The Kitchen Light

Training log updated.

Take a breath. The next test is already starting.

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The kitchen light was on when I got home. Mom had left the hallway dark, so I could see her sitting at the table before she heard my key.

My phone was in my hand. I had written I'm on my way three times during the walk and erased it three times. By the time I sent it, I was downstairs. She hadn't answered.

There was a bowl in front of her, covered with a plate to keep the rice warm. Beside it lay my school timetable, opened to tomorrow. She looked up at me, then at the way I used the doorframe to get my shoes off.

"I can do that standing," I said.

"You did."

I put the shoes together more carefully than I ever had in my life. One had no lace. The other was wet with street water. If she asked about either, I had an answer. I had been collecting answers since the alley.

Mom got up and moved the bowl to my place. She didn't ask the question I had prepared for. She asked, "Do you want me to heat it again?"

"It's still warm."

"Then sit while it is."

The chair caught my weight harder than I expected. My ribs objected. I kept my face still and failed; Mom had already seen me coming through the door.

She put the plate in the sink without a sound. The television in the next apartment was loud enough for me to hear a reporter say All Might's name. Mom heard it too. Her hand stayed on the rim of the sink for a moment before she turned off the tap.

"They showed the street," she said. "They kept showing it."

"I know."

"They did not show me where you were after."

I looked at the rice. The bowl was chipped on one side. I knew exactly which way to turn it so she wouldn't notice the chip, as if that were a useful thing to know right now.

"The paramedics checked me," I said. "They let me go."

"I can see that."

She came back to the table but remained standing. She wasn't waiting for the version a camera could use. She was waiting for me to say what happened between the camera and the door.

"The police asked what I saw," I said. "I told them I went past the line."

"I saw you go past it."

I hadn't known that was in the footage. My chopsticks stopped halfway to the bowl.

"Was it on every channel?"

"Izuku."

"Sorry."

"I didn't ask about the channels."

I ate one mouthful because my body needed it, not because the conversation had become easier. She pulled out the other chair. A small red mark crossed the heel of her palm. It might have been from holding her phone too tightly. I didn't get to turn it into proof of anything.

"All Might spoke to me afterward," I said.

She lowered herself into the chair. She knew that name from the news, from my notebooks, from every poster I had ever asked her to leave up. Here it was at our table, too large for the distance between the kettle and the sink.

"About the attack?"

"About what I did. And about U.A."

"What about U.A.?"

I could have told her that he'd said I might become a hero. I could have told her he had not promised a thing. Both were true. Neither explained why he wanted me at a beach at five in the morning.

"He's considering helping me prepare," I said. "We meet tomorrow."

"Where?"

"Dagobah Municipal Beach Park."

She looked toward the window. It was already dark. "At what time?"

"Five."

"Tomorrow morning?"

"Yes."

After this?

That question didn't come out loud. It didn't have to. She had watched me turn a doorknob with my left hand and sit down like the chair was moving.

"He knows I was hurt," I said. "He said to come dressed to work. Gloves, water, old clothes. I don't know what he'll ask me to do."

"Does he have a plan for the ribs?"

"He knows about them. He said I have to report injuries and stop if he tells me."

Mom looked at the covered bowl again. She had made enough for two and eaten neither portion. I wanted to tell her to eat. Instead, I told her the part I had been trying to hide inside the rest.

"I want to go."

"I know you do."

"I'm not going because I think today was a good way to get his attention."

Her eyes came back to me. "Then why did you run into that street?"

I had answered a policeman. I had answered All Might. Their questions had been about what I saw and what I could admit. Mom's was about the person who would have had to open our door if I hadn't come home.

"Kacchan couldn't breathe," I said. "I saw him and moved. I didn't know it would help."

"Did you think about coming home?"

"Not until afterward."

It would have been kinder to say yes. It would also have been another thing she would have to find out was false.

Mom folded her hands under the table. "Eat your rice. It's getting cold."

That wasn't forgiveness. I ate. She rose to heat her own bowl, then stood in front of the microwave with her back to me while it turned. The kitchen clock clicked once for every second we spent not looking at each other.

When she sat down again, she put a pad of paper between us. It was the one she used for shopping lists. The top sheet still had dish soap and cabbage written on it.

"What time are you leaving?"

"Before five."

"I know. What time?"

I checked the transit schedule on my phone. The first route I tried would get me there late. The second required a longer walk. I had been so busy imagining the beach that I hadn't checked either. Mom watched me find that out without rescuing me from it.

"Four twenty," I said. "If I take the early route. I need to be at the stop by four thirty."

She wrote 4:20 beneath the grocery list. "And when will you come back?"

"I don't know."

