Hero

The fun ended all too soon. By the time the sky turned from silver to dark blue, the snow fort at the park was half‑melted, the ice on the lake was thinning, and parents were calling from the paths for everyone to come home. Kumi, Yuna, and Rin dragged their feet to the park gate, still laughing about Rin's near‑wipeout on the ice, and split off at the corner with quick hugs and promises to meet at school tomorrow.​

Dinner out with Dad that evening was almost enjoyable. He took her to her favourite little restaurant, the one Mum used to pick for birthdays, where the lanterns were warm, and the tables were too close together. He let her order extra gyoza and pretended not to notice when she stole pieces of his karaage. Once, when the soy sauce bottle slipped between them, and they both grabbed for it, their fingers bumped, and he almost smiled.​

But mostly, dinner was ruined by a silence that sat between them like an extra person at the table, breathing up all the air. Every time the conversation ran out, it grew bigger, stretching from his side to hers and swallowing all the things they didn’t say about Mum.

She kept quiet about the fun she’d had with Rin and Yuna in the park – and about the genie and her wish. The words pressed against the back of her teeth, buzzing like a trapped storm, but every time she looked at his tired face, at the way his shoulders curled in, they blew away before she could open her mouth. The next day, she left for school without saying good morning.

The classroom hummed in a low, sleepy way. Pens scraped. Chairs creaked. Someone’s pencil case kept rattling every time they shifted their knee. Outside, instead of the forecasted downpour, sunlight spilt through the windows in wide rectangles across the floor.

“Psst.” Rin leaned over, whispering across the narrow gap between their desks. “Kumi.”

Kumi dragged her attention up from her maths textbook. She didn’t need to see Rin’s face to know she’d come up with some means of starting trouble. Yuna, on Kumi’s other side, was dutifully copying from the board but kept flicking quick, uneasy glances their way.

Rin whispered her evil plan in her ear. Kumi’s smile twitched. At the front of the room, their teacher was sketching a neat little triangle on the whiteboard, her back to the class. Her hair was twisted into a tidy bun. A faint sheen of sweat shone at the back of her neck.

Kumi hesitated. Her fingers itched. She nodded and focused on the space right above the teacher’s bun. A book-sized patch of air. She pictured a smudge of grey there, heavy with just enough water to misbehave. A small, dark shape puffed into existence exactly where she imagined it. Kumi sucked in a breath. The cloud sagged, then began to drip. Slow, fat drops slid off its underside and splatted onto the whiteboard in front of their teacher, leaving little wet polka dots right through the fire triangle she’d just drawn.​

“Teacher, there’s a rain cloud on your head!” Rin announced, pointing with perfect fake shock. A ripple of snickers ran through the room. The teacher froze. She blinked at the damp patch blooming on the board, then rolled her eyes up as if trying to see the top of her own head. One cool drop chose that moment to land directly on the bridge of her nose. She flinched, then sighed.

“Yes, I can see that,” she said, voice very dry. “Could someone tell me why there’s a rain cloud on my head?” Kumi stared hard at the numbers on her page, heart pounding. Yuna kicked her lightly under the desk. On the far side of the room, near the windows, a chair scraped back.

“Teacher, would you like me to get rid of it?” a boy’s voice asked. Hiro stood up from his seat by the window. His uniform blazer was buttoned as neatly as ever, tie straight. Dark brown hair fell into his eyes in that way it always did. He raised his hand and looked at the cloud as if it were an equation he already knew the answer to.

“Are you sure that’s safe?” the teacher said, a flicker of nerves breaking through her patience.

“Yes,” Hiro said. His voice didn’t waver. He pointed. A tiny ember the size of a breadcrumb shot from the tip of his index finger. It zipped across the short distance, hit the cloud dead centre, and vanished into it. The cloud disappeared with a soft puff. In the same heartbeat, the water on the teacher’s hair and shoulders steamed away and was gone, leaving her bun crisp and dry, her blouse unmarked. The classroom went very quiet.

“Thank you, Hiro,” the teacher said after a moment. Her voice was almost normal again. “All right. Everyone, eyes front, please.” Hiro dipped his head, as if he’d just answered a normal question, and sat back down. He opened his textbook to the right page without looking.

Kumi’s hand clenched around her pencil. From where she sat, she could see the side of his face, calm and ordinary, framed golden by sunlight. She bit her tongue, then narrowed her eyes and imagined a new cloud forming just above Hiro's head. A puff of dark grey appeared over his hair. The preliminary drops fell – a light sprinkle, barely enough to notice. One slid off the edge and landed on Hiro’s worksheet. Another clung to a strand of his fringe. He looked up. For a second, his gaze tracked the ceiling. Then his eyes found the cloud. Kumi held her breath.

