the way over there, but then, he hadn’t gotten much sleep last night.
Huffing, Katsuki barely resisted the urge to stomp as he entered the other hallway, which was also filled with abstract paintings. “So fucking annoying,” he grumbled, making a beeline for the last room on the right—first on the left, from the opposite direction.
He stopped in his tracks as soon as he entered. Until that moment, if Katsuki had to describe what he’d been feeling, he wouldn’t have known where to start. He was annoyed and confused by the museum’s layout, slightly embarrassed by his inability to navigate it, and vaguely anxious, for reasons he couldn’t precisely determine.
The first thing he felt when he stepped into that room was fear.
It was sharp and abrupt; a hypodermic needle piercing the skin—there and gone in a second before fizzling out into anxiety.
They were back where they started, or so it seemed. Back in the room where he’d found Izuku to begin with.
He didn’t have to look to know that Izuku was just as freaked out as he was. He could tell from the way his breathing choked up.
“This… s’gotta be a fucking joke.”
Izuku took a shuddering breath. “No, we… We must’ve gotten turned around somehow.”
Katsuki said nothing. He stared at a painting of a woman lacing up a pair of ballet shoes, and swallowed the metallic taste on his tongue.
“Oh, I know!” Izuku took his backpack off halfway and unzipped it. He rifled around for a moment before he pulled out a small pamphlet, much like the one Katsuki had been given upon entry. Izuku flipped through it for a moment, and then the tension eased from his shoulders. “Look, there’s a map.”
Katsuki came to look over his shoulder.
“I think… I think we’re here.” He pointed to a room on the lower left. “We just passed the bathrooms, so that must be it.”
“You sure those are the only bathrooms?”
Izuku bit his lip. “I mean… I don’t see any others.”
Katsuki remained quiet, looking back at the hallway they just passed through, unease steadily mounting.
“Maybe we should just ask the receptionist,” Izuku suggested.
“…Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
With that, they headed out into the hallway. Abstract paintings passed in his periphery, somehow both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. The hallway felt longer than he remembered, but that was probably just the anxiety talking.
Their footsteps reverberated throughout the corridor as they neared the end, punctuating the silence. It was then that Katsuki realized something.
“Deku?”
“Yeah?”
“Have you…” He looked over his shoulder. “Have you seen anyone else in here?”
“Hm? Oh.” Izuku looked up, as though thinking. “Now that you mention it, I guess not. There was the receptionist, but after her…” He trailed off.
Katsuki nodded slowly, that sense of disquiet creeping back in, despite his efforts to suppress it. “That’s… weird, isn’t it?”
Izuku hummed. “I mean, maybe a little, but… well, it is the middle of the day on a Tuesday. Most people are at school or work right now.”
“Yeah, but shouldn’t there at least be, like… employees? The woman at the front desk asked if I wanted a guide.”
“Maybe she’s the guide, too.”
“Well, there’s gotta be someone who takes over while she’s giving tours. And don’t museums usually have, like, security?”
He shrugged. “I guess they don’t need it.” And then he pointed at something, and Katsuki followed the gesture to the camera mounted high on the wall, staring down at them, glowing red light indicating it was on.
Katsuki felt a chill run down his spine.
They reached the end of the hall, turned left, and Katsuki spotted the arch near the end with a sigh of relief. He quickened his pace, moving ahead of Izuku as he turned the corner, and nearly walked straight into a sculpture of a woman breastfeeding an infant. He staggered back, cursing under his breath. They were in the room with the sculptures again, but this time, Katsuki recognized it. The tapestry hung at the far end of the room.
“What? But… no.” Izuku held the map closer to his face, as though that would make it display anything else. “This is supposed to be the reception area. Look, it’s right here.” Izuku all but shoved the map in front of his face. But Katsuki didn’t need to look at it to know Izuku was right.
“Maybe it’s out of date. Or maybe we went the wrong way.”
“That…” It sounded like he was about to protest before he went silent, gazing at the map. “I mean… I guess it’s possible. The layout seems mostly symmetrical…”
They turned around and backtracked down the hall. But when they arrived at the opposite end, they found no sign of the reception area, just another door. Katsuki reached out, hand hovering over the handle for a moment. He reined himself in and twisted it. The door opened into the bathroom, facing the urinals.
This is a different bathroom. It has to be, he thought.
But even then, he knew, deep down inside.
Katsuki yanked it shut, and when he looked at Izuku again, he found him fiddling with his phone.
“What’re you doing?”
“I was thinking there might be a more up-to-date map somewhere on the museum’s website. It’s worth checking, at least.”
Katsuki hummed, watching as Izuku opened up a new tab and typed something in, but when he hit search, the page just went white. They both stared at it, waiting for it to load, but it didn’t.
“Um, uhh… wait, hold on.” He opened the settings app and switched to data, and tried to reload the page.
Still, nothing.
Katsuki pulled out his own phone, a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach as he read the text in the upper left corner: no service. He slid the device back into his pocket. It looked like Izuku was restarting his phone, still trying to make it work. Katsuki stood there, silent, as Izuku tapped in his passcode and tried again.
Nothing.
There was an acrid taste on the back of his tongue, like the times he ate too much candy as a kid, mixed with the metallic tang of a nosebleed running down the back of your throat. He tried to swallow it down, but the taste clung to his tongue like a disease.
“Let’s just yell for help,” Katsuki tried, clenching his fists, trying to ignore the way the idea made his stomach churn. What are you afraid of?
Don’t worry about it.
Izuku hesitated for a second before nodding. They returned to the room with the statues and set their sights on the security cameras. Katsuki cleared his throat.
“Oi! Where’s the exit?” He shouted. “We’ve been looking all over this place!”
Izuku cupped his hands over his mouth. “Could someone please help us?”
They continued to shout as they weaved in between various rooms, but if anyone was watching the feed, they weren’t listening.
“For fuck’s sake.” Katsuki muttered, raking a hand through his hair. “Gonna be late for my next class at this rate.”
Izuku nodded quietly, but said nothing, a faraway look in his eyes. Katsuki swallowed. “C’mon. Let’s try this way.”
They were in the hallway again, heading to the left. At the end, they found a set of double doors. Katsuki shoved them open, and they were in the pastel room.
“The fuck?” he started to turn around. “Since when did this room have—”
Katsuki froze.
The doors were gone. In their place was just another pastel piece, innocently affixed to the wall. Katsuki stumbled back, his pulse racing.
“Kacch—?” Izuku said. And then he saw it too, and the sound he let out was somewhere between a cry and a wheeze.
Katsuki stared at it for several seconds, blood rushing in his ears. A wave of nausea took hold of him, bile twisting in his stomach, creeping up his esophagus. He gulped it back down, ignoring the sting. He might’ve stayed there much longer, were it not for the sound of Izuku at his side, his breathing growing distinctly heavy.
“Kacchan…” he said, so soft he almost didn’t hear it. There was a prickly sensation in his limbs, his fingertips cold and numb. He took hold of Izuku’s wrist and wordlessly led him out of the room and into the hall. There was a small alcove at the near end, decorated with fake potted plants. He didn’t register the way Izuku was shaking until they came to a stop, at which point he hastily released his wrist, as though he’d been burned.
They were in the alcove now, backed up against the wall. The relative seclusion was comforting, even if he was pretty sure it didn’t actually matter.
“Kacchan, what is this?” Izuku whispered, like he was afraid of being overheard. “What the hell is going on?”
Katsuki opened his mouth, but no sound came out—because really, how the fuck should he know?
“I…” He hesitated, peering around the corner of the alcove—into that long, red hallway. “I don’t know.”
He tore his eyes away long enough to look at Izuku. He found him sitting at his side, his face pale and his lips raw from chewing on them. His legs were crossed, and his trembling hands lay palm up in his lap, and he stared down at them, a vacant, distant glaze in his eyes. Katsuki knew that look, the gaze of a person in danger, whose brain was screaming at them: fight, flight, fawn, freeze. But fighting was impossible, as were flight and fawning, so Izuku was making himself as still as possible. It was the only option that made any sense.
Katsuki checked around the corner one more time and then returned his attention to Izuku. “Hey, it’s…” He swallowed, his voice dropping to a whisper. “It’s gonna be alright, nerd… we’re gonna get out of here, okay?” He said. “I… do you have a class soon? If you want, I could drive you… drop you off right in front of the building…” He trailed off, strangled, like he’d run out of oxygen.
It felt better, somehow—framing this as an inconvenience. A barrier to overcome, where the only consequence was being late to class. It made it feel normal, like he could almost trick himself into believing that none of this was really happening. They’d simply walk down the hall, turn the corner and leave. The receptionist would bid them farewell with a smile, and everything would be as it ought to.
But it felt hollow to him, and saying it out loud only made it worse. Like a cruel joke.
Izuku didn’t respond immediately, almost like he didn’t even hear him. A few seconds went by before he tensed, like the words had only just made it up to his brain. “I… yeah. Of course…” A pause. “Thanks… for the offer…”
The lights in the hallway buzzed ceaselessly, the blast of the air conditioning like cold cuts on his skin.
Katsuki sat down next to him, his legs angled awkwardly to avoid touching him. The marble floor felt too cold, even through his jeans. Every few seconds, he peered around the corner.
He wasn’t sure how much time passed in silence. Katsuki saw Izuku’s head shift from the corner of his eye, so he wasn’t startled when Izuku spoke.
“What should we do?” He asked, quiet and scratchy.
Katsuki sighed, leaning back against the wall. “What can we do?” He muttered, mostly to himself. “I guess we just… keep looking.”
Izuku nodded slowly and was quiet for a moment. “What if that doesn’t work?”
Katsuki blinked, his mind going blank for a moment. It was the most natural question, but Katsuki didn’t have an answer. He checked around the corner again, but the hallway looked the same. Would it be worse if it was different?
A minute passed before he said, “then we wait for something to change, I guess.”
Izuku frowned, finally looking up at him fully. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. I think this place closes around four... I guess an employee will find us sooner or later.” That wasn’t the kind of change he meant, and Katsuki was pretty sure they both knew it.
Izuku looked down again. “That’s only if we’re still in the Red.”
Katsuki blinked again. “…The hell d’you mean?”
He shrugged. “Just because it looks similar doesn’t mean it actually is.”
“Deku… are you hearing yourself? That’s crazy.”
“Crazier than those doors disappearing behind us?”
Katsuki clenched his jaw, looking away for a moment. “Or,” he began, trying to keep his tone even, “maybe it’s just a fucking prank. Hell, maybe we’re on some shitty reality TV show right now. Or maybe none of this is real, and one of us is just dreaming it all up, or maybe someone drugged us with some sort of hallucinogen and orchestrated this entire shitshow.” He was just throwing ideas at the wall, seeing what stuck.
Izuku looked up, staring at him for a moment, and for the first time in a while he seemed to relax, at least a little. Some of that tension returned as he said, “But… we’ve been seeing all the same things.”
“Have we?” Katsuki raised an eyebrow. “Maybe we’re just assuming that. Maybe the drug’s playing off our reactions. Like, you see something shocking, I see your reaction, and then when I look wherever you’re looking I also see something shocking ‘cuz that’s what my brain expects.”