"Ask him."

"I can ask. I can't promise he'll know tonight."

"Then you can promise to tell me when you do."

The pen stayed in her hand. I could hear the difference between a question and the beginning of a rule. She could too, and she didn't make the rule larger to fill the silence.

"I will message you when I get there," I said. "And when I leave."

"What if your phone dies?"

"I'll charge it tonight."

"That wasn't the question."

I put down my chopsticks. The page between us had an hour on it, not a guarantee. "If it dies, I'll find a public phone or ask to use one. I'll contact you before I go anywhere else."

"And if it hurts?"

My first answer rose by itself: it already does. But she wasn't asking me to inventory today's injuries. She wanted to know whether I would let tomorrow change the plan.

"I'll tell him," I said.

"And me?"

"I'll call you."

She set the pen down. It wasn't a signature. It wasn't a bargain that could make her stop being afraid. She pushed the paper toward me anyway.

"Write the place. Your departure time. Your phone number, in case I have to give it to someone who doesn't know you."

"You know my number."

"Write it."

I wrote it. The ink line from her groceries ran through the first digit, so I moved down and wrote it again. My hand had shaken at the police notebook. Here it shook at a list beside cabbage. Mom saw. She looked at my fingers, then at my face, and left the pen where I could reach it without help.

"Are you going to call All Might?" I asked.

"Do you have a number I can call?"

I didn't. He had given me a place and a time, not a way to bring him into our kitchen. Saying that aloud made the arrangement smaller than it had felt in the alley.

"Not yet."

"Then no. I'm asking you."

It would have been easier if she had demanded to meet him before I left, or forbidden me to go. I could have argued with either. She was making me carry the part I had agreed to carry.

Mom took the pad and set it beside the kettle. "Don't let me learn a change from the television again."

"I won't."

"You didn't know I would see it today."

"No."

"So don't make me rely on that."

I wanted to apologize until the words stopped sounding like a request for her to comfort me. I couldn't find that many honest words. I rinsed my bowl instead.

She came to the sink and took the dishcloth from its hook. I expected her to take the bowl. She wiped the table, leaving me the dish. It was a smaller mercy and a harder one to accept.

"Do we have gloves?" I asked.

"Under the utility shelf. The work pair."

"I'll get them."

"You can get the water bottle too. I will see what's left for breakfast."

We worked on opposite sides of the kitchen. I found cheap work gloves stiff with old detergent dust and shook them out over the sink. One seam held when I pulled it. The other would have to. I filled my bottle and put it in the refrigerator, where I would see it before leaving. Mom measured out rice in the kitchen while I searched for clothes I could stain.

My school uniform hung on the back of the bedroom door. I moved it aside, chose an old shirt and a pair of trousers with a repaired knee, and set them by my shoes. I replaced the missing lace with one from a pair I had outgrown. Bending over the knot made my side ache; I sat on the floor to finish it. No one had to watch that except me.

When I returned, the light was still on. The rice was still on the counter. Mom was washing the same spoon twice.

"Mom."

She set the spoon down and turned off the water. There were tears on her cheeks. She wiped them quickly, as if she had meant to finish before I came back.

"I promise I'll tell you if training becomes too much," I said.

"You said you'll call if it hurts. Those are different things."

They were. I had been trying to make them the same because I was afraid of how much she might ask if I didn't.

"All Might is helping me prepare for U.A.," I said. "I got hurt today, but I'm okay to be here. I don't know yet if I'll be okay to work tomorrow. I'll tell you if I'm not."

"And if you don't notice?"

"Then I need you to notice. I can't ask you not to."

She looked at the bottle, the rice on the counter, the gloves I had laid beside it. "I won't pretend this makes sense to me tonight."

"It doesn't all make sense to me."

That was the most I could give her without handing over something that wasn't mine to tell. She knew it was incomplete. She didn't ask me to fill the space with a story she could disprove later.

She wrapped two rice balls, then set them in the refrigerator beside my water. A small sports drink and a packet of disinfectant wipes went behind them. She didn't ask me to call that permission.

She took the pad from beside the kettle. Under 4:20 she wrote two words: arrived, leaving. Then she placed it under my phone on the counter.

"Charge that," she said. "And go to bed."

"You don't have to get up when I do."

"I know."

She switched off the kitchen light. In the dark hallway, I could still see the clock above the stove. Tomorrow it would start too early for both of us. I picked up my phone, plugged it in, and set the alarm where I would have to reach past the shopping list to silence it.

I had come home with an answer I couldn't give her. In the morning, she would have a time, a place, and two messages. It wasn't enough to make today disappear. It was enough that I would have to keep my word when the beach was no longer an idea.

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