A Week Written in Blisters

Training log updated.

Take a breath. The next test is already starting.

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On Thursday of the eighth week, I missed the early bus by watching it leave.

I was close enough to see the driver check his mirror. Not close enough to ask him to wait. The skin behind my left heel had caught against the edge of my work shoe two blocks from home. I had stopped under the station awning to pull the shoe off, found a blister split along one side, and spent the last of my four-minute margin trying to make yesterday's bandage stick.

The bus pulled out while I was still tying the lace.

I stood with my bag on one shoulder and considered walking. Dagobah was too far to reach by five. Walking fast would make the bandage useless before I got there. I checked the next departure anyway, as if disliking the answer might change it.

5:18 at the beach. We were supposed to start at five.

My phone showed a message from Mom, sent while I was fighting the shoe: Laundry room at 6:30. I left the bag by the door. Don't forget the two shirts.

I had volunteered for the slot. The building machine was booked for a repair the next two days, and both of us had clothes we needed before the weekend. I typed Running late, then stared at the words. They could mean the bus. They could mean the laundry. I hadn't yet decided which promise I intended to keep.

I sent: Missed the bus. Heel rubbed open. I'll tell All Might when I get there. Please leave the bag; I can still make the machine.

Her reply came before the next bus. Tell him before you start. Send me the revised return time.

The kitchen notebook already held the same rule in her handwriting. Back in the third week, after she'd opened my training log, she and All Might had made me put sleep, meals, injuries, schoolwork and training days where she could see them. I still kept the detailed measurements separately. Her page did not need the weight of every bag at the beach. It did need to know when I couldn't reach a bus stop without pain.

I looked down at the pale oval of tape showing above my shoe. My reply had already called the blister an injury. I wished I could take back the noun and keep the honesty.

The second bus arrived nearly empty. I sat with my foot out from under the seat, trying not to rest the shoe against the floor at the wrong angle. Outside, shops lifted their shutters. Students in other uniforms waited at crossings with their bags held close against the morning wind. No one else on the bus had a reason to care whether I carried six sacks or zero before breakfast.

All Might was standing by the painted collection line when I reached Dagobah. The bags behind it were tied and tagged. The weekly sheet in his hand had a space for six carries today, not the eight I'd proposed on Monday. He had already told me why eight was too many. I had spent Wednesday trying to finish the sixth faster.

"Eighteen minutes," he said.

"The bus left. I told my mother."

His eyes went to my shoe. "What did you tell her about that?"

"That it rubbed open. It looked worse at the stop than it does now."

"Show me before we decide what it looks like."

I sat on the low wall and unlaced the shoe. The bandage had rolled into a white rope against my sock. A red smear marked the seam. The blister was small. That was the humiliating part. I could have held it beneath one fingertip.

All Might crouched without touching it. "When did it start?"

"It felt hot yesterday. I wrote that down."

"Where?"

"My training page."

He turned the sheet over. Wednesday: heel friction, mild. I had given the word mild a box of its own, as if it could hold the skin together overnight.

"I should have changed shoes," I said.

"Probably. Did it hurt while you were walking here?"

"I took the bus."

"To the bus."

"Yes."

He set the sheet on the wall beside me. The shore was gray and loud. Farther down, two workers were checking the collection bins. One waved at All Might's tracksuit without recognizing the man inside it; he waved back.

"No carries," he said. "No sand passes. Clean it and cover it properly. If it keeps opening or looks infected, we get it looked at."

I heard the first sentence and tried to negotiate with the rest. "There's the north edge to mark. I could do that without lifting anything."

"How will you reach it?"

"Walk. Slowly."

He waited.

"It hurts when I walk," I said.

"Then not that either."

I looked at the six empty boxes. Monday's four had taken me most of the morning. Tuesday's five had left my hands shaking when I opened my school locker. Yesterday I'd completed six, though the last had taken longer than the first. That was the week as it had happened, not the upward line I'd drawn in my head. A patch of broken tile still waited beyond the rope marker. The beach did not know I had kept count.

"Could we do upper-body work here?" I asked.

"On a foot you can't put down normally?"

"Seated."

"You slept how long?"

I knew the number. I'd written it before leaving the apartment. "Six hours, twenty minutes."

"And Wednesday night?"

"Six ten."

He turned to the recovery column. I watched his finger stop on each entry. He didn't say I had lied. I hadn't. There was no rule that sleep became adequate merely because I wrote the short hours honestly.

"We can spend the remaining time listening," he said.

"To what?"

"The beach. The crews. Your foot when you put the shoe back on. I'll note what has to wait. You do not have to make a workout out of sitting here."

That sounded like a trick with no satisfying answer. I had come to carry things. The bags were in reach. My school uniform was at home in a laundry sack. I could not do any of the useful work by staring at it.