“But that still doesn’t explain us seeing the exact same things. I mean…” His voice dropped to a whisper, his eyes darting around. “You saw what happened with the doors too, right?”
“Yeah, but like… what else could it have been? The doors disappearing is a pretty predictable escalation of the shit we were already dealing with.”
“…I guess,” Izuku mumbled. “But it still seems pretty… out there.”
“Never said it wasn’t,” Katsuki said, shrugging. “But it makes more sense than this not being the Red.”
Izuku was quiet for a while, seeming to have calmed down, at least a bit. “Maybe you’re right…” He said. “But we… we should still be careful. Even if it’s as you say, we should proceed with the worst case scenario in mind.”
“What is the worst case scenario?” He asked, before he could think better of it. There was a second of silence before Katsuki shook his head. “Actually, don’t answer that. Let’s just focus on getting out of this hellhole,” he said, reaching into his pocket to grab his phone. “D’you have reception?”
“Uhh,” Izuku pulled out his phone and checked. “No,” he sighed.
“Maybe we should walk around, see if there’s someplace with a signal around here.”
Izuku seemed somewhat reluctant to leave the alcove, but after taking a deep breath, he nodded, standing up and holding his phone high.
Everything was fine at first.
They stuck together as they crept through the halls, weaved between rooms, their cell phones held high. Yet, no matter where they went, the words ‘no service’ persisted. Katsuki tried to keep his frustration locked down tight, tried to keep his head on his shoulders because goddamnit, this wasn’t the time to lose it. But when careful searching failed, it was so easy to get careless.
They started walking faster without meaning to. The clock on Katsuki’s screen cut straight through him, each digit a slice in the thin veneer of his reality. Always marching onward.
No service.
3:32.
No service.
3:33.
And every other minute:
“Anything?”
“No. You?”
“No.”
Nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing. Katsuki clutched his phone harder, fingertips white and cold.
So they walked faster, stretched their arms further, jumped up and down as if it would help, as if anything would help. Full-on power-walking now, Katsuki swung around the corner at the end of the corridor, where the splatter paintings all blurred into one long smear of color across the deep red walls. He was on the tips of his toes, reaching hard enough to feel the burn in his shoulder, and he shouted: “Anything?”
Katsuki heard the sound of his own voice, resonating through the halls; that subtle echo that played off the wide walls and high ceiling, that carried through the building so well that even the furthest reaches of the Red would feel it.
He heard his own voice. He did not hear Izuku’s.
Katsuki’s heels hit the floor and his heartbeat stalled. “Deku?” He called again, still as the statues housed in this space. Again, there was no response.
Katsuki willed himself to turn around, look down at the end of the hall he’d just come through. It was so quiet down there. He felt it as he inched toward the turn. The silence invaded him, suffocating his thoughts beneath its weight. No talking. No thinking. Just one step forward. And then another.
There was no such thing as true silence. There were only sounds we had learned to filter out. The blow of air and white noise machines, the buzz of fluorescent lights, the creaks and cracks just quiet enough to pass under the radar.
That’s where it hid—in those auditory blind spots. It bloomed where the silence was strongest.
Katsuki couldn’t think, too muffled by the quiet. His vision blurred as he neared the end of the hall. It was a left turn, and the area beyond seemed dark. He held his breath, and in that thin pocket of soundlessness, he found the space for one observation.
It’s supposed to be a right, not a left.
At the cusp of the turn, Katsuki stopped in his tracks, teetering on the edge of oblivion. The buzzing lights stuttered, and for one fleeting a moment, it truly was silent. He felt the pull of gravity just around the corner, and the brief sparks of clarity.
Katsuki took a deep breath.
And he spun around and ran.
He didn’t turn to look behind him, he just bounded down the hall and turned the next corner, shoes squealing across the marble floor as he tore through room after room. “Deku? Deku?!”
He felt the cameras staring into him, the piercing gaze of each eye in the pastel works, and beneath the sculptures he felt the weight of pity and contempt. Katsuki rounded another corner and almost smacked straight into a wall, and doubled back in the direction he’d come through. And it was there, in the room with the sculptures, that he saw the double doors again. Katsuki dove for them without a second thought, slamming into the crash bars, only to find himself back in the sculpture exhibit again. Except it wasn’t the same one he’d come through. It couldn’t have been, because this one had—
“—Kacchan!”
Izuku’s body slammed into him from his left, arms wrapping tightly around him like he was afraid he’d slip away. Katsuki hugged him back as they hit a nearby wall and slid down to the floor together, too relieved to care about the bruises that bloomed beneath their skin.
“Izuku,” Katsuki heard himself say. Izuku was crying, face buried in his chest as he shook and heaved and stained his shirt with tears and snot.
“I thought,” he hiccoughed. “I thought you were gone.”
Katsuki was speechless for a moment, his mouth opening and closing uselessly. Eventually, he croaked, “I thought I was too.”
For a long time, they remained there, tucked away in the corner of the sculpture room, moving very little, except that every once in a while, Katsuki would check the time on his phone.
7:01 pm.
8:14 pm.
9:45 pm.
11:03 pm.
In the brightly lit exhibit hall, every hour looked the same.
Until it didn’t.
Katsuki had his eyes closed at the time. Under normal circumstances, he would’ve been in bed already, and though the bright lights were disorienting, they couldn’t fully keep the drowsiness away.
Then, with one echoing snap of a switch, the lights were off. And ironically, Katsuki felt more awake in their absence than he had at any point in the past five hours.
He held his breath, arms tightening around Izuku, who lay tense against him. For several long minutes, neither of them dared to speak. They just lay there, still as corpses, listening. Waiting.
Without the buzzing lights and white noise machines, everything was so much more quiet, every creak and groan of the building’s structure magnified into a potential threat.
Then Izuku shifted against him, propping himself up just a little bit, and breathed, “Kacchan…”
Katsuki’s response was more reflexive than anything. “Shh.”
More silence, and a few more minutes elapsed before Izuku tried again. Still barely a whisper. “What should we do?”
Katsuki swallowed. Even that sounded too loud to him. “We could… try to find the bathroom… I guess.”
“Hmm?”
“If any room’s got a light switch, it’d be that one.”
“Oh,” Izuku murmured. “I see. That’s smart.”
But Katsuki did not move, and neither did Izuku.
“Do you want to?” Izuku asked.
“…Do you?”
It was a very long time before Izuku responded. “No,” he said, like the word had been strangled out of him. “I’m scared.”
Me too, he wanted to say. This can’t be the end. I still have so much I need to tell you. More than I can say right now. Please don’t let this be the end.
But instead, he just said, “It’s okay. We’ll just… wait it out.”
He felt Izuku nod against him.
For the rest of the night, they did not speak.
When the lights switched on again, the shock of it had them both nearly jumping out of their skin.
A harsh fluorescent glow flooded the room, banishing the oppressive darkness but leaving behind a jagged edge of unease. Katsuki looked around the room with jerking, bird-like turns of his head. As far as he could tell, nothing had changed. Once the initial panic subsided, Katsuki checked the time on his phone.
6 AM, on the dot.
He swallowed the knot in his throat and looked at Izuku again. “…Did you sleep?”
Izuku shook his head. “I was too nervous.”
Katsuki nodded. “Yeah.”
The silence between them stretched thin, not quite awkward but charged with a tension Katsuki couldn’t name. It was in that silence that Katsuki noticed something strange.
“Deku, I…” He hesitated, frowning slightly. “Are you, like… hungry? Or thirsty?”
Izuku blinked, his brows knitting together. “Now that you mention it… no.”
“Me neither.”
“That’s… weird.”
Katsuki grunted, shifting into a more comfortable position as he thought it over.
Six in the morning meant they’d been trapped for nearly eighteen hours now. A lot of drugs functioned as appetite or thirst suppressants. Eighteen hours was a long time, but for a powerful enough substance, it wasn’t absurd.
That was assuming they had, in fact, been drugged. Katsuki wouldn’t say so out loud, but the idea only seemed less plausible with each passing hour.
“We should find a bathroom,” Katsuki said suddenly, standing and dusting his hands off on his jeans. “Drink some water, just in case.”
Izuku nodded, a quiet grunt escaping him as he pushed himself up, his backpack still slung over his shoulders. Katsuki started to turn toward the hallway, but Izuku’s voice stopped him.
“Wait.”
Katsuki looked back, and his eyes landed on Izuku’s outstretched hand, his fingers trembling just slightly. A faint blush colored Izuku’s cheeks as he avoided Katsuki’s gaze. “So we don’t lose each other again.”
For a moment, Katsuki froze, his throat tightening. He forced a gruff nod and laced his fingers with Izuku’s, turning away to hide the warmth creeping up his neck.
It didn’t take long to find the bathroom. The door creaked softly as it swung shut behind them, and they finally released each other’s hands. Katsuki went straight to the sink, the water rushing cold and metallic-tasting. He forced down a few handfuls despite the bitterness, and once he’d had enough, he splashed his face and grabbed a paper towel, drying himself off before glancing over his shoulder.
Izuku was on the floor, muttering to himself as he rifled through his book bag.
“The hell’re you doing?”
Izuku’s muttering cut off abruptly as he pulled something free with a triumphant grin, held it up like a prize.
Katsuki squinted. “What’s—Oh.”
It was a box cutter.
Katsuki raised an eyebrow. “You suggestin’ we try to cut our way outta here with… that?”
Izuku frowned. “Unless you’ve got something better we could use.”
“Sure, Deku,” he said with a snort. “Lemme just whip out my trusty chainsaw.”
“Well,” Izuku pouted, “If you don’t have anything, stop looking at me like I’m an idiot.”
Katsuki rolled his eyes. “I don’t think you’re an idiot, nerd. I just think it’s kinda cu—” He stopped himself, biting his tongue. Izuku looked at him expectantly. “Comical,” he amended. “It’s a bit comical. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea, though.”
Izuku turned his gaze away, his pout softening into a faint smile. “Ah.”
It was quiet for a moment.
“Oh, shit, actually—” Katsuki dropped to one knee and yanked his own bag open. He rummaged through the front pouch until his fingers brushed over a familiar shape. He pulled out a heavy-duty utility knife, flipping it open with practiced ease. “If that box cutter gives out, we’ve got this. Sturdier blade.”
Izuku narrowed his eye. “You just… carry that around?”
Katsuki gave him a flat look. “I go hiking, Deku. Y’think I’m gonna fight a bear with my bare hands?”
“I mean…” Izuku’s eyes flickered to Katsuki’s forearms. “Maybe?”
Katsuki blinked a few times and then looked away, heat rising to his cheeks again as he grumbled under his breath. “Look, I’m just saying… a box cutter might work for drywall, but mortar? Brick?” He raised an eyebrow.
“…Okay, yeah. Point taken.”
Katsuki slid the knife back into his bag for the time being. “Oh, and—” He dug deeper, pulling out two Sharpies—one orange, one green.
Izuku tilted his head. “Markers?”
“More of an experiment than a solution,” Katsuki replied with a shrug. “But I figured it’d be smart to mark where we’ve been. Just in case.”
