The Marked Trajectory

At Aldera Junior High, there was one unwritten rule: if Katsuki Bakugo was walking down the corridor, you got out of the way. Not because he demanded it. It simply happened on its own. He had that kind of aura—charged for conflict. A glare from under his brows, hands in his pockets, shoulders squared. He didn’t walk—he shoved his way through space like a cannonball. That morning, I’d stayed late in the classroom, copying the math homework I’d blissfully slept through. Green had already run off to the library—he had some kind of hero-history project. I stepped into the corridor, yawning, not bothering to look around. At exactly that moment, Bakugo shot around the corner. Our shoulders collided. “Watch where you’re going, orphanage brat!” he barked, without even slowing down. I felt like firing back in the same tone, but I stopped short. Because at the instant of the collision, my right hand had jerked forward reflexively to catch my balance and slid across his shoulder. Bare hand. My glove was still in my pocket—I’d taken it off to write and forgotten to put it back on. The Mark locked on. The sensation was unique. An invisible thread stretched from my fingertips somewhere ahead, toward the receding back. It was like holding the end of an endlessly long fishing line, the other end tied to Bakugo. I could feel his position in space—not precisely, but enough to tell he was turning, going down the stairs, heading for the exit. For a second I stood motionless. Then I slowly pulled on the glove. The corners of my mouth crept upward. Firecracker, without knowing it, had just become the owner of the most ridiculous Mark in the history of my Quirk.

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“Okay, people, gather up!” I flung open the door to the room and clapped my hands. Koji jolted on his bed, nearly smacking his head on the ceiling. Takumi looked up from his book. Ryohei didn’t even stir, but his skin shifted from gray to pale yellow—mild curiosity. “Why are you yelling?” he asked, without turning around. “I have an offer you can’t refuse,” I said, shutting the door and lowering my voice conspiratorially. “Want to pull a prank on one explosive jerk?” Koji was beside me in an instant. His eyes lit up with that special fire that usually meant trouble. “On who? That guy from your school? The one who pisses you off?” “Exactly. Katsuki Bakugo. Personality like a hungry rhino. And today,” I raised my gloved right hand, “I accidentally put a Mark on him.” “Accidentally?” Takumi raised an eyebrow. “You said the Mark only sets with intent.” “At the moment of the collision, I thought, ‘I wish I could chuck something at him.’ That was enough.” I shrugged. “The subconscious is a fast thing.” “And what do you want to do?” Ryohei finally deigned to turn around. His skin had already gone orange—interest. “Paper airplanes.” A pause settled. “What?” Koji asked. “Paper airplanes,” I repeated deliberately. “Lots of paper airplanes. Dozens. Maybe a hundred. We take old notebooks, newspapers, anything we can find, and fold them into airplanes. Then I take off my glove, send them one after another, and they fly to Bakugo. Across the whole city. Through windows, doors, whatever. They pursue him until they reach their target.” “And what happens when they reach the target?” Takumi asked. His voice sounded skeptical, but I noticed he’d set his book aside. That was already an achievement. “Nothing.” I spread my hands. “Absolutely nothing. They just fly in and hit him. It’s paper. It won’t hurt. But imagine Firecracker’s reaction when airplanes start coming at him from all sides and he can’t figure out where they’re coming from.” “He’ll lose it,” Ryohei said. For the first time in a long while, he smiled. “He’ll totally lose it.” “Exactly,” I confirmed. “And he’ll never know who did it. Because he can’t see the Mark, he doesn’t know about my Quirk, and the airplanes will come from all over—they go around obstacles along the shortest path.” Koji was already cackling. He grabbed a stack of old notebooks from his nightstand and started tearing out pages. “I’m in! What do we do?” “Fold airplanes.” I took one sheet and demonstrated. “Like this. Simplest model. The main thing is they fly straight.” “I can do better,” Takumi said suddenly. We all stared at him. “What?” He shrugged. “In third grade we had an origami club. Airplanes are the basics.” “Great.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ll be the chief designer.” Ten minutes later, news of the impending prank had spread through the orphanage. Kids were flocking to our room with paper, scissors, and enthusiasm. Honda-san glanced in, saw the crowd, sighed, and shut the door from the other side. Either she didn’t want to know, or she silently approved. I preferred to think it was the latter. “So here’s the deal,” I announced, as the room filled with the rustle of paper. “The target is Katsuki Bakugo. The Mark is set on him. Right now, based on what I’m sensing, he’s somewhere near his house. About half an hour’s walk from here. The airplanes will take about the same time to reach him. Their speed isn’t great, but they can’t be deflected.” “What if he hides inside his house?” asked Yuki, who had already curled into a ball but unfurled himself for the occasion. “Windows,” I answered shortly. “Or ventilation. Or he’ll come outside when the first ones arrive. The airplanes will find a way.” “This is genius,” whispered the girl with glowing hair. Her name was Hikari, I think. “Just genius.” “Genius comes later,” I said, picking up the first finished airplane. “Now—practice.”

