Outage

Days with Noa fell into a routine fairly quickly. He would be up by the time Miyori arrived downstairs. He walked her part of the way to school, ditching her as soon as he started spotting other former classmates, and then he apparently went to work with her Uncle Daisuke or do other odd jobs that his size made convenient. 

Everyone was remarkably okay with Miyori inviting a boy to live in what was essentially their basement, and Noa showed no signs of complaining about his accommodations, either. 

That wouldn't be strange, except that Noa kept insisting on going out to eat together when Miyori got back.

Sometimes it wasn't a full-fledged meal at a restaurant, but they almost always ended up somewhere that served food. She would have been worried about how he was feeding just himself, but he kept insisting on feeding Miyori, too. 

Even when she finally insisted that they go to the library, he stopped her part of the way there to grab a snack. 

"We're not supposed to eat inside," she protested feebly as he waited pointedly near the pre-heated food section. 

"There'll be spots to sit out front, right?" he said. "It won't take long."

Miyori sighed and scanned the display in front of her for something that wasn't too expensive. The problem was, it was all expensive, and Noa kept pretending like it didn't cost more than he was paid over the course of an entire day just to buy her a snack. 

She turned to him, keeping her voice low. "You know, you really don't need to do this." 

He frowned. "Do you actually hate it, or are you just trying to be polite?"

"I…" She looked away, feeling her stomach make a low, inaudible rumble.

The thing was, she didn't hate it. It was actually really nice. And she was starting to feel the difference—she was less hungry the next day when she'd eaten a human portion of something the evening before, and she even thought her uniform was hanging off her a bit less at full size now. She hadn't realized there would be such a difference.

"Okay, I'm going to interpret that to mean you're trying to be polite." Noa gave her a serious look. "Don't, okay? You and your family are doing so much for me. This much is no big deal." 

Miyori bit her lip and breathed in the smell of the fried foods section. She admitted to herself that it smelled amazing, but still limited herself to one of the cheapest options. 

Noa, apparently satisfied, went ahead and picked up a few items for himself. He pulled a wad of cash out of his pocket and paid as though he did it every day—which he did. Miyori tried not to stare. 

On the walk to the library, Noa snuck bites of his onigiri and Miyori pretended not to notice him eating and walking. Once they were at the bench, he inhaled the rest of his food and then waited, in no rush, as Miyori nibbled her way through her chicken tenders. 

"Noa-kun…" she said once she was done. "I really…"

"You're welcome, already," he said, standing up and stretching. "You don't have to thank me for every single thing. Look, I even brought my own textbooks this time, so I don't have to borrow yours."

Maybe he wasn't as comfortable as he seemed. Miyori hadn't been about to thank him, but the assumption shut her up quite effectively—enough so that she thought Noa might have done it on purpose. 

The silence in the library felt a little oppressive, after that. 

The Noa she'd seen working with her uncle and the Noa in the library almost felt like two different creatures. This one was quiet and polite, letting her choose her study space and keeping a step and a half behind her. She thought he almost put his hood up at one point. 

"Do you not go to libraries much?" she asked quietly, bending over her bag. 

"Well, I've never been to this one," Noa said. "I'm still pretty new in town. It's nice, though."

"It is." Miyori liked the library. It was large and airy, a refurbished building that had stood for nearly a century in some form or other. Like a lot of public buildings, it positively hummed with magic—everything from the lights on the ceiling to the spells that ran the card catalogue. You could see people following sparks here and there among the shelves towards the books they were searching for. 

"We can get you a card later, if you'd like," she added. 

She almost missed it out of the corner of her eye, but Noa froze—flinched, almost. "Yeah, maybe," he said, a beat too late. 

Miyori cracked open her biology textbook instead of staring in his direction too obviously. 

She didn't want to be suspicious of Noa—he'd been nothing but kind and grateful to her and her family. But some of the things he was doing just weren't adding up. 

He was spending far more money than he was earning, and didn't seem to be troubled by that fact at all. And yet, when he'd needed a place to stay, he didn't seem to have even considered renting a hotel room. 

He didn't want people saying his last name and seemed wary of even making a library card. He'd mentioned his mother, if not his father—but never given a hint that he thought she might be looking for him. 

Miyori didn't want to go around borrowing problems, but the longer Noa stayed, the heavier these questions weighed on her mind. She wasn't ready to push Noa about them—not yet, at least—but it wasn't stopping her wondering. 

Noa, meanwhile, was reading through a history book and yawning. He didn't seem to get excited for much of anything except magic, but he was at least making a token effort to stay familiar with the other subjects Miyori told him they were covering in class. Miyori didn't know if that was for her sake or because he was genuinely still interested in an education. His plans for the future were another topic she didn't feel she could touch just yet—

The lights overhead flared, and Miyori winced. Then they did it again, flickering into full darkness for a moment before returning.
Noa blinked, looking up at the lights. "Does that happen a lot?" he asked. 

"No," she said. "Maybe there's construction nearby, or—" 

There was an odd, crackling rumbling all around, and all the lights in the library went out. The card catalogue section lit up brightly like fireworks and then went dark. 

There was a beat of silence, and then questioning voices rose up everywhere. Miyori looked at Noa, but Noa was staring up at where the lights had been, gaze intense. 

Then they slowly flickered back on again, all intensity gone, and the regular humming that had died out for a moment came back. People chattered for a moment longer, and then the quiet died down again. 

"Do you think it was an earthquake?" Miyori said eventually. 

"I think we would've felt it, if it was a big enough one to disrupt the spell infrastructure like that," Noa said. "Maybe a construction accident." 

They settled in again, continuing to study. When she heard the wailing of an ambulance outside, she kept her eyes on her book.
But when the lights flickered again, Noa snapped his own book shut and stood up. "Be back in a minute."

Instead of staring after him obviously, Miyori glanced at the clock overhead. 

Noa had told her one minute. She'd give him ten. If he wasn't back by then, she was going to see what he'd gotten himself into.