“Ohh,” Izuku said, and then started to laugh.
“What?”
“I dunno. It’s just kind of funny. We’ve been trapped in this museum for less that a day, and we’re already ready to vandalize it.”
Katsuki smirked, twirling the orange sharpie between his fingers. “Well, if they didn’t want their building getting fucked up, they shouldn’t have trapped us here. Stupid games, stupid prizes, y’know?”
Izuku shook his head, still grinning. And even under harsh fluorescent lights, even with dark circles under his eyes, he still smiled like the sun.
Katsuki cleared his throat.
“So…” He glanced pointedly at the box cutter in Izuku’s hand. “Did you have any particular place in mind, or…?”
Izuku hummed thoughtfully, tapping the blade against the tile floor. “Mm, not really. I mean, we should definitely try to cut through an exterior wall. Problem is, I’m not really sure what that… well, means.”
Katsuki nodded, considering. “I think the room with the pastel drawings had exterior walls.”
Izuku stood up and threw his backpack over his shoulder again. “I guess it’s as good a place to try as any.”
The walls were much tougher than they expected them to be.
When Izuku made the initial cut, he had to throw his entire weight into the movement just to pierce the surface, and it didn’t look like slicing through was much easier. Thin white dust flaked off as he worked, but the blade wasn’t making much progress. It was only when Katsuki noticed him torquing the box cutter that he opted to intervene, covering Izuku’s hand with his own.
“It’s gonna break if you keep that up.”
With a frustrated sigh, Izuku let go.
“Here, let me try,” Katsuki said, lightly shouldering him out of the way.
It was difficult, that was for sure. The walls weren’t indestructible, but they were stubborn. Katsuki made a little more progress than Izuku had in the same amount of time, but even then, it was just a few inches.
After a few minutes, he stepped back, rolling his shoulder and glancing back at Izuku. “Whelp,” he said, cracking his knuckles, “this shit better be worth it.”
“Maybe we should try the knife?” Izuku suggested tentatively.
Katsuki hesitated, his eyes darting to his bag where the knife was stored. “Not yet,” he said, eyeing the plaster. “This stuff’s soft enough. No point wreckin’ the good blade before we really need it.”
And with that, he dove back in.
They spent the next several hours working in shifts.
The box cutter had been adequate for the outermost layer—what they assumed to be drywall or plaster—but it had dulled significantly throughout the day. Katsuki tested the give of the wall once they’d started on the second side, but it was like steel beneath his knuckles.
So they kept cutting.
From morning to afternoon, from afternoon to evening. Katsuki’s hands ached from the repeated pressure, and more than once, he’d had to stop to clean the blade, removing chunks of plaster caked to its edge. It was hard, tedious work, but eventually, at around 8 PM, they managed to break through the first layer. When they pried the chunk of wall free, they were met with the sight of bricks behind it.
For several seconds, neither of them spoke.
“Well,” Izuku said finally, a wry smile tugging at his lips. “At least we know it’s an exterior wall.”
“Yeah,” Katsuki muttered, crouching to inspect the hole. He reached in, brushing his fingers against the brick surface. It was rough and cool to the touch, utterly ordinary. He sat back on his heels, sighing. “Bad news is this is gonna take forever, if it even works at all.”
Izuku bit his lip. “Maybe we could use one of the sculptures. Is marble harder than brick?”
Katsuki frowned, glancing toward the hallway. “If people are sculpting with it, it can’t be that hard.” He tapped the surface of the bricks with his knuckle. “This shit looks pretty old, though. If we focus on the mortar, it might work… maybe. Still gonna take fucking ages, though.”
“Well,” Izuku said softly, “we’ve got time.”
The silence that followed was heavy, and the longer he sat in it, the more uncomfortable he became.
After a moment, Katsuki took a deep breath and exhaled. “We should get some rest.”
“Here?”
“Oh, hell no,” Katsuki shot back, grabbing his bag and tossing it over his shoulders. “Could you sleep under these lights? We’re sleeping in the bathroom.”
“But… But what if it disappears? All our hard work would be for nothing…”
Katsuki tensed. He was right. “Fuck.”
He thought it over for a while, and then it hit him. He half-removed his backpack and pulled it around to his front, then started rifling through it. Eventually, he found a small tin container, encased in shrink wrap as evidence of its disuse. Katsuki bit the plastic, then ripped it off and opened the container, grinning at what he found.
His parents had always overemphasized the importance of keeping an emergency sewing kit on hand. Katsuki just assumed it was a byproduct of them being fashion designers. He’d never found himself in a situation where a needle and thread were necessary—until now, anyway.
Katsuki picked the biggest needle and thickest thread he could find, and threaded it through the eye of the needle. He then took to the wall, pressing the needle into it, just under the edge of the hole.
“What’re you doing?” Izuku asked.
“You’ll see.”
Piercing the wall was tough. Katsuki lifted his shirt up and bunched the fabric in his palm, to keep from stabbing his own hand with the back of the needle as he pressed it in. Eventually, the needle popped through the other side of the plaster and Katsuki looped it around, forcing the needle through the hole one more time before triple-tying it. It was around that point that Izuku seemed to catch on.
“You mean to—?”
“Yep.” Katsuki grunted, biting the thread to cut the needle free, and grabbing the spool off the floor. “It’s not a guarantee, but neither is us stayin’ here all night, if you think about it.”
With that, they packed their bags and made for the bathroom. It was awkward, holding the spool of thread as they walked. Katsuki was a bit worried there might not be enough, but in the end, they made it back to the bathroom with a few feet to spare. Katsuki tied the thread around the pipe beneath the sink and sat down with a sigh. When he glanced at Izuku, he found him grinning.
“That’s such a smart idea, Kacchan.”
Katsuki looked away. “I’d wait to see if it works before sayin’ that.”
“Ah… yeah, fair,” Izuku said. “Well, anyway… I was thinking. We should probably sleep in shifts. I mean, I know we haven’t seen anything, and maybe I’m just being overly paranoid—”
“—You’re not.” Katsuki interjected. “Deku, paranoia is like the only sensible way you could react to this bullshit. We should be as cautious as possible.”
Izuku looked back at him for a moment, biting his lip.
“…Do you still think the same thing?” He eventually asked. “That we’ve been drugged, I mean.”
Katsuki opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He just gaped at Izuku for a moment, his thoughts muddled. “I… don’t know.”
Izuku nodded slowly. “Do you have any other ideas?”
“I don’t know,” he repeated. “Look. We’ve both been awake for over thirty-six hours. We can theorize about it tomorrow.”
“Ah. Good point,” he muttered. “So, um. Do you wanna go first?”
“To sleep?” He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t really care either way. You can go first.”
“W-Well, I mean, you’ve been awake longer than I have. I slept in yesterday,” he said. “I don’t mind taking the first shift, Kacchan.”
Katsuki stared at him for a while, searching for any sign that he was just doing this to be polite. Ultimately, he conceded. “Alright. You’re on watch first, then.”
Izuku smiled. “How long should the shifts be?”
“Eh, three hours?” Katsuki offered. “That’s two full sleep cycles. I’ll set an alarm.”
“Good idea.”
Katsuki grunted and did his best to make himself comfortable. The floor was hard and probably pretty unsanitary, but he couldn’t think about that right now. He lay his head on his bag like a pillow, and settled in. “Lights?”
“Ah, right.”
Izuku stood up, nearly tripping over himself as he went for the light switch. He flicked it off, and the room filled with darkness, the only light leaking in through the sides of the bathroom door. It was just enough to see Izuku sitting there, slumped against the wall, squinting as he peered through the crack.
When Katsuki woke, it was half-past eleven. He was disoriented at first, but quickly shook himself when it came back to him.
Right, the shifts. I have a job to do.
The lights from the museum’s main area still bled in through the cracks around the door.
“Are you sure you don’t want to sleep a little longer?” Izuku asked. “I don’t mind.”
Katsuki scoffed. “Go to sleep, Deku.”
And that was that.
Izuku initially assumed a position similar to Katsuki’s, but seemed to toss and turn a lot more before he finally settled down, curled up in a ball on his side.
Cute.
Katsuki made himself look away.
He couldn’t see much through the door. The walls of the hallway were just a mass of red a couple of feet across from him. If there was anything out there that wanted to get in, Katsuki wouldn’t have much time to react.
He sighed, slumping against the wall, glancing at the string still tied around the sink pipe. It didn’t seem like anything had changed. Maybe nothing would.
And then, with a harsh snapping sound, the lights went out. Katsuki tensed, a quick glance at his phone letting him know that it was midnight. This was one thing he hadn’t really thought about; the fact that sleeping first meant he’d be the one on watch when the museum went dark.
And boy, was it dark. Without his phone, Katsuki would’ve been locked in total blackness.
He considered turning on the flashlight and shining it out into the hall, but decided against it. His phone was running low on battery as it was, and he wasn’t in the mood to paw around the walls in search of an outlet.
So he just sat there, in the dark, only occasionally glancing at his phone to check the time. Nothing happened. The museum was calm. So calm, he was starting to worry he might fall asleep on accident. He tried to occupy his mind with other things, the sound of Izuku snoring softly in the corner. But it was a constant battle.
He checked his phone again. It was around one in the morning.
Katsuki felt a shift in the air, and instantly tensed.
It was subtle. The kind of thing you could only notice when your senses had become so attuned to things being exactly as they were. He fumbled for his phone, the glow of his lock screen lighting just enough to illuminate that which was in his immediate vicinity. And it was enough.
In an instant, all the blood drained from Katsuki’s face.
The thread had gone taut.
Katsuki’s heart slammed into his chest.
It wasn’t enough for it to snap, but it was close, and oh God, oh fuck, what do I do, what do I do?
Katsuki shakily turned on the flashlight app, and swallowed the bile rising in his throat as he slowly leaned closer, and held it up to the crack in the door. He didn’t want to look, but he forced himself to anyway.
As he peered out of the crack, Katsuki was confused at first. He couldn’t see anything. At all. It was just completely black. His flashlight might as well not be on.
But it only lasted a second. He blinked, and the hallway was back again. Nothing out of the ordinary. When he checked the thread, it was loose again. He watched it for a moment before quickly retying it, giving it a bit more slack, just in case.
He stared out into the hallway for a while longer, but nothing else happened. He wondered if he should wake Izuku up, but decided against it.
One more hour, he told himself. One more hour and I can go back to sleep.
But Katsuki knew he wasn’t sleeping after this.
When Izuku woke up, Katsuki filled him in on what had happened, and told him he wanted to stay up with him for the next shift. Izuku initially protested, but Katsuki could see the relief in his shoulders.
And so they sat there, on either side of the bathroom door, peering through the cracks with one eye and watching the string with the other. Izuku had volunteered his own phone while Katsuki’s was charging, and it sat face down on the floor between them, flashlight shining up. Whenever Izuku leaned over to speak, the light caught his face. It reminded Katsuki of when they were kids. The stories they’d tell while camping out in tents in Katsuki’s backyard, the way they’d shine flashlights under their chins as they spoke in hushed tones about ghosts and monsters.