All Might took a small first-aid packet from his bag and handed it to me. I cleaned the spot, let it dry, and used a dressing that covered the rubbed edge instead of rolling into it. He made me put the shoe on, stand once and tell him where it pressed. I did. I could walk without limping if I shortened the step. He noticed the shortening.

"Sit," he said.

I sat.

A collection truck backed toward the far gate. Its reversing tone carried over the surf. The driver waited while a worker moved an empty bin clear of the tires. All Might pointed to the pause.

"What did you hear before she moved it?"

"The alarm."

"And?"

"She called to the driver. He didn't answer until he could see her."

"Good. Write that, not what you assume he meant."

I wrote it on the back of the week's page. Then I heard glass knock against the rigid bin and wrote that the crew was separating it from bagged litter. The exercise felt absurdly like school until the truck left and I realized I'd been about to add a carry to my plan without knowing its pickup point. My marks described what happened while I was still enough to see it.

The sun cleared the low buildings. I checked my phone. The return bus that would have put me at the laundry room by six-thirty had left while I was changing the dressing. The next one would get me home after the slot started.

I could still ask Mom to put the shirts in for me. I could call that keeping my promise. It would make her morning absorb the minutes I had lost.

I called.

"You're late," she said. She was not asking about Dagobah.

"I won't make the machine. Please don't carry the bag down for me. I'll handle the shirts tonight."

"The repair starts tomorrow. Tonight's bookings are full."

"I can wash them in the sink."

"Can you stand there long enough?"

I watched the line of foam slide over the smaller strip we'd cleared. "I can sit with a basin."

"You said you'd tell him before starting. Did you?"

"Yes. He stopped the carries."

"Did he stop tomorrow?"

I looked at the square marked Friday on the sheet. It still held four planned loads and a line for a morning check. I had been keeping tomorrow alive in my head because losing today felt expensive.

"We haven't decided," I said.

"That is what I'm asking about. We agreed you'd report pain before the next session, and we'd decide whether you leave. I'm hearing you plan a way around that."

She had the household page in front of her; I could hear the paper move. She had earned the right to ask after three weeks of coming home to partial answers. This was not a new rule she had invented for a blister. It was the one I had agreed to when the injury had been someone else's fear and the boxes on my training page were still empty.

"I'll call you back with the decision," I said.

"Before you leave there."

"Yes."

She hung up. All Might had turned away from the call, but he was close enough to hear my half of it. I did not need him to explain my mother to me.

"I want to cancel Friday," I said. Saying it first mattered, though I still wished it didn't. "Not shift the work to Saturday. Cancel the session. If it's closed and I can walk normally after that, we can make a new plan."

He studied me for a moment, then crossed through Friday's four-load target in one firm stroke. Under it he wrote: Week 8, Friday - Dagobah session canceled. Rest; check heel and gait before any new load. On return: four carries maximum, rest after two, no make-up loads. Sleep and school as usual. He signed All Might at the bottom of that day's change, beside the date relative to the first Dagobah session.

"This is a record of what we decided," he said, handing me the sheet. "It isn't a dare to recover the loads later."

"I know."

"You know the words. Take the sheet home."

I folded it once, not across the canceled line. The six empty boxes for Thursday remained visible. For the next session there were none to fill.

I texted Mom a photo of the signed change and called to tell her I was leaving. The bus ride back gave my heel time to cool and stiffen. By the time I reached our building, the laundry room door was closed and the machine was already turning behind it. Our bag remained where Mom had left it. She had not rescued the booking and called it my work.

I went to school in yesterday's clean shirt. Nobody knew what had happened at Dagobah. Bakugo looked at me once in the corridor, at the careful way I put weight on my left foot, then kept walking. I let him. I had no wish to turn a missed bus into another argument he could carry into class.

That evening Mom put a basin beside the bathroom sink and left the two shirts there. She did not wash them while I was at school. I sat on a stool, worked soap through the collars, and hung them over the rack. The left shoe waited by the door with its heel lining pulled back. My hands could do this much; my foot did not need to pretend.

When I came out, she had the kitchen log open. She looked at the signed sheet I placed beside it, then at the wet cuffs dripping into the basin.

"They may not dry by morning," she said.

"I'll wear the other one."

"And Friday?"

"School. No beach. I'll tell you if the heel gets worse."

She wrote canceled beside Friday, using her own pen. I wrote the sleep target below it. Neither of us filled Saturday.

The Ledger appeared only when I sat down with my homework.

[Hero Analysis Log]

Fatigue: recorded after observation

No training benefit assigned

I closed the display. The machine downstairs finished its cycle with a dull thump, somebody else's shirts clean on schedule. My page for the week had six empty boxes, one crossed-out morning, and two damp uniforms I could not hurry dry. All Might's signature was still there when I turned back to the first problem.

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