The next morning Riku was halfway through his second set of shadow drills when he noticed the woman watching him from the park entrance.
She was trying to look casual about it. Leaning against the gate, sunglasses on, hair tucked into a baseball cap that wasn't doing much to hide the fact that it was waist-length and blonde. Civilian clothes. Tight jeans and a cropped jacket that probably cost more than his monthly rent. She had a convenience store coffee in one hand and her phone in the other, and she was pretending to look at the phone while her eyes kept sliding over the top of her sunglasses toward him.
Riku threw another combination at the dummy and didn't look her way.
He knew who she was. He'd known since the cap didn't do much for the waist-length blonde hair and the sunglasses didn't hide the height. Yu Takeyama didn't do subtle. Even her attempts at anonymity looked like a photoshoot.
She watched him for another minute. He let her.
Then she walked over.
"Hey." She stopped about three meters away, one hip cocked, coffee cup held out to the side like a prop. "You were at the event yesterday."
Riku wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his wrist. "Lot of people were at the event yesterday."
"Yeah, but most of them wanted a selfie." She pushed the sunglasses up onto her head. Green eyes, sharp, evaluating him with the same directness she'd used on stage. Up close she was taller than he'd estimated. Five-nine, maybe five-ten in the boots she was wearing. "You just stood there."
"I was eating a crepe."
"You were staring at me."
"You were on a stage. That's usually where people look."
She almost smiled. Caught it, redirected it into something more controlled. "Most people look different. You looked like you were taking notes."
Riku shrugged and turned back to the dummy. Threw a jab that was slower than it should have been. His body was running on nothing and the morning air was doing zero favors for the stiffness in his shoulders. "So you tracked down the one guy who didn't ask for an autograph. How'd you find me?"
"I didn't track you down." Too fast. She heard herself and recalibrated. "I was in the area. Patrol route goes through here sometimes."
"You're in civilian clothes."
"Day off."
"And you just happened to walk past the park where I train every morning."
"It's a public park."
Riku stopped hitting the dummy and looked at her. She was standing with her weight on one leg, chin tilted up, the posture she probably used in every interview. Armor made of body language. He could see the performance in it and under the performance the fact that she'd actually gone looking for him, which meant the aura had done its job better than he'd hoped.
His pheromones were leaking. Tired and underfed, his control fraying at the edges. She was close enough to catch it now and he could see it working in small ways. She kept shifting her weight. Her fingers tightened on the coffee cup. She didn't know what she was feeling. She just knew she felt something and she'd shown up to figure out what.
"Okay," Riku said. "You tracked me down."
"I did not."
"You absolutely did. And you're not even good at pretending you didn't."
Her jaw tightened. Then she laughed, short and genuine, the first sound she'd made that wasn't calculated. "You always this blunt with people you just met?"
"Only with people who pretend they're not interested."
Her chin came down half an inch and her eyes changed, the evaluating look sharpening. She was used to men who tripped over themselves, who blushed and stammered and couldn't get a full sentence out. A guy who called her out was a different animal and she didn't know what box to put him in yet.
He wanted to stay unboxed for as long as possible.
"I'm not 'not interested,'" she said. "I'm curious. There's a difference."
"Sure."
"There is." She took a sip of her coffee, watching him over the rim. "So what's your deal? You're what, high school? You fight like you've been training for a while."
"Fifteen. And yeah, a few years."
"Hero track?"
"UA entrance exam in two weeks."
Her eyebrows went up. Real surprise, not performed. "UA. Big swing."
"Not really. I'll get in."
"Confident."
"Accurate."
She stared at him for a beat. He could almost see her brain working behind those green eyes, categorizing him, trying to find the angle. Was he a fan playing it cool? Just a cocky kid who didn't know what he was talking to? She couldn't land on an answer and he could see that bugging her.
"What's your quirk?" she asked.
"Emitter hybrid. Pheromone-based."
Her expression shifted. Something clicked. "Pheromone-based. That's what I felt yesterday."
"Probably."
"You were doing it on purpose?"
"No. It leaks when I'm tired. I've been tired a lot this week."
She looked at him differently after that. The competitive edge was still there but there was something else now. She was a hero who dealt with quirk effects every day. She knew what pheromone-types felt like because she was adjacent to the category herself, even if her Somnambulist quirk worked through a different mechanism. His aura had pinged something in her biology and she was smart enough to connect the dots.