It was around half-past three in the morning when it happened again, and this time, they got to witness it, got to watch the way the thread suddenly tightened—and thank god he’d thought to loosen it. Izuku kept his cheek pressed up against the door.
The thread when slack, and then tightened again. It oscillated between the two states, like an accordion, and then settled into its taut state for what might’ve been a minute, or might’ve been an hour.
Izuku was still pressed up against the door, eyes glued to the outside. When he spoke, it was hushed and racked with tremors.
“It’s just like you said, Kacchan,” he whispered. “There’s nothing out there.”
Katsuki swallowed. He opted to take Izuku’s word for it.
“Nothing at all.”
Katsuki did eventually get to sleep again, albeit only another hour and a half, after the sun had risen.
Or rather, after the lights had turned on.
They left the bathroom at around nine in the morning and cautiously followed the string. When they finally reached the end, they were relieved to see that the hole they’d cut in the wall was still very much there.
But so was something else.
Katsuki actually didn’t notice it at first. He was making a beeline for the hole, ready to start on the bricks. Then Izuku grabbed his arm, and then he stopped, and saw it, too.
There, at the center of the opposite wall, was a door. It looked different from the other ones—similar in style, but… older. Or perhaps it just wasn’t maintained as well. The burnt red paint was cracked and peeling, the lower half marred by dirt and the shoe marks of thousands of visitors who stepped too soon, anxious to get through, to, perhaps, get out.
Katsuki turned his head just slightly toward Izuku, but kept his eyes locked on the door, as though watching it could keep it from vanishing.
Or doing anything else.
When he spoke, his voice was soft and scratchy. “You seen this one before?”
“No,” Izuku breathed. And they kept still.
There was something in there, the barest breath of red light. You could just see it, bleeding in beneath the bottom edge of the door, but the bright lights of the museum made it easy to miss. Katsuki imagined it’d be a lot easier at night, when it was dark. The thought of it sent a jerk of cold down his spine that he defiantly shook off. He cleared his throat.
“I guess we should probably…” He trailed off. After a second, he looked at Izuku, finally, but Izuku wasn’t looking back. His eyes were wide, mouth gaped and cheeks pale as he stared at it, as still as one of the museum’s sculptures.
“…Yeah, I…” He swallowed. Katsuki could almost hear the muscles working against the dryness in his throat. “I suppose we kind of… have to.”
Katsuki looked back at the door, and for a few more seconds, they stayed there. It was Izuku who moved first, and as if to make up for it, Katsuki took large strides to get in front of him. The door didn’t go anywhere as they approached. Katsuki stopped just in front of it, his hand hovering over the dull, slightly rusty handle.
There was still time. They didn’t have to open it. Except in every sense that was not physical, Katsuki knew they did.
He glanced one last time at Izuku, who stood at his side, if slightly behind. Then he turned the handle and pushed, the hinges squealing as the door opened to…
A wall.
There was just… a wall. Three of them, really; it was a room, albeit a tiny one. It might have passed for a small broom closet, but the door was too heavy—the sort of door that only ever leads outside.
He heard Izuku’s gasp before he saw it. His mouth was open, and he was about to ask what was wrong. Then he looked down, and he saw. He understood.
There was a hole in the floor.
It was large and round, encroaching on the perimeter of the closet. The edges were a bit jagged, but overall it was shockingly clean, given the floors were made from stone.
It was deep, too.
Katsuki leaned in, eyes straining, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not discern the bottom, or really anything further than a foot or so in. Beyond that point, he saw only pitch black—impossible, aberrant. The sort of darkness that just didn’t occur in the natural world, existing only in recollections of fever dreams you wished you could forget.
As he stared into it, he felt oddly captivated by its alien, impenetrable depths. There was something in there. Something just for him. He wanted to—
“—Kacchan,” Izuku whispered, sharp and strangled, pulling Katsuki from his trance. He started to turn toward him, but froze partway through. The red light, he remembered. He’d been so hypnotized by the chasm he’d failed to look for the source.
The sign sat precariously on the edge, and didn’t appear to be nailed down. He could probably kick it right down into the pit if he wanted to. And he kind of did, but he wouldn’t. Somehow, he just knew that the second he looked away, it’d be as though he’d done nothing at all. The sign would be there again, just as it had been, four bold letters glowing red above the infinite dark.
EXIT.
Katsuki slammed the door.
His knuckles were white around the handle, and he leaned back, pulling with his body weight, as though he could expect it to fly open the moment he let go. His heart hammered in his chest, and his grip was growing slick with sweat. After a moment, he slowly took his hands off of it, and as soon as he saw the door staying in place, he shot an arm out over Izuku’s shoulders and ushered him away from it.
As they left the room, Katsuki glanced back at it one last time. It was still there. And he had a sinking sensation deep in his core that seemed to pull his entire sense of being downward, as though a part of him was still there, reaching toward it until it reached back, and with hands of shadow it pulled him down into its primordial depths and swallowed him whole.
“Maybe we should go back…”
Katsuki looked up at Izuku, sitting cross-legged on the bathroom floor in front of him. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“I didn’t say we should… y’know, go into it,” Izuku waved his hands. “I just… I dunno. It seems like something worth investigating.”
“Yeah, if you’re looking to win a fucking Darwin award.”
Izuku sighed, shifting his weight back onto his hands. “I’m serious. I mean, I know it’s risky, but what if that really is the way out?”
He scoffed. “And where do you suppose that shit goes? Think we’ll emerge at the fuckin’ train station, or something?”
Izuku pursed his lips, and didn’t respond at first. His voice was a bit softer when he did. “We might regret it if we don’t.”
“We also might regret it if we do.”
“It’s not going to attack us, Kacchan.” Izuku rolled his eyes. “I’m only saying we should inspect it. We might be able to learn something… why are you so averse to this?”
Katsuki stared at him for a moment, incredulous. “What, you didn’t feel it?”
“Feel what?”
It dawned on Katsuki then.
“You… You didn’t look into it.”
Izuku frowned. “I did.”
“But you weren’t looking straight in like I was. You couldn’t have; you were behind me.”
“I guess?” He said. “I’m still not sure what you’re talking about, though.”
“Deku, that thing…” he swallowed. “It’s not… normal. I mean,” Katsuki stopped, exhaling harshly. “Fuck. It… wants us.”
Izuku blinked. “The hole?”
“Yeah. Or the Red. Fuck. I dunno.” He sighed. “It’s… I don’t think we’re hallucinating anymore, Deku. There’s something else going on here.”
For a while, Izuku just stared at him, brows pinched together in concern.
“What do you mean, it wants us?”
“Exactly what it sounds like.”
“…What does it sound like?”
Katsuki groaned.
“I’m sorry!” Izuku said. “I’m just trying to understand, is all! Could you be less… I dunno, cryptic?”
Katsuki closed his eyes, trying to collect his thoughts. “Deku… when I looked into that thing…” He trailed off. “It did something to me. It made me feel… something,” he winced.
“What did it do?”
“I don’t know. It was something I’ve never felt before,” he admitted. “It… I didn’t fucking like it. And frankly, if you hadn’t said something…”
“Kacchan? What—”
“—I was gonna climb in,” He interjected.
He stared at him until Izuku looked away, and then continued to stare at him.
“Oh,” Izuku said softly, his brow furrowing. Slowly his eyes widened. “Oh, god.”
“Look, just use your damn—” He stopped for a second. Use your damn head for once, he wanted to say. Katsuki took a deep breath, and tried to exhale the past. “Just think about this shit critically for a minute. What does any of this actually achieve? ‘Cuz from where I’m sitting, it looks like you’re suggesting we do exactly what it wants us to do. Somehow I doubt it’s got out best interests at heart.”
He looked at him again. “It?”
Katsuki caught himself, and looked away. “Yeah. It,” he said. “I’ve seen more than enough shit to conclude my first theory was wrong. So, yeah. It.”
Izuku frowned. “You mean…?”
Katsuki gestured at the space around them. “What else could I mean?”
But he just kept staring at him, blinking slowly, and for a second Katsuki thought he actually didn’t know. Somehow. Still.
“You think… it’s doing this on purpose?”
“Trapping us?” He raised an eyebrow. “Clearly.”
Izuku’s frown deepened. “I don’t know if that’s something we should just take for granted,” he said. “I mean, maybe it’s just, like… I dunno, a pocket… universe, or dimension, or whatever, and we just ended up here on accident. I’m not saying it couldn’t be some sort of… malevolent intelligence, but… this isn’t a movie, Kacchan. The idea that we’re here randomly is at least as likely as what you’re suggesting.”
Katsuki stared at him again, but this time Izuku held his gaze. There was something in him, some fragment of the petulant child he used to be, that wanted to argue with Izuku, but even as he sat there stewing in his irritation, he couldn’t deny that the point Izuku was making was compelling. He eventually broke eye contact and looked away, slumping back against the wall with a sigh.
“Okay, sure,” he conceded. “But it’s better if we assume I’m right. It’s like you said on day one, Deku… if we’re gonna be wrong, it’s better to be wrong about it being malicious than be wrong about it being harmless.”
“…Fair enough.”
They spent the majority of the day weaving together thread from Katsuki’s sewing kit, in hope of creating something less prone to snapping. It was around five in the afternoon when they returned to the pastel room. The other door was still there, but Katsuki avoided looking at it.
Once they had widened the puncture in the drywall to a suitable radius, Katsuki looped the woven rope through it and triple-tied it again. “There,” he said, standing up again.
“Hopefully that’ll be a bit more secure,” Izuku said.
“It should be… but we should still watch it, obviously.”
Izuku hummed, and for a moment it was silent. He looked at Izuku. Izuku was looking at the door. Katsuki gulped, tugging at the fabric of Izuku’s shirt. “C’mon,” he said. “We can start on the bricks tomorrow.”
He was calling his name when Katsuki opened his eyes. A soft refrain reverberating in his skull. Kacchan. Kacchan.
Quiet. Distant.
Katsuki sat up quickly, scrambled to his feet and flipped the switch. The bathroom flooded with cold, fluorescent light. He was alone.
The hallway felt longer than he remembered, and much less straight. The walls seemed to writhe and twist under the light of his flashlight, but he didn’t care. Izuku’s voice was getting louder.
His heart hammered in his chest as he spotted the pastel exhibit up ahead. “Deku?” he called out tentatively, entering the room. “De—“
He stopped in his tracks.
The braided rope was not tied to the wall anymore.
Instead, it went straight into the closet, where the door sat propped open.
Katsuki approached it slowly, wielding the utility knife in his right hand and a flashlight in his left. He cautiously peered over the edge.
“Kacchan, could you help me?” Izuku asked, from inside the hole. “I’m almost up, but I need a hand.”
Cut the rope, he thought.
“Kacchan, are you there?”
“What the hell are you doing down there, Deku?”
A pause. Long and drawn out.
Cut the rope.
“I just wanted to inspect it for myself. Honestly, I’m a little disappointed. There’s not much down here. I’m not sure what you were so worried about.”
Cut the rope.
“Why would you do this alone, without telling me? Are you insane?”
A sigh. “Well, if I told you, you would’ve tried to stop me. Now, could you give me a hand? I could really use it.”