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I made the first launch at nine in the evening. It was already dark, streetlights glowed beyond the window, and the room looked like a paper factory. We’d cranked out about sixty airplanes of varying quality—from the perfectly straight ones Takumi folded to the crooked ones Yuki sweated over. There was also a handful of simply crumpled sheets, for variety. I walked over to the open window and pulled off my right glove. The thread of the Mark still stretched into the distance, toward the target. I could feel it—faintly, but clearly. Bakugo was somewhere out there, kilometers away. “First one,” I announced, and picked up an airplane. I touched it with my right hand and gave the mental command: Fly. The airplane tore from my palm and went into the night sky. No throw—just a touch and an order. It slipped into the darkness, and a second later I could no longer see it. “Second one.” The next airplane followed the first. “Third one.” I worked methodically. One after another, paper projectiles flew out the window. The children crowded around, holding their breath. Koji brought up new batches, Takumi sorted them by quality, Ryohei… Ryohei stared out the window with an expression as if he wanted to fly after them himself. “Fifty-seventh,” I said, sending off another airplane. “Fifty-eighth. Fifty-ninth.” “Let’s do a crumpled sheet!” Koji suggested. “Let’s.” I picked up a notebook page wadded into a ball, touched it, and sent it. It flew tumbling end over end, but just as unswervingly as all the others. My Quirk didn’t care about aerodynamics—it made no difference whether an ideal airplane was flying or a shapeless lump. “Last one.” I took another airplane, folded personally by Takumi. “Sixtieth.” It went into the sky. I pulled on my glove and shut the window. “Well,” I said, turning to the kids. “Now all that’s left is to wait.” “Can we somehow find out what’s happening there?” Yuki asked. “No. The Mark doesn’t transmit an image. But,” I smirked, “we can imagine.”

