The sun hit his eyes, so he angled the manga to block the light. The page showed All Might, hitting All for one with the United States of Smash. The rooftop door was always supposed to be locked, but today it had simply opened when he tried it, and he hadn't questioned the small gift. Up here, three stories above the school courtyard, he could read without anyone asking why he was alone again.
"That's a good scene."
He looked up, and a girl stood five meters away near the rooftop's edge. She looked about his age with dark hair and a school uniform he didn't recognize. She hadn't been there a moment ago, and he didn't hear the door being opened.
"How did you get up here?"
"Same way you did." She stepped closer, hands clasped behind her back. "That's the All-Might fight, isn't it? The one against All For One in Kamino."
He glanced down at the page, then back at her. "Yeah."
"Do you like that scene?"
"It's well-drawn."
"That's not what I asked."
He considered closing the manga and leaving. This conversation felt wrong somehow, like he'd walked into a room and forgotten why he'd come, but something kept him sitting there.
"I like that he was already past his limit, and instead of trying to preserve any last embers, he just burned everything that was left."
"You admire that?"
"Why do you care?"
"Curious. You're up here every day, you know. Reading manga or just staring at nothing. Don't you have friends? Club activities?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Not interested."
She laughed, "That's honest, at least. Most people would make up an excuse. Say they're busy or that clubs don't appeal to them."
He didn't respond. This was already more conversation than he'd had with anyone at school in the past weeks.
"What are you interested in, then?" She asked.
"Free Diving."
"How deep do you go?"
"Sixty meters last time."
"Isn't that dangerous?"
He picked up the manga again, finding his page. "Everything's dangerous if you think about it too much, but thinking about the danger doesn't make me want to stop. It makes me want to go deeper."
"Why do you want to go deeper?" She asked.
"Because I can't stop wondering what's further down."
"Even if it kills you?"
"Especially then."
"I hope you find what you're looking for down there." She stood up and walked toward the door. "Even if it's not what you expect."
"Wait."
She paused, glancing back.
"Who are you?"
Her smile widened slightly. "Does it matter?"
And then she was gone. He sat alone on the rooftop for another ten minutes with the conversation replaying in his mind, but it was foggy even though it just happened recently; had she really been there?
He gathered his things and headed for the door. The strangeness of the encounter faded as he walked home, replaced by familiar thoughts of preparation and planning. Wetsuit, weight belt, dive computer, and fins. The mental checklist he'd run through a hundred times before. By the time he reached his apartment, the girl on the rooftop felt like something from a dream.
---
He stood on the rocky shore, forty kilometers south of Tokyo, checking his equipment one final time. The dive site was unofficial, with no staff or emergency services within quick reach, just a deep channel where the shelf dropped away sharply, offering vertical access to depths most recreational divers would never see.
The wetsuit was three millimeters thick and felt like a second skin; he'd worn it so many times that pulling it on felt like shedding his surface-world identity for something truer. His fins, mask, and dive computer were strapped to his left wrist.
He checked the dive computer one last time: 16:47. The water temperature was estimated at eighteen degrees Celsius at the surface, dropping to twelve at depth, and the visibility was good.
He'd told no one he was coming here. His parents thought he was at a study group. His classmates, the few who noticed him at all, wouldn't think about where he spent his afternoons.
He walked into the water and swam out past the rocky shallows and out to where the shelf began its steep descent. He floated on the surface, face down, breathing deeply to build the oxygen reserve his body would need for the minutes ahead.
The final breath came, and he pulled air deep into his lungs. Then he bent forward, kicked once, and began his descent. The dive computer glowed on his wrist: fifteen meters. Twenty. Twenty-five.
Pressure built against his eardrums, so he pinched his nose and blew gently, feeling his sinuses adjust. The technique was automatic now, as at this depth mistakes were not to be made.
He hit fifty meters, and the ocean was grey now, with the water feeling thicker. Each meter downward increased the pressure on his body, and his heart rate had dropped to half its normal pace. He was now at fifty-five meters; his sixty-meter dive had taken everything he had, he'd surfaced dizzy, vision blurred, barely conscious. The memory should have served as a warning, but the question remained: what was deeper?
He reached sixty meters, and the dive computer flashed yellow: WARNING-MAXIMUM DEPTH. He ignored it and kept diving, then he hit eighty meters, and the dive computer flashed red: CRITICAL DEPTH, IMMEDIATE ASCENT REQUIRED. The first real urge to breathe touched his diaphragm; it wasn't painful yet, but soon it would demand to do everything except the one thing he wouldn't do: make him surface.
He reached eighty-three meters, and the urge to breathe intensified to active discomfort. His diaphragm spasmed involuntarily, but he rode through it, relaxed consciously, and let the spasm pass; his vision started to narrow at the edges.
His thoughts moved more slowly, each one requiring more effort to form. The dive computer's numbers blurred slightly on his wrist. All of the pain, the cold, and the pressure felt right. This was who he was, here in the depths, pushing past what his body could safely endure.
His chest was starting to burn now; he was around ninety-five meters. His body was throwing every signal it had, and his heart rate dropped further, conserving what little oxygen remained. The question of whether this would kill him felt distant now. His last thought, before he succumbed to the darkness, was-
'Just a little deeper.'