Cut the rope.
“What do you want me to do, exactly?”
“Just reach down into the hole and pull me out. I don’t think I’m that deep, but my upper body strength… well, it leaves a lot to be desired. I’m barely hanging on.”
Cut the rope. That isn’t Izuku.
“Kacchan?”
“Sorry. I’m… I’m here.”
He was getting closer, despite himself. Stop. He dropped to his knees in front of the hole.
“Can you see me?”
“No.”
“Oh. I can see you.”
That isn’t Izuku. Cut the rope. Do it right now.
But Katsuki’s body moved anyway, even as tears welled up in his eyes.
“That’s it, Kacchan,” it said, voice calm and soothing. “Lean in, now. Just a little more. Put the knife down.”
Katsuki did as it asked, and leaned over the chasm.
“Just for you. Just for you.” It wasn’t even trying to sound like Izuku anymore. “One hand in, now.”
Shakily, Katsuki reached inside. He felt a warm hand grab onto his. Just like Izuku.
“The other one, now.” He didn’t question it. He just put both hands down the hole. “I want to show you something. Something just for you.”
Gently, the hands pulled him downwards, until his entire upper body was inside. Katsuki felt the darkness enveloping him, swallowing him down, further and further, until there was nothing left.
It was Izuku. It really was.
He was warm and soft and when he held him close, Katsuki felt no heartbeat. He was speaking though. He could feel his mouth moving against his lips.
“Do you like it?”
—
Katsuki gasped awake, cold sweat matting his bangs against his forehead.
“Kacchan?” Izuku murmured, from his watchdog spot by the door. “You alright?”
“…Yeah. I’m fine,” he said, his voice soft and scratchy.
Then he rolled over onto his side, facing away from Izuku, as if to go back to sleep.
He stared at the wall in silence until it was his turn to keep watch.
They returned to the pastel room the following morning. Though the door’s presence was quite unsettling, it was just that. It couldn’t hurt them if they didn’t let it. That’s what Katsuki told himself, anyway.
And so, he did his best to ignore it as he scraped away at the mortar, taking turns every half hour or so to avoid fatigue. Katsuki knew this was going to take a while, but it wasn’t until the end of the first day, when they’d barely made a dent, that he realized just how hard it was going to be.
Even if this shit works, we’re gonna be stuck here another two weeks, at least.
That was the thought that was plaguing his mind when they returned to the bathroom the fourth night. Izuku was walking just ahead of him, fingertips tracing over the braided string that wound around each turn.
They hadn’t spoken much since this entire ordeal started. Or if they did, it was to speculate about what was going on, or discuss their next move. They hadn’t really talked about anything outside of the museum, at least not that Katsuki could remember.
When they reached the bathroom, Katsuki splashed his face with cold water and patted himself dry, glancing over at Izuku to find him muttering to himself as he attempted to work out the best way to position his backpack to act as a pillow.
“Can’t believe you still do that, nerd.”
Izuku blinked, looking up as though he’d forgotten he was there. “Do what?”
Katsuki hunched over, pitching his voice up. “This side’s more cushiony but the zipper’s kind of uncomfortable maybe if I rotate it this way—no, that’s no good—maybe if I crumpled up some paper and stuffed it inside it’d soften the other side enough to—”
“Kacchan,” he whined.
Katsuki laughed. “I still remember that one time you gave yourself away while we were playing hide and seek.”
He frowned, but it was more of a pout. “We were six, Kacchan.”
“But even I knew how to shut the fuck up when I knew I needed to, Deku. Me.”
Izuku rolled his eyes, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “Okay, that’s… highly debatable.”
Katsuki smirked despite himself. “Okay, yeah, I wasn't exactly quiet, but still. Like, I wasn’t gonna be loud when it meant giving away my hiding spot.” He leaned against the sink, crossing his arms as he glanced at Izuku. “You though? Couldn’t shut up to save your life.”
Izuku laughed quietly, looking down as he tightened the straps on his backpack. “It’s not like I wanted to give myself away. I just… couldn’t help it sometimes.”
“Yeah, I know,” Katsuki muttered before he could stop himself, the words slipping out softer than he intended. When Izuku looked up, confused, Katsuki cleared his throat and pushed off the sink, moving toward the far wall like it was nothing. “Anyway, that’s ancient history. Point is, you still talk to yourself. Some things never change.”
Izuku didn’t press him, instead leaning against the wall and crossing his legs. “I guess not. Old habits, huh?” He smiled faintly. “It’s… comforting, I guess. Talking things out. Makes me feel like I’m not alone.”
Katsuki froze for half a second, his hands balling into fists before he stuffed them into his pockets. “You’re... not alone, though, Deku,” he said, glancing at Izuku out of the corner of his eye. His voice was quiet but strained, the words edged with something raw.
Izuku blinked again. “I know,” he blurted, his smile turning sheepish. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant, you know… it helps me think things through. I’ve always been like that.” There was a pause, not heavy, but noticeable. “It's good that I'm not alone, though.”
Katsuki’s shoulders tensed, and he forced a scoff. “Someone’s gotta keep your dumb ass out of trouble.”
Izuku’s smile widened, and he chuckled under his breath. “Sure, sure.”
The banter was easy, almost too easy. Katsuki found himself sitting down against the opposite wall, legs sprawled out in front of him. He rubbed the back of his neck, his mind drifting back to Izuku’s words.
Izuku glanced at him, his smile small but genuine. “I mean it, though. I’m glad you're here with me, Kacchan.”
Katsuki’s throat tightened, and for a moment, he didn’t trust himself to speak. He nodded instead, letting his head fall back against the tile again as he closed his eyes.
“Yeah,” he said after a moment. “Me too.”
And for the first time in days, the silence that followed didn’t feel so heavy.
Katsuki was walking, and for a while, that was all he knew. He was in the hallway at the museum, staring straight ahead as he moved, but there was no end in sight. The corridor seemed to stretch on infinitely. Abstract paintings passed through his periphery like TV static.
He became aware of his body first—the steady, regular impact of his shoes against marble, the cool air biting his exposed arms as they swung with every step. The paintings slowly became more distinct, unique in the way that snowflakes were—no two exactly alike, and yet Katsuki still struggled to tell the difference.
He returned his attention to the corridor itself, noting the odd shape of it. The walls weren’t regularly spaced, but rather seemed to drift in and out, like waves on the shore. Sometimes it was as vast as a showroom, sometimes as cramped as a child’s clubhouse.
It began to come together, then. Details coalescing, pieces of some grand puzzle falling into place. As he walked, Katsuki could feel it all building toward something greater, though even then, he knew only enough to know he knew nothing at all.
What the hell is going on?
He didn’t want to stop. He wasn’t sure where the hallway went, or if it went anywhere at all. Katsuki only knew he felt compelled to continue, some unknown force pulling at a part of him he never knew was there. The soles of his shoes tapped against the glossy marble floor, one after another. He didn’t want to stop. Why didn’t he want to stop?
Why was he afraid to turn around?
And with that question came a wave of something new, a weight upon something outside his understanding.
Oh, of course, he realized. Because it’s behind me.
And as this knowledge sank in, Katsuki’s senses finally returned, and the world came into focus. It was quiet, save for his footsteps, but if he held his breath he could just make out the sound of it—this odd clicking somewhere close behind him, too rhythmic to attribute to anything inanimate. The back of his neck prickled as he felt the subtle shifting of air. It was right there. Maybe a foot or two back, at most.
Muted fear, like the remnants of adrenaline fizzling out in the moment you accept this is the end. Katsuki was cold and nauseous and afraid, but not stupid. He wouldn’t turn around or look up, because it didn’t matter where he looked. It would be there, staring into his eyes. Ready.
He did not know what it wanted, or if it meant to kill him. He only knew that it would change him, make him into something new—maybe a corpse, or maybe some other thing. The specifics didn’t really matter to him.
It was going to turn him into something, and that’d be it.
He would never get to be anything else.
And so he walked, his muscles tense, arms stiff and pressed tight to his sides. No sudden movements. Just keep going. Don’t think about it.
Only it wasn’t that easy. His acute senses amplified everything around him, every noise making his stomach lurch, just enough to distract him from what was actually happening.
Were the lights always this dim…?
It was a subtle thing, but now that he thought about it, the lights were definitely dimmer than before. It was imperceptible from one step to the next. Katsuki thought of the classic metaphor, about the frog sitting in a pot of water, failing to notice the temperature slowly rising until it was too late.
He slowed his pace, but the hallway grew darker still. He was only delaying the inevitable.
He wasn’t sure how long it had been when he finally lost visibility, but it was somewhere around fifteen minutes into it when it started. And again, he didn’t really think much of it, at first. In the fog of his suppressed terror, the numbness in his fingertips was barely a footnote.
But slowly, that absence of feeling started to spread, moving up his fingers like an infection. Perhaps the corridor was colder than he thought. He balled his hands into fists, trying to keep his fingers warm. Then it reached his knuckles and continued up his hands as well.
He felt it in his toes, too, steadily moving into his feet, and almost tripped over himself at the odd sensation.
What…?
What the hell’s happening to me?
Katsuki clenched his teeth, his skin cold and clammy, arms now numb from the elbows down as the feeling climbed his calves. He rubbed his hands roughly against the fabric of his jeans, but the nerves seemed dead. He kept trying, though, harder and harder until he was certain he was bleeding, and then even more still, as he stumbled through the dark.
He couldn’t feel anything anymore, apart from vague vibrations. With trembling hands, he touched his stomach, checking to make sure it was still there. It was, but it felt odd, as though he were off center, somehow.
He was still moving forward, but he couldn’t feel himself walking. He could maybe reach for his legs and check, but he no longer knew for sure which direction was down.
The terror reached an apex then, collapsing into a black hole of despair. He only knew he was crying because there was no way he couldn’t be.
“Stop,” he begged. “No, I don’t want this.”
Where were his hands? He tried to reach back, tried to claw at whatever monster lurked behind him, but he wasn’t sure where his hands were in relation to the rest of him. He got the sense that they were floating somewhere far away.
“Put me back together! Please, just make it stop. Please.”
But the entity said nothing to him, if it had even heard him at all. Katsuki was collapsing, disassembling, everywhere and nowhere, all at once.
“Deku,” Katsuki wheezed. “Someone. Deku. Izuku, please—!”
He felt something gripping him, shaking him in the darkness, and with a surge of adrenaline, he shoved it away, scrambling across the floor until his back slammed into the wall. His throat was closing up. He gasped for air but could never get enough. With cold, sweaty palms, he patted up and down his body—where was it—was it all still there? Did he—?
Katsuki jumped to cover his eyes when the room flooded with light, and even then, it took him a few minutes before he finally remembered where he was. Wincing at the brightness, he looked up to find Izuku kneeling in front of him, hands twitching, like he wanted to reach out but wasn’t sure if he should. His face was pale, panicked, and stained with—
“—Kacchan, can you hear me? Please, god, say something, please—”
“—Izuku?”
Izuku froze for a split second, his eyes seeming at once worried and relieved. “Yeah, it’s me. I’m here, Kacchan.”