A thin line of orange flickered deep in his irises, there and gone so fast she might have imagined it. The tiny cloud vanished in an instant without a trace. When the teacher turned from the board to scan the room, Hiro was already looking down again, pen moving, expression smooth. The only sign anything had happened was the damp smudge soaking into the corner of his worksheet. The bell rang for lunch a few minutes later, loud and shrill. Chairs screeched back. Voices rose.

“Homework on page sixty‑seven,” the teacher called over the noise. “Don’t forget! And no running in the corridors.” Hiro was already on his feet, bag swung over one shoulder, heading for the door with the same calm as always. Kumi watched him go, jaw tight. Kids shifted around her, packing bags and complaining about how many questions they’d got for homework, while she eyed the back of Hiro’s head, wondering how he could have reduced her power to nothing so effortlessly. What a freak! It was common knowledge that he could wield fire – everyone had seen the clips of him fighting Kaen on the news – but no one knew how he’d got his power in the first place.

The genie? Were his powers from a wish as well? Kumi wondered about that, fingers digging into the strap of her bag as she finally stood up to join the stream of students heading out of class.​

For lunch, the three girls ate on the rooftop. It was a flat rectangle of concrete ringed by a high metal fence, with air‑conditioning units humming in a row along one side. The sky was still clear, thin harmless clouds drifting across the blue, yet no one else came out to enjoy it; everyone still worried to their bones about the forecasted rain.​

Before stepping out from under the covered stairwell, Kumi lifted her hand and flicked her fingers, letting a small, fluffy cloud materialise overhead.​

“What do you want, guys?” Kumi asked, coming up beside her friends as the breeze tugged at their sleeves.

“Make ice cream!” Rin said at once. Kumi snorted.

“I’ll give it a try.” She pointed at the cloud and thought, ice cream, but all that came out was a soft flurry of snow that drifted onto the concrete in a powdery heap. Apparently, that was good enough, because Rin gave a whoop and dove in, scooping it up with her hands.

“It’s fine,” she said through a mouthful. “It’s close enough.​” The girls picked a dry spot near the railing, sat down, and opened their lunches. Kumi ate quietly, knees drawn up. Rin alternated between nibbling on actual food and scooping little balls of leftover rooftop snow to crunch like ice, while Yuna pulled out her phone.

“Hey, Kumi,” Yuna said, eyes on the screen. “Think you can make a rainbow for me?” Kumi hesitated, chopsticks hovering.

“Maybe? You’re going to have to tell me what to do, though,” she said, standing up.

“Okay, let’s see,” Yuna murmured, looking up the recipe. “It says you need sunlight on one side and rain in front like this.” She turned the phone to show a simple illustration: the sun behind, raindrops ahead, and the magical curved band of colour on top.​ Kumi positioned herself, carefully taking in the steps.

“So,” she summarised. “Sun behind me and the rain in front.” She picked a spot in the air a few metres away and willed what she wanted. Not a downpour, not even proper rain – just the soft, floaty spray from a hose on the shower setting. The air shivered. A faint curtain of droplets shimmered into being, hanging there like a sheet of glass beads. Sunlight speared through them.​

Colour caught at the edge of the mist, a thin smear that thickened and spread. Red. Orange. Yellow. Green. Blue. Violet. The bands swelled and sharpened until a bright arc hung over the rooftop, its ends sinking into the grey like they were hooked to the horizon.​ The concrete, the fence, even the dull air‑con units picked up a wash of colour. Kumi could feel the rainbow almost as much as see it, a gentle buzz in the back of her teeth.

“Nice!” Rin whooped through a snowy smile.

“Sweet. Thanks, Kumi.” Yuna snapped a selfie with the rainbow blazing over her shoulder, then took another with all three of them squashed into frame. The rainbow hummed there quietly, colours blurring and bleeding at the edges. “Uh…” Yuna glanced at her screen again, then back at Kumi. “How about lightning?”​

“Lightning?!” Rin yelped, instantly on her feet, eyes huge.​

“Lightning?!” Kumi echoed. “That’s kind of dangerous, you know.”

“Oh, sorry.” Yuna’s shoulders hunched; she lowered her phone a little. “You don’t have to. I was just wondering.”​

“Nooo, you should do it, Kumi,” Rin said, grabbing her arm and bouncing on the spot. “Lightning, lightning,” she started to chant, every syllable louder, like she could shake the sky into cooperating.