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Katsuki Bakugo sat on a bench in a small park near his house, and he was pissed off. He was almost always pissed off, but today he had a specific reason. Two reasons, actually. Both named Kaburaya Seiha and Izuku Midoriya. The first was that upstart from the orphanage who had dared to say he’d get into U.A., and who hadn’t even flinched when Bakugo tried to put him in his place. The second was Deku—useless, worthless Deku, who had suddenly stopped trembling at the very sight of him and had started snapping back. And now the two of them walked around together, trained together, sat next to each other at school. As if on purpose, just to drive him crazy. Bakugo clenched his fist, and a miniature explosion popped on his palm. “Orphanage bastard,” he muttered. “And a talentless loser. A perfect pair.” He was already weighing how to teach them a lesson. Not physically—after that incident at the gate, he’d realized Kaburaya wasn’t so simple. But there was another way to be found. Humiliate them in front of everyone. Show who was in charge. Make Deku remember his place, and the orphanage kid his own. A soft rustle interrupted his thoughts. Bakugo raised his head. At first he saw nothing—darkness, a streetlamp, the crown of a tree. Then a white rectangle emerged from behind the branches. A paper airplane. It glided in a shallow arc, dipped its nose, and fell right onto Bakugo’s lap. He stared at it. “What the hell?” He picked up the airplane and examined it. An ordinary notebook page, folded into the shape of an airplane. No writing, no tricks. Just paper. A second airplane came from the left. Bakugo didn’t even register where it had come from—he just turned at the sound, and it was already diving for his shoulder. The third smacked into the back of his head. The fourth glanced off his arm. “What the—?!” He jumped up from the bench, looking around wildly. Airplanes were coming from all sides. They emerged from the darkness like night moths, and every single one was aimed at him. Bakugo batted one away with a swipe. He incinerated a second with an explosion—the paper flared and fell as ash. But in the place of the burned one, there were already three new ones. “Who’s doing this?!” he shouted into the void. No answer came. Only the paper airplanes kept arriving. Now they were coming in a stream—one after another, like a flock of invisible birds. Bakugo spun in place, trying to figure out where they were coming from, but it was impossible. They flew from different directions. They skirted around trees. They dove under lampposts. They changed trajectory in midair, but always returned to their target. To him. “Knock it off!” Bakugo roared and started blasting them with explosions. Bang! Bang! Bang-bang! Flashes tore through the darkness. Burning scraps of paper rained down. But the airplanes didn’t stop. They kept coming and coming, as if someone had launched them from a dozen different spots at once. One particularly stubborn one hit Bakugo right in the forehead. Another—in the ear. A third slipped down the back of his collar. He snarled, spat, fired off explosions, and jumped in place, trying to fight off the paper swarm. From the outside, it looked like some strange dance—a kid in a school uniform fending off harmless airplanes with a fury worthy of a battle against a real villain. And then the crumpled sheet arrived. It didn’t move like an airplane—it tumbled end over end, clumsily, but just as relentlessly. It smacked Bakugo right in the face and stuck there for a second before dropping. Something was written on the sheet. Bakugo snatched it up and smoothed it out. In the lamplight, he made out crooked lines: “Math homework. Equations with two unknowns. Problem number…” That was it. No signature. No threat. Just someone’s homework. “I’LL KILL WHOEVER DID THIS!” Bakugo screamed so loudly that crows took off from the nearest tree. A light flicked on in the window of one of the neighboring houses. A woman’s voice shouted: “Stop that noise! I’ll call the police!” Bakugo ground his teeth. The airplanes had finally stopped coming—their stream had dried up. The last one fell at his feet, brushing his shoe. He stood there, breathing hard, in the middle of a paper-strewn lawn, clutching someone else’s homework in his fist. And he did not understand. Absolutely did not understand what that had been. Someone was playing with him. Someone who could reach him anywhere. Paper airplanes weren’t dangerous—but the very fact that they had found him, pursued him, pelted him while he was powerless to stop it… It was humiliating. And he didn’t know who to take revenge on.

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“I can just picture his face,” I said, lying down on my bed. “Think he got really mad?” Koji asked, still giggling as he sifted through the leftover paper. “Judging by how far away I can sense the Mark, he’s currently running around the park yelling at trees.” “Won’t he figure out it was you?” “How?” I shrugged. “He doesn’t know how my Quirk works. He might suspect only if he overheard my conversations with Green, but there’s zero proof. The airplanes came from all sides. Tracking them back to the source is impossible.” “That was magnificent,” Takumi said quietly, and I caught something like admiration in his voice. “Too bad we didn’t get to see his reaction,” Yuki sighed. “No big deal,” I said, closing my eyes. “Tomorrow at school, I’ll see the aftermath. If Firecracker looks like he’s been terrorized by ghosts all night—I’ll know.” “And if he asks you straight out?” Ryohei added. “I’ll put on an innocent face and say I have no idea what he’s talking about. My alibi is ironclad—I was at the orphanage all evening, tons of witnesses.” “That’s true,” Koji confirmed. “We’ll all vouch for you.” “Thanks.” I smirked. “You’re reliable accomplices.” After the lights went out and the room sank into darkness, I lay there for a long time, staring at the ceiling. The Mark on Bakugo was still holding. I could feel it moving—apparently, he’d gone home. I wondered how many airplanes he’d burned. How many he’d managed to catch. I’d get the answer to that last question tomorrow. And, honestly, I was looking forward to it eagerly. After all, what was life without small joys? And watching that arrogant Firecracker rage over paper airplanes—that was exactly what the doctor ordered. I closed my eyes and slid into sleep with a satisfied smile on my face.