“Deku… what…” his eyes were drawn to the blood staining the upper part of his forehead and scalp, matting his bangs. And it was like he’d been doused with cold water. “Oh… fuck. Oh god. Did I—?” he reached for his face, fingers curling up when Izuku flinched away. His heart sunk into his stomach. “I’m… I’m so fucking sorry.”
“What?” Izuku’s eyes widened. “No, it’s okay! It’s not your fault. I… think I hit my head on the bottom of the sink—”
“—Because I shoved you.”
He hesitated. “Well… I guess, technically.”
“Fuck.” Katsuki put his head in his hands. “Fuck.”
“It really is okay! Please don’t feel bad about it, Kacchan,” he said. “I know you weren’t trying to hurt me. It was just a reflex!”
“Fuck,” he repeated.
“It’s not even a big cut! Head wounds bleed a lot, so it looks a lot worse than it actually is.”
“Fuck.”
“…Are you… are you just going to keep saying—“
“Fuck.”
“—That?”
“What else is there to say?” Katsuki muttered.
“Well, are you okay?” He asked. “You were… I heard you calling out to me in your sleep, and I got worried.”
He sighed. “I’m… fuck, I’m fine. It was just a fuckin’ nightmare or something. God.”
Katsuki scrubbed a hand down his face, his heart still pounding, and glanced at Izuku again. The blood on Izuku’s forehead had dried, but it painted a harsh contrast against his pale skin.
It wasn't the first time Katsuki had hurt Izuku. But the last time it happened, it was on purpose. The thought made him sick to his stomach.
“Your head,” Katsuki muttered, his voice hoarse as he pushed himself off the floor. “We should clean it. C’mere.”
“Kacchan, I’m really—”
“Shut up,” he barked, but it lacked its usual bite. He grabbed a paper towel and ran it under cold water before crouching down in front of Izuku again. “Head wounds ‘bleed a lot,’ huh? So let me fucking check it.”
Izuku blinked, seeming surprised, but he stayed still as Katsuki carefully pulled back his hair and dabbed at the dried blood. Izuku winced slightly as the cold water touched his skin. Katsuki paused, his hands steady even as his insides still felt like they were twisting.
“Doesn’t look too bad. You're lucky. It could've been a lot worse.” Katsuki finished cleaning up the blood and leaned back, inspecting his work. “Just... don’t touch it.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” Izuku murmured, his voice soft.
“Good.” Katsuki stood and tossed the bloodied paper towels in the trash before glancing over his shoulder. Izuku was still sitting there, watching him, his expression unreadable in the harsh fluorescent light.
Katsuki crossed his arms, trying to steel himself. “You should lie down,” he said finally. “Rest your head. I’ll... I'll take over from here.”
Izuku’s brows furrowed. “Kacchan, you haven’t slept much either—”
“I said I’m fine,” Katsuki snapped, but the edge to his voice didn’t quite land. He looked away, one hand rubbing at the back of his neck. “Just... go to sleep, alright? I’ll wake you if anything happens.”
For a moment, Izuku hesitated, like he wanted to press the issue. But then he nodded. “Okay. If you’re sure.”
Once Izuku was settled, Katsuki turned off the lights again, and tried not to think too much as he leaned against the wall by the door, gazing into the hallway beyond.
It took three excruciating weeks. By the final days, their desperation had reached a fever pitch, and they found themselves pushing further, stretching each session closer to midnight. Just a little more. Almost done.
It never was.
Three of the last four days ended in the same suffocating disappointment, but tonight, the sharp crack of crumbling brick finally broke the cycle. The sound was like thunder in the stifling quiet, and suddenly they were wide awake.
“On three,” Katsuki ordered, his voice tight with urgency. “One… two… three!”
They kicked as one, the impact reverberating through the wall, but it didn’t give. Not yet. Another kick, and another. Katsuki’s leg ached, his boot smearing dust across the marble, but still they kicked.
“Again,” Katsuki growled through gritted teeth. “One, two—three!”
On the eleventh kick, the wall finally relented. The bricks broke loose in a single jagged chunk, collapsing on the other side with a deafening clatter. The sound echoed, sharp and final. Dust bloomed from the impact, swirling like a smothering fog. Both of them fell back, shielding their faces with their shirts, coughing as the air turned to grit.
When it settled, Izuku moved first, creeping forward with slow, hesitant steps. Katsuki watched him crouch by the hole, the buzz of fluorescent lights seeming louder now. Izuku leaned in to peer through, and Katsuki saw the shift—the frown that spread across his face, the way his shoulders stiffened.
“Tell me it’s not another goddamn room,” Katsuki said, his voice rough and low.
“Not… exactly.” Izuku said, his throat bobbing as he swallowed hard. “I mean… it’s a hallway, but it looks different from the others… longer.”
Katsuki let his shirt fall away and stepped forward, brushing past Izuku to look for himself. His eyes adjusted slowly, and for a moment, he wasn’t sure what he was seeing.
Then his focus sharpened.
And his blood turned to ice.
The hallway was long, stretching farther than the eye could see, and its walls seemed to ebb and flow inward, never the same width for more than a few meters. The further he looked, the more it seemed to warp, the space twisting into something impossible.
The marble floor scraped under Katsuki’s heels as he stumbled back, his legs giving out as he hit the ground hard. His breath came in short, ragged bursts, his lungs struggling to expand properly. The sound of his heartbeat thundered in his ears, drowning out everything else.
“Kacchan?!” Izuku was at his side instantly, but Katsuki barely registered it. All he could see—all he could feel—was that hallway.
He’d been here before.
No.
No, no, no. His hand shot to his arm, pinching hard enough to bruise. This isn’t real. He clawed at his own skin, willing himself to wake up, but it didn’t work. Nothing worked. He was still here. This was still happening.
And that was still the hallway from his dream.
“Don’t go in there.” The words came out hoarse, barely audible. He pressed his back against the wall. His throat was dry, his hands clammy.
Izuku frowned, glancing from Katsuki to the jagged hole. “What? Why?”
His fingertips turned white against the marble. “Just don’t fucking go in there!”
“Kacchan, what’s wrong?” Izuku asked emphatically, reaching out to touch his shoulder, pulling back when Katsuki flinched at the contact.
“I’ve been here before,” he choked out. His breaths came in shallow gasps, his throat constricting like a noose. “I’ve seen it. I’ve seen that fucking hallway.”
Izuku knelt beside him, his eyes wide. “What do you mean?”
“That hallway.” Katsuki’s voice cracked, raw and broken. “The nightmare. A few nights ago.”
Realization dawned in Izuku’s wide green eyes. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m fucking sure!” Katsuki snapped, more harsh than he intended. He could feel the cold sweat trickling down his spine, the visceral memory of the dream clawing at the edges of his consciousness. “I know what I saw. I know what this is. It looks exactly the same, Deku. We can’t go in there.”
There was a silence, heavy and thick. Katsuki’s gaze remained fixed on the hallway, half-expecting the nightmare to spill into their reality at any moment.
Izuku turned back to the opening, his brow creased with worry and something else—something that made Katsuki’s stomach churn.
“Deku, I mean it,” Katsuki said. “Don’t go in there.”
“But…” Izuku took a tentative step toward the gap. “Kacchan, what if this is our way out?”
“It’s not!” Katsuki’s voice cracked, loud and raw, echoing down the corridors. “You don’t get it, Deku! You haven’t seen it. It’s a fucking trap. There’s… there’s something in there. It’s dangerous.”
“Maybe… Maybe I can just—”
“No.” Katsuki scrambled to his feet. “Deku, I’m serious—do not do this.”
“You don’t have to come with. I’ll be careful!”
“There is no ’careful,’ Deku! It’s a fucking trap!”
Izuku held his hands up, but they were trembling. His gaze remained locked on the opening. “I’ll just take a quick look!” He said, already moving closer to it.
“Don’t you fucking dare!” Katsuki lunged forward, his pulse spiking with panic, but Izuku was already crouching before the opening, already extending his hand. “Deku, stop! Izuku!”
As Izuku reached through the opening, the lights flickered, and for a second, Katsuki swore he saw something reaching back.
Then a sharp, searing pain erupted in his temple. He cried out, stumbling back as his hands flew to his head, clutching at his skull like it might split open. He closed his eyes reflexively. By the time he opened them, Izuku was already rushing over.
“Kacchan?!” Izuku’s voice was panicked, his footsteps fast and frantic as he closed the distance between them. “Kacchan, what’s wrong?”
Katsuki didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His vision was swimming, his head pounding like a drumbeat.
“Kacchan, your nose!” Izuku’s hands hovered near his face, hesitant and trembling.
“What—?” He felt it then, a hot liquid rolling down his upper lip. Katsuki blinked hard, disoriented, and raised a shaky hand to his nose. When he pulled it away, his fingertips were streaked with red. A drop of blood hit the marble floor, and his hands shook as hastily pinched the bridge of his nose. “…Fuck.”
“Shit. What—ah, wait, let’s just…” Izuku took Katsuki by the elbow and started leading him back to the bathroom. Katsuki leaned over the sink, and a second later Izuku offered him a wad of paper towels. Katsuki grunted as he accepted them, holding them under his pinched nose.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know,” he said, a bit muffled. “I felt this… stabbing sensation in my head when you put your hand in, and then…”
Izuku’s eyes widened, and then his brow furrowed in naked remorse. “I’m sorry. I should’ve listened—”
“—No,” Katsuki interjected, tired and defeated. His back hit the bathroom wall, and he slid down until he reached the floor. “S’fine. You’re fine. I should’ve…” He took a shuddering breath. “I should’ve just… fuck, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t fucking know,” he muttered, his voice cracking.
Pathetic.
Katsuki dropped his head and fell silent. For a while, neither of them said anything. He wasn’t sure how long it was, but it was long enough that by the time he spoke again, his nose had stopped bleeding.
“I’m sorry.”
Izuku looked up, his eyes wide, probably surprised to hear Katsuki call him by his first name.
“…What? Kacchan, I’m the one who—”
“No, not that,” he said, staring down at his lap. “Before that. Before any of this,” his voice broke again, but he forced himself to look up and meet Izuku’s eyes. “I’m sorry… for how I treated you. Back when we were kids.”
Izuku’s mouth fell open. Katsuki looked down again.
“I’ve been meaning to say it for a while. Long before any of this shit, but I just… kept… fucking chickening out, I guess. I don’t know, but… yeah.” He swallowed against the tightness in his throat, his eyes falling shut. “And I don’t… I know that doesn’t undo anything. Of course. Obviously. I don’t know how to fix it, but I’m trying. I’ve been trying. I’m just… I’m sorry, Izuku. I really am.”
There was a long pause, and then Izuku breathed a small, “Kacchan…” and crawled over to him. Katsuki averted his eyes as Izuku came to sit beside him. He was exhausted. Never in his life had he felt so defeated. Like he could curl up and die and it wouldn’t even matter. It would be just as well.
After a moment, Izuku began speaking again. “Kacchan, you don’t have to apologize… we were just kids.”
“…And I made your life a living hell for years.”