"Pheromone emitter going for UA," she said. "That's going to be fun for you."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean the hero commission has opinions about quirks like yours. 'Indecent' is the word they use when they're being polite." She said it without judgment, more like she was stating a fact she'd observed from the inside. "You'll spend half your first year proving you're not a creep."
"Already used to that."
"Yeah. I bet you are."
Something in her voice softened. Not a lot. A degree, maybe two. She recognized the experience because she'd had a version of it herself. A gigantification quirk meant comments about her body were constant and came from every direction. She'd weaponized them, turned her appearance into her brand, but the comments had come first and the brand was a response to them, not the other way around.
Riku didn't say any of that. Didn't need to. She'd either see the parallel or she wouldn't.
She took another sip of coffee and looked at the practice dummies. "Your form's not bad. Sloppy on the hook, though. You're dropping your elbow."
"I know. My shoulder's been messed up all week."
"Injury?"
"Fatigue. Part of the quirk. I need to..." He weighed how honest to be and decided to just go for it. "My quirk has a maintenance requirement. Physical contact. I haven't met the requirement in a while and my body's degrading."
He watched her process that. Physical contact plus pheromone emitter plus maintenance requirement. She did the math fast.
"You're an incubus-type," she said.
"Yeah."
"Huh." She looked at him again, head to toe, more openly this time. Not hiding the assessment. "And you're fifteen."
"Sixteen in two months."
"That doesn't help as much as you think it does."
"Wasn't trying to help. Just correcting."
She laughed again. Took another drink of coffee. She was stalling, he could tell. Turning something over in her head, running the risk assessment the way any smart adult would when a teenager with an incubus quirk was standing in front of them being charming about it. The aura wasn't making the decision for her. It was just making the decision feel warmer.
"You're pretty smooth for fifteen," she said.
"I've had practice."
"At being smooth?"
"At talking to people who are trying to figure out if I'm dangerous."
That hit somewhere real. Her face did something quick and complicated that he filed away for later. She looked at her coffee, then at him, then at the practice dummies, then back at him.
"I should go," she said. She didn't move.
"Okay."
"I have things to do."
"I believe you."
"Stop smirking."
"I'm not smirking. This is just my face."
She pointed at him with the coffee cup. "That is a smirk. I know smirks. I invented half of them."
Riku let the smirk become a grin. She saw it happen and her composure cracked a little more. Not in a dramatic way. Just her weight shifting forward and her free hand coming up to adjust the cap that didn't need adjusting. Her eyes stayed on his face a half-second longer than casual.
The aura hummed between them. Low and steady, not a push, just a presence. A warmth in the air that had nothing to do with the weather.
"Look," she said. She was going for nonchalant and missing by about a mile. "I live in the area. If you want to, I don't know. Hang out sometime. I could give you some pointers on your form. Hero stuff." She paused. "That sounded more professional in my head."
"Are you inviting me to your apartment?"
"I'm inviting you to receive professional hero mentorship in a private setting."
"So your apartment."
"Don't make it weird."
"I'm not the one making it weird."
She pulled out her phone and held it out to him. Contact screen, empty. "Give me your number. I'll text you. If you're free tonight, maybe. If not, whatever." She was trying very hard to sound like she didn't care either way.
Riku took the phone. His fingers brushed hers during the handoff and she inhaled, a small sharp sound that she covered by clearing her throat. The contact had been maybe half a second of skin on skin. Not enough for a real drain. Enough for her to feel the edge of it, a warm pull that ran up her arm and settled somewhere in her chest.
He typed his number, handed it back.
"Riku," he said. "Amane Riku."
"Yu." She pocketed the phone without looking at the screen. "I'll text you. Maybe."
"You'll text me."
"God, you're annoying." She was smiling when she said it. Not the stage smile. The real one, slightly crooked, slightly pissed off.
She turned and walked toward the park entrance. He watched her go. The cap was crooked and her posture was different from when she'd arrived. Looser. Less performed. Halfway to the gate she looked back over her shoulder, caught him watching, and flipped him off without breaking stride.
Riku laughed. Actually laughed, loud enough that a pigeon on the fence startled and took off.
He went back to the dummy and hit it. The punch landed harder than any he'd thrown all morning. Still not what it should have been. A week past when his body needed what it needed and the gap was showing in everything he did.
But tonight. Maybe tonight.
His phone buzzed in his pocket before he'd finished the next combination.
One text from an unknown number: "7pm. I'll send the address. Don't be weird about it."
He saved the contact as "Mt. Lady" and went back to training. The dummy's smug marker face looked slightly less smug than usual. Maybe it was the light.
Seven hours.