Kumi looked from Rin’s excited face to Yuna’s worried one, then up at her clouds. The rainbow still glowed faintly across the sky, its colours washing the fence and concrete in pale stripes. Her fingers tingled. A smile flickered in spite of herself.​

“Okay,” she said, more to the sky than to them. “Just a little one.” Kumi breathed in slowly and held it as she raised her arm. First, she expanded her rain cloud and pushed it higher up in the sky. The rainbow thinned, colours stretching, then vanished altogether. Kumi summoned more clouds and pressed them into one another. Grey piled on grey until a single, heavy lump of cloud hung there, low and swollen, like it was sulking. Rin bounced on her toes, clutching her lunch box to her chest.

“This is so cool,” she whispered, as if talking any louder might scare it away.​

“Not too big,” Yuna said quickly. “Just… Just a tiny one, okay?” She held her phone pointed at the sky to record.

“Yeah,” Kumi agreed, though her heart was thudding against her ribs. She pointed at the dark knot of cloud and circled key words in the back of her mind. Electricity. Thunder. Lightning. The air over the rooftop tightened. The little hairs on Kumi’s arms stood up. The breeze that had been tugging at their sleeves went still, as if the whole roof was holding its breath with her.​

“Uh… Kumi?” Yuna said, voice small.​ Kumi twisted her wrist. A thin white bolt cracked out of the cloud, so fast it was more flash than line. It stabbed into the empty concrete a few metres away with a fierce crack, louder than any dropped textbook, leaving behind a sizzling mark the size of a coin and the sharp, metal smell of ozone that rushed over them like burnt air.​ All three girls screamed. Rin’s scream flipped into wild laughter halfway through.​

“Again! Do it again!” Rin yelled, grabbing Kumi’s sleeve and hopping from foot to foot.​ Yuna clapped both hands over her mouth, eyes huge behind her glasses.

“That was not tiny,” she squeaked through her fingers. “That was not tiny at all.”​ Kumi stared at the faint scorch on the roof, her hand still half raised. Her neck was stiff.

“I… didn’t mean it to be that strong,” she said. The sound of her own voice came out thin. Above them, the dark knot of cloud rumbled once, low and warning, like a stomach threatening to growl louder. “But… it worked,” she added with a weak shrug. “So… yay?”​

Rin snorted. Yuna did not laugh.

Before any of them could decide what to say next, the door to the roof slammed open so hard it bounced off the stopper.

“What was that noise?” Hiro stood in the doorway, one hand braced on the frame, completely out of breath. Wind from the open door tugged at his fringe. Kumi, Yuna, and Rin froze and stared at him like three very guilty statues.​ On that rooftop, there was a long silence. Luckily, Rin had already chugged down every last scoop of snow, so there was no suspicious pile left for him to see. The storm cloud overhead quietly growled.

“Hey, look at that cloud,” another classmate said curiously, pushing past Hiro without waiting for an answer. He tipped his head back to squint at the sky. “If it’s going to rain, I hope it goes over the pit.”

Hiro was tugged sideways by the flow of bodies, forced to step away from the doorway and into the crowd. As the other students spread out across the rooftop, Kumi stepped forward and stamped her foot over the mark left by the lightning bolt, grinding her heel until the scorch blurred into an ordinary grey smudge.​

Since everyone had seen it already, Kumi left the grey storm cloud to drift in the sky and went back to class for the next lesson. Lessons blurred past, and by the time the final bell rang, the sky over the school was back to ordinary grey. Students poured out of the building in noisy streams, heading for bikes, buses, and train stations. Kumi and her friends lingered by their desks, trading looks instead of packing up properly.​

“Wait till she leaves,” Rin whispered. They hung back until their teacher finished erasing the board and slipped out, a stack of exercise books in her arms. Then the three of them darted after her, keeping a careful distance down the corridor.​

“She’s going to the staff room,” Rin murmured.

“Roger that,” Kumi said. Outside the teachers’ lounge, Kumi pointed at the ceiling and called up a small cloud, letting it drift into place right over their teacher’s neat bun as she reached for the handle. But the woman stepped through the door without even a twitch, the cloud sliding uselessly through the closed frame behind her.​ Kumi deflated. “Well, that was pointless.”

“New plan,” Rin said immediately. Her eyes lit up. “Come on.” She grabbed both their sleeves and towed them away from the corridor. Rin led them out a side door, around the edge of the school building, and across the yard to the empty playground on the far side. Through an upstairs window, the staff room was just about visible: fluorescent light, a row of lockers, the top of a noticeboard.​

“Guys, what are we doing here?” Yuna asked.