Izuku went quiet for a time. Then, gently, he took hold of Katsuki’s hand and held it between his own. There was still dried blood on it, just starting to flake off. But Izuku’s hands were warm and just the right amount of soft. Izuku remained silent for awhile, his hands still wrapped around Katsuki’s. When he finally spoke, his tone was kind, almost hesitant.
“You’re right… it wasn’t easy. Sometimes it felt like no one really saw me, like I didn’t matter, and yeah, you made it harder sometimes, but…”
Katsuki stiffened, a lump forming in his throat. He thought he might throw up. Izuku tightened his grip, as if he knew, and kept going.
“…I think I always understood, at least a little. I mean, not why you acted the way you did, but… you were amazing. You still are. I didn’t hate you for it. I couldn’t. You were everything I wanted to be, and… that made it easier to forgive, somehow.”
Katsuki’s brow furrowed, but he didn’t look up. “Well, that’s—you’re…” He closed his eyes, and sighed. “You’re a fucking idiot, then.”
Izuku released a soft chuckle. “Yeah, maybe. But I guess I knew—maybe not consciously, but I knew—that wasn’t really you, not completely. The way you acted back then? It was… it wasn’t everything you are. It’s not everything you are now.”
“It was still me, Deku.”
“Sure,” Izuku said. “But you’re more than the worst things you’ve done, Kacchan. I always knew that.”
Katsuki went quiet, pulling his knees up toward his chest. “But… but who fucking cares? I still treated you like shit. And now here we are, and you’re… you’re fucking comforting me for my guilt over the shitty things I did to you, it’s not—” he shakes his head, closing his eyes tight in an attempt to reign himself in.
Izuku squeezed Katsuki’s hand again. “It’s not about who comforts who. It’s about understanding each other. Right? We’ve both grown since then… We’re not the same people we were in middle school.”
Izuku’s words hung in the air, a fragile thread connecting their past to their present. Katsuki looked at him, the weight of everything pressing down on his chest. The fluorescent lighting of the room cast shadows down their faces, highlighting the dark circles beneath Izuku’s eyes that Katsuki was pretty sure weren’t so deep three weeks ago.
“I know we’ve both changed,” Katsuki murmured, his voice barely above a whisper. “I’ve seen it in you every goddamn day since this shitshow started. You’re… you’re so much braver than I am, Deku, and it… it fucking terrifies me. Because I don’t—” He could feel his throat closing up, his eyes stinging. “I don’t know how to protect you,” he finished, the tears finally spilling over. Katsuki scrubbed at his face with his free hand, smearing them before they had a chance to fall further. “You’re always running ahead, always charging into shit, and I… I don’t know how to keep up with you, let alone keep you safe. And I know, I know you don’t need me to, but—” He swallowed hard, his voice breaking again. “I want to. I want to so bad it makes me feel like I’m splitting apart.”
Katsuki clenched his fists, his hands trembling in Izuku’s grasp. “But I can’t. I can’t fucking do this, Deku. I don’t know how to keep you safe when everything’s… when everything’s so fucked, and nothing makes any sense, and I fucking hate it so goddamn much. ’Cuz I’m supposed to be smart, right? I’m supposed to know how to fix shit. But how am I supposed to do anything when fucking reality itself is just… fucking broken? When everything I thought I knew is wrong, and nothing matters anymore?”
Izuku stayed quiet for a moment, his grip on Katsuki’s hands tightening just slightly, grounding him. He took a deep breath, exhaling softly, and then spoke, his voice steady but filled with warmth.
“Kacchan… you’re not supposed to have all the answers. No one could. Not here. Not with…” he gestured vaguely to the room around them, “all of this. But… you’re still here, aren’t you? You’re still trying. You haven’t given up.”
Katsuki didn’t look at him, but he didn’t pull away either. “For all the good that’s done.”
“It has done good, because you’re still with me.” Izuku shifted closer, his knee bumping against Katsuki’s. “And you’re the reason I’m able to be brave, Kacchan. Because I know you’re here with me, and I know you have my back. Just like I have yours.”
Katsuki remained silent for a while, his fist loosening just the smallest bit. “Could you perhaps consider being a bit less brave?” He then said, his tone a quiet deadpan.
Izuku laughed. “Hey, I’m more careful than you may think. You’re not the only one who’s evolved since middle school.” His tone softened a bit as he added, “But if it makes you feel better, I promise that from now on, I’ll try not to jump into anything without discussing it first. Mostly. Probably.”
Katsuki rolled his eyes. “Thanks, Deku. Real fuckin’ reassuring.”
“I think it’s important to set realistic expectations.”
“God, you’re such a fucking—” Katsuki halted suddenly, the words dying on his tongue, his breath stolen away.
Because Izuku was kissing him.
For a few long seconds, he was frozen, his mind struggling to catch up. But eventually, his eyes slipped shut, and he leaned in, lips moving gently against Izuku’s. Izuku wrapped his arms around his neck, and Katsuki pulled him closer. And for a fleeting moment, the Red seemed to dissolve around them, leaving only the warmth of Izuku in his arms—a world unto itself, separate and safe.
They fell asleep together that night, as the logic behind sleeping in shifts seemed to crumble in the wake of what had happened. And for the first time in what felt like an eternity, Katsuki slept soundly, his mind the domain of mundane dreams rather than incomprehensible nightmares.
Left undisturbed, he probably would’ve slept through much of the following day. Instead, Katsuki awoke at dawn to the sound of the bathroom door opening.
The lights flicked on, and Katsuki cursed under his breath, shielding his eyes. And then he heard a voice he didn’t recognize.
“…The hell?”
Katsuki’s mind jolted into awareness, as he found himself face-to-face with a tall man in work clothes, pulling a bucket and mop in tow. The janitor?
“Whass goin’ on…” Izuku slurred as he started to stir. Katsuki shook him harder.
“Deku, wake up,” he said, his voice hushed.
“What the hell are you two doing here?” the man asked, and that seemed to grab Izuku’s attention. He sat up quickly, his eyes wide.
“Uhh, um…” He stammered, blinking rapidly. “I… we got locked in.”
“Uh-huh,” the janitor responded, with a tone that said, yeah, I don’t buy that for a second.
“But we’re leaving now,” Katsuki quickly added, already standing up and hastily stuffing things into his backpack.
The man narrowed his eyes, and Katsuki could almost see the scales of decision-making tilting back and forth in his head: to call the cops, or not to call the cops?
Hopefully, if we’re fast enough, he won’t have time to commit to the former.
After a second of hesitation, Izuku was on his feet, scrambling to pack his things up as well. As they threw their backpacks on, mumbling more apologies as they ducked past the janitor, Katsuki could feel his heart racing. He could see the exit up ahead—the actual exit—the closer they got, the faster his pulse became. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Izuku repeatedly glancing back over his shoulder, as if the janitor might suddenly vanish. Which made sense, of course.
Stranger things have happened.
But luckily, they made it to the reception area without incident. As they hurried past, the receptionist had just enough time to stand up and stammer out a, “H-Hey, wai—” before Katsuki was shoving the door open, grabbing Izuku’s hand, just to make sure he wouldn’t lose him.
It was cold outside, overcast. Dreary weather by virtually any metric.
To Katsuki, it was the most beautiful day he had ever witnessed.
Perhaps the most alarming news was that apparently, only a day had passed. What had, to them, seemed like three weeks had somehow happened in the span of just twenty-four hours, at least as far as the rest of the world was concerned. Katsuki was conflicted about this. On the one hand, it was unsettling. On the other hand, it meant that the apparent length of their predicament would mercifully bear no consequences.
Well, other than the trauma.
But still, it quickly things seemed to just… go back to normal. Classes resumed, as did the projects and tests and all the stress that came with them. Katsuki continued working at his part-time job, cursing at customers in his head—and occasionally in real life. It was like nothing had happened.
Of course, except for Izuku.
Things were strange, at first.
In the Red, it was almost easier in some ways. Everything was survival, and though they did at times interact in ways that were almost normal, there was always that persistent undercurrent of unease, every conversation book ended by some sobering understanding. Something about it was almost… automatic.
They eventually sat down and discussed the myriad things they couldn’t in the moment. Processed their past, leaving with a better understanding of each other’s perspective than they had going in. Things smoothed out after that. Their bond grew stronger, and soon they were nearly inseparable.
And so autumn turned to winter, and winter turned to spring, and the first time Katsuki told Izuku he loved him, Izuku cried. Katsuki pretended to be annoyed. But he still held him close through the night. That night and many more.
It happened toward the end of April, less than a week after Katsuki’s birthday.
It was a Saturday night. There was a new Mediterranean restaurant Izuku wanted to try, and so after a couple rounds of “extracurriculars” in Katsuki’s apartment, the two got dressed to head out.
Katsuki zipped up his pants and flushed the toilet, flicking on the sink to wash his hands. Just as he finished, he registered the sound of his front door opening. Followed by the most horrific scream he had ever heard.
And there was a moment, somewhere in between seconds, deep in the recesses of the infinitely small, where Katsuki thought about it. A knee-jerk reflex that still remained, yet untouched by the efforts of his therapist. Something in him knew, even as he tried to suppress it, even before he opened the bathroom door.
With wet hands, he hastily grabbed the handle and twisted, yanked the door open to find Izuku standing at the open front door, frozen on the precipice of oblivion.
On the opposite side was a room, with white marble floors and red walls adorned with paintings.
Katsuki felt his stomach drop, as if their lives were falling apart in slow motion. After all this time—months and months of normalcy.
They were in the Red again.
They did their best to preserve what they could.
Katsuki tied pieces of twine around just about everything in sight, crafting a sprawling network of string that stretched throughout the apartment like a spider’s web. Izuku shut the front door, ran around opening up all the others in an attempt to keep the rooms in their sight.
One of the few upshots was that the months in between had given Katsuki a lot of time to agonize over what he could have done differently. And so, before they could get too far, Katsuki secured a long piece of twine to each of their wrists, so they couldn’t lose each other. At least, that’s what he hoped. It was far from a guarantee. Nothing was, in the Red.
For the first few days or so, their preparations seemed to work, for the most part. They kept all interior doors open at all times, and the front door firmly shut, the curtains drawn tight. They didn’t need to see what was outside to know they were still in it; the conspicuous lack of hunger told them enough. They hadn’t eaten since the first day, though they had opened the fridge once, only to find the sculpture exhibit. The absurdity of it made them laugh for the first time in days. When they closed it, they used a bike lock to keep it that way.
Their phones had no service; nothing in the apartment had wifi. In the night, Katsuki would lie awake, listening to the sound of the structure groaning around them, pieces of twine going taught and loose cyclically.
Funny how quickly the mind adapts to routine horrors.
Out of an abundance of caution, they tried to keep the most important items close. Power tools, a set of walkie-talkies, books and chargers and framed photos from back when things weren’t so fucked up.
It was around the one-week mark when things started to go missing.
It was a couple days later when things started to appear.
A poster on the living room wall replaced with a familiar classical portrait; an abstract piece where the bathroom mirror should be. They tried to stop it, tried to attach more twine, but it only seemed to accelerate in subsequent days. The lights began to hum, softly at first, but every day they grew closer to that godforsaken buzz.
Two weeks in, even the structure started to change. Patches of red appeared on the walls in the bathroom and living room. At first they’d find them in the spots that were hidden—behind the couch in the living room, under the sink the kitchen. But gradually, these patches began to spread, infecting the apartment. The bedroom was the last to go, but the aberration metastasized further every day, until eventually the walls bled there, too. By that point, most of the furniture outside of the bedroom was gone.
After three weeks, all they had left was each other, their bed, and what few items they could fit in it with them. They slept with their heads under the covers most nights, like children hiding from monsters under the bed.
Then one morning, they woke to the sound of a door slamming. Katsuki’s body shot upright in bed, instinctively reaching for Izuku to make sure he was still there. “What the hell was that?” he whispered.
“I don’t know,” Izuku gasped back. “Should we go look…?
Katsuki pulled out his phone, glanced at the screen. 6 AM.
He swallowed roughly, a cold sweat prickling at the back of his neck. And he had this deep, twisting, gut feeling, something he couldn’t name, something that corroded his insides. Knowledge without a source, but knowledge all the same.
Katsuki nodded, and dragged the covers off his body.
It was dark, save for the weak illumination provided by the light leaking in under the door. He held up his hand, a silent plea for Izuku to wait there, and then slowly stood up.
His bare feet met the frigid tile floor, and Katsuki felt his stomach lurch, but he forced himself onward, closer and closer to the door until he could reach the light switch.
White light flickered on with a crackle, followed by a sustained buzz. Katsuki stood completely still, his fingers still on the light switch, and met Izuku’s eyes. To his left were the sinks and the stalls. The urinals on the right. He held Izuku’s gaze for what felt like several minutes, until he registered that telltale shine in his eyes.
Katsuki turned off the light.
He padded across the cold floor. He climbed back into bed, and pulled Izuku close. And silently, he prayed. To God. To the Red. To whatever was listening, really.
Please.
Let me keep him.
Just him, if nothing else.
I’m begging you.
Please.
Please don’t take him away from me.
The day had been a haze, hours blurring together in a cycle of restless sleep and suffocating silence. Maybe that was why Katsuki hadn’t noticed it at first—the single piece of twine, frayed at the edges and impossibly taut, stretched from the frame of the bed to somewhere beyond the bathroom door.
With Izuku at his side, Katsuki gripped the string and followed it out of the room. The hallway greeted them with its typical oppressive silence, its crimson walls and marble floors tinged with the cold glow of sickly fluorescent light. Their footsteps echoed despite their attempts to tread lightly, the sound lingering in the air like a conversation he wanted no part of.
The twine led them down the corridor—winding, twisting around corners and through doors. Katsuki’s grip on the string tightened with every room they passed, until finally, they reached the end. It was the pastel exhibit—one of its infinite iterations, anyway. The twine ended here, tied to the leg of a chair Katsuki recognized as one of his own.
His grip tightened on the knife in his free hand as he scanned the room. He spotted it almost immediately—the exit.
It stood at the far end of the room, rusty and weathered, its paint peeling away in jagged flakes. It looked the same as the last hundred times they'd seen it. Katsuki almost wanted to roll his eyes.
For a moment, he thought about opening it. Instead, he turned on his heel. “C'mon… let’s go.”
Izuku didn’t question him, falling into step as they retraced their path back through the hallway, passing the same endless stretch of doors. Katsuki didn’t even bother to glance at them. There was no point. No hidden answer. No salvation waiting in their periphery.
There was nothing left for them here.
“When’d you get so tall?” Izuku asked. They were sitting cross-legged in bed, playing card games with rules they only half-remembered. Anything was better than nothing.
“Uhh,” Katsuki raised an eyebrow. He was shuffling the cards, tapping them on his knee to straighten them out. “I don’t know. Grade eleven? Why?”
Izuku shrugged. “I dunno. Just wondering. I remember us being about the same height in middle school…”
“First of all, I’ve always been taller than you. And secondly, I’m not even a crazy amount taller than I was then. You just stopped growing in seventh grade, apparently.”
“Hey, I’ve grown a bit,” he countered. “And that’s not true. In fact, I’m pretty sure I was taller than you at one point.”
Katsuki snorted. The idea seemed patently ridiculous. “Excuse me? And when was that?”
“Mm, I think around the middle of elementary school? Like, age eight or something.”
“You’re delusional.”
“I’m serious! I swear,” Izuku said. “Don’t you remember? They measured us in gym class, and you got mad because I was like, a centimeter taller? You asked the teacher to re-measure you, but it came out the same.”
“I have literally zero recollection of any of this,” Katsuki deadpanned. “Are you fucking with me?”
“No, really!” he insisted. “Kacchan, you refused to talk to me for, like, two full days.”
“And that’s funny, because you would think I’d remember something like that,” Katsuki shot back, with narrowed eyes. “You’ve always been shorter than me, Deku. It was never even close. In fact…” He grinned, pulling out his phone and bringing up his photo gallery.
Izuku frowned slightly. “What’re you doing?”
“I’ve got pics of us as kids, Deku. We can settle this shit right now.”
There was a pause. “You keep those on your phone?”
The tone of Izuku’s voice prompted him to look up. Izuku was smiling just a bit too wide. Katsuki rolled his eyes. “Oh, shut the fuck up.”
He returned his attention to his phone, swiping until he found the album labeled, “old,” and scrolling until he found the year when they would have been eight—when Izuku was allegedly taller. He pulled up the first photo of them he saw. “There, here’s…” he trailed off, his brow furrowing as he studied the picture. It was nothing special. Just a picture of him standing next to Izuku. He remembered the occasion; it was taken during the school festival, but… something about it wasn’t right. The background was out of focus, but even so, it didn’t look like anything Katsuki remembered at their elementary school.
Silently, Katsuki started to swipe through the photos.
A photo of them cutting up construction paper for some project; something tall and grey to their left.
A photo of them wearing paper hats; an abstract painting in the corner.
A photo of them apparently playing soccer, but they appeared to be indoors. The floors were marble.
The walls were red.
Katsuki’s hands were shaking.
“Kacchan? What’s—” Izuku stopped short as he scooted closer, and he saw for himself. His breath seemed to catch in his throat. Slowly, he reached over and swiped to the next photo. This one showed them eating lunch in what should have been the cafeteria. The pastel pieces were right behind them, in clear view. “Wh-What…?” Izuku swiped to the next photo, and the next. Faster and faster, frantic, desperate, but Katsuki wasn’t even looking anymore. He felt sick to his stomach.
“They’re… are they all…?” Izuku didn’t dare finish the sentence. “But… no, that can’t be…”
Izuku was muttering under his breath now, the sound an almost comforting source of static. He wasn’t really paying attention. Every once in a while, he’d catch a few words—words like ‘trick,’ phrases like, ‘messing with us.’ But even those felt overly optimistic.
Katsuki stared at the bedspread on which he sat, his eyes out of focus, his face void of expression. Izuku had to say his name a few times before he even noticed him calling out to him. Slowly, he looked up, and was greeted by Izuku’s wide, tearful eyes. And that hurt, seeing him like that. It was such a gut punch, Katsuki wasn’t even sure if he’d have the nerve to speak. He opened his mouth, and all that came out was a hollow, wheezing sound.
“Is this… is this just a game, or something?” Izuku stammered out. “Is it… did it just change the pictures, or did it… oh god, is it altering the past? Like, the actual past?” Tears slipped down Izuku’s cheeks. “Kacchan, what the hell is going on? I-I don’t…”
Katsuki glanced at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. His face was pale, gaunt. The bags under his eyes were more pronounced than he’d ever seen them. He looked back at Izuku, and again opened his mouth, only for it to hang there as he looked down again. Because how does one tell someone something like this? How is he supposed to look the man he loves in the eye and tell him that…
It’s so much worse.
He wasn’t sure how he knew it, but somehow he did. It was a level of certainty that would’ve been disquieting in itself in a place as incomprehensible as the Red, if the thing he was certain about wasn’t so much more distressing.
He pulled his gaze up again, forced himself to look Izuku in the eyes.
“I think it’s always been this way,” he said, his voice a weak, raspy thing.
Izuku’s brow creased further. “Wh-What?” He stuttered. “What do you mean, Kacchan?”
Katsuki swallowed the lump in his throat, and closed his eyes. Behind the darkness of his eyelids, he watched their lives play out like a film. Their first meeting, the years they were friends, the years that they weren’t. The years they spent apart, and the year they found each other again. Years upon years of memories; sunlit forests in summertime, the first time Katsuki saw snow. The dappled rays of light in the grass that day they rescued a baby bird from the ground, that time they had to waltz together for a school play in middle school. Insults and injuries and unexpected quiet moments. The first time Katsuki looked at Izuku and thought, ‘beautiful.’
Everything they had been through, everything they ever were. This was the story of their lives. Katsuki could feel it all around him with startling clarity—these echos of the past.
There was a lot he didn’t know. But he knew one thing for certain, so he clung to it, like a fire keeping him warm. A fire he knew would eat him alive.
Katsuki opened his eyes.
“We’ve always lived in the Red.”
“I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there’s no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more.”
― Franz Kafka, The Castle
The bathroom lights were off. The bed lay empty. Frayed twine wove through winding halls. Rows of canvas. Flickering lights.
At the end of the rope, they stood.
“Don’t look,” Katsuki murmured, his fingers laced tightly with Izuku’s. Their palms were clammy, slipping against each other, but neither let go.
“I won’t,” Izuku promised. His chin lifted, resolute, the faint glow of red light tracing soft edges over his face. He didn’t look down. He gazed only at Katsuki, and Katsuki gazed back.
A shadow of a smile passed between them, fragile and fleeting. Then Katsuki shuffled forward. His steps were small, deliberate, the sound of his shoes barely audible over the electric hum. At the edge, his toes hovered, and he let out a long, shuddering breath. Beneath him, there was nothing but black.
“Ready?” he asked, his voice low and trembling.
Izuku nodded. His eyes were steady, green depths fixated on Katsuki’s.
“Ready.”
Katsuki nodded back. He swallowed hard and closed his eyes. “Okay.”
Izuku squeezed his hand, warm and firm. Katsuki squeezed back, drawing in one last breath before opening his eyes again. Their gazes met again, and for a moment, everything was still.
A strip of fluorescent light flickered in the room behind them, its rhythm uneven. The sound wasn’t sharp, but soft, almost muffled, as though the surrounding air was thicker there. The light paused for half a second too long before snapping back on. Beneath its glow, the shadow of the twine stretched across the floor like a scar.
“Three—”
On the back wall, one piece hung crooked, the bottom edge dipping just slightly out of alignment with the others. On the canvas, thick layers of pigment swirled together, forming shapes that might have been faces, but the longer you stared, the more certain you became that they weren’t.
“Two—”
Somewhere far away from here, perhaps birds sang. Perhaps children played. Perhaps someone flipped a coin that landed on its side. Perhaps god tripped over the universe and no one—not a single soul—survived.
Maybe people laughed. Maybe the sun still shined. And maybe somewhere, a star fell from the night sky and never stopped falling.
“One.”