“Kumi, can you make a cloud we can stand on?” Rin said.

“Uh…” Kumi frowned at the cracked tarmac and shrugged. “Time to find out, I guess.” She raised her hand. A cloud puffed into being right on the ground in front of them, a soft, dense cushion of white.​ Rin stepped straight onto it.

“Does that work?” Kumi asked.

“I don’t know. Try lifting it,” Rin said, perfectly calm for someone half‑buried in vapour. Kumi willed the cloud to rise. It floated up like a balloon, but Rin did not come with it; she stayed where she was, standing on solid ground with her torso vanishing into mist.​

“Didn’t work,” Rin reported, her voice muffled. “But I did discover what clouds taste like.”

“Like water?” Yuna asked, sounding offended by the question.

“That is correct,” Rin said.

“Okay, let me try something else.” Kumi swept the cloud away from Rin’s head and back down to the tarmac. This time she thought of snow rather than rain – heavy, packed, like the stuff they’d stomped into shapes at the park. The white puff thickened and flattened, settling into a solid‑looking base.​ She pressed her foot onto it. It held. A gleeful look sparked on all three faces.

“Climb on board, guys!” Kumi said. Rin scrambled up at once; Yuna followed more cautiously, clutching her bag to her chest. When all three were balanced, Kumi focused and gently urged the cloud upwards.​ They rose. The playground dropped away beneath them, swings and climbing frames shrinking. Wind brushed their ankles.

“We’re flying,” Rin wowed. She threw her arms wide like she was on the front of a ship.​

“Don’t move so much!” Yuna cried back. “You’re going to fall off!” Kumi steered them higher, keeping one eye on the window. They floated level with the teachers’ lounge and edged sideways until they had a clear view in. Their teacher sat at a low table with a cup of tea, flipping through a stack of papers, blissfully unaware of the airborne revenge squad outside.​

“Target acquired,” Rin said, one eye squinted shut and the other peering through a makeshift telescope of her hand.

“Okay,” Kumi breathed. Her fingers tingled again. She raised half a hand and willed a new rain cloud into existence, this one inside the staff room, right above the teacher’s chair.​ In an instant, raindrops pattered down over the woman’s head, darkening her blouse and spattering her marking sheets. She jolted upright with a shout and scooted her chair back. The girls’ cloud drifted alongside the window; Kumi nudged her cloud to follow the teacher wherever she moved.​ Yuna snorted. Rin burst into full belly laughter, clutching her stomach as the teacher dodged uselessly around the small room, pursued by her private rainstorm.​

Kumi smiled too, but her eyes stayed locked on the cloud. Following what she’d learned on the rooftop, she could feel how much energy sat inside it – a buzzing, restless weight. If she pushed, just a little… She let the rain ease for a moment and focused. Storm, she thought. Electricity. Just a little shock. The cloud darkened. Somewhere deep inside it, the air crackled.

“Uh, Kumi?” Yuna said, laughter dying in her throat. Zap. A tiny bolt of lightning jumped from the cloud to the floor, striking near the teacher’s heel. The woman yelped and hopped sideways, eyes wide.​ Zap. The next bolt snapped closer to her ankle. She jumped again, this time tripping over the leg of a chair and grabbing the table for balance. Papers flew.​ “Kumi…” Yuna hissed. “Maybe that’s enough…” Zap.

The teacher bolted for the door at last, sloshing tea and scattering worksheets, and vanished out into the corridor where Kumi’s power couldn’t easily reach.​ Kumi exhaled hard. The rain cloud sagged. She let it unravel, water and charge dissolving into harmless vapour that faded into the ceiling. Suddenly, the whole thing seemed much less funny.​ And then, delayed but real, the laugh bubbled up anyway. Kumi folded over, giggling so hard her knees wobbled. She lost her footing and toppled backwards off the edge of their snow‑cloud.

“Whoa!” Rin grabbed for her and missed. Kumi gasped and, on instinct, flung her hands out. The cloud spread beneath her like a quick‑growing cushion, stretching just in time to catch her fall. She hit the soft surface and bounced once, breath whooshing out of her. The laughter hurt now, but she couldn’t quite stop.​

A flare of orange lit the air beside them. Hiro materialised on the cloud in a burst of heat and ash, boots landing sure and solid near her feet. For a second, he just stood there, framed against the sky, looking down at her with those serious eyes.​

“Ms Amaya,” he said sternly. “Are you the one who has been messing with the weather all day?”​