Chapter 6
[11]
Ren woke up groggier than usual the next morning, his first thought as he got out of bed was to reach for his phone on the shelf next to his bed, only to find that it wasn't there. His mind too tired to process where it might be he decided his next course of action was to go to the bathroom.
Moving downstairs into the cafe he was startled to find customers already sitting in the booths drinking coffee. An old couple sitting closest to the stairs gasped as they witnessed a teenage boy stride into the middle of the cafe wearing only boxer shorts and an "I Heart Tokyo" T-shirt. Futaba, who was sitting on one of the stools at the counter, snapped a picture of the confused Ren, who promptly turned around and ran back up to the attic.
"Kid what the hell are you doing?!" Called the voice of Sojiro from downstairs.
Ren was already rushing to get dressed for school before anyone else could say anything. With his school uniform only partially on Ren rushed back downstairs, bookbag in hand when he was stopped by his guardian. Sojiro had a look that seemed halfway between angry and amused at Ren's morning antics.
"School's been cancelled for the rest of the week, on account of yesterday's events."
"Oh... right." Memories of what had transpired the day prior flooded back into Ren's mind. The monster, the explosions, the destruction.
"Sorry about uh, earlier." Ren glanced over to the elderly couple who snickered at the boy.
"It's fine, just come have breakfast."
Ren took a seat next to Futaba who couldn't stop giggling, looking Ren up and down.
"You look like you've been taking fashion advice from Ryuji." She said, gesturing to his haphazard appearance.
"Yeah, figured I'd finish changing on the subway."
Sojiro laid out the standard breakfast of Leblanc which also happened to be the only food Leblanc served, curry over rice. Ren didn't mind though, Sojiro's curry was amazing and he found himself never getting tired of it even after two straight months of it.
As Ren finished his meal, the cafe door burst open to reveal the two blondes Ren knew as his best friends.
"Ren!" Ann and Ryuji shouted in unison as they rushed to hug their friend, relieved at his safety.
"Agghh!" The next thing Ren knew he was being slapped across the face by Ann whose tone had done a 180 in under a second.
"Why didn't you reply back to us! You told us you were going to Shibuya after school and then all that shit went down and not a peep from you!" Ann slapped him a second time. "We thought you were dead y'know! I didn't get any sleep last night, I was so worried!"
As she went in for a third slap, Ryuji caught her hand. "He gets it! Let's just be glad he's safe."
Ann pulled her hand away and pouted, a faint blush dusted her cheeks. "Don't make me worry like that again! Got it?!"
Ren nodded holding a hand to his now red cheek "I'm sorry, my phone broke in the chaos, so I didn't get to see any messages."
Ryuji took in Ren's disheveled appearance. "Hey man I like the new style, looks good on you! Though, why're you dressed for school? Didn't you hear we got the week off?"
"I just woke up. It was a long night."
"Right... Sorry."
After Ren mentioned waking up, Futaba gestured Ann over to her and showed her something on her phone which got Ann to laugh her ass off.
"Send that to me!"
Ren had no doubt it was the picture from earlier and frowned at the joke at his expense.
"Oh hey dude, I just noticed, no glasses today?" Ryuji questioned Ren. This gave Ren pause, he reached up to his face and noticed that he wasn't wearing the thick framed glasses that normally always donned his face. But that made no sense, Ren's eyesight was terrible, without them he could barely see his own hand in front of his face.
However right now, Ren could see crystal clear, in fact his eyesight was better than ever, it had been since he woke up this morning.
"What the hell?"
[12]
Ren Amamiya wasn't a complete idiot. He wouldn't dismiss all of the strange things that had been happening to him for the past few days.
His eyesight had fixed itself overnight and he no longer required his glasses. He was sticking to things now, earlier when he had leaned his hand against a brick wall it had gotten stuck and he ended up tearing a chunk off of the wall before becoming unstuck. And then there was his newfound strength, first discovered when he lifted a large chunk of concrete off of the ground, Ren had run a series of tests in private to make sure it wasn't just a heat of the moment thing.
To his surprise, he was capable of lifting many times his own weight which he found out by bench pressing a parked car in Yongen Jaya and uprooting a large tree in Inokashira park, both events led to him nearly being caught and having to make up a terrible excuse as to what he'd been doing.
Ren was washing dishes in the kitchen of cafe Leblanc, thinking back to what could have caused this change in him. 'Did it start with the attack? Maybe it had awoken something within him? No, things had been off before then as well.'
"The field trip!" Ren realized that it had all started when he was coming back from Shido Sciences and got sick on the train ride home.
"What about the field trip?" Sojiro asked him while taking a drag from his cigarette.
"Oh uh nothing just thinking out loud, I uh think I left something at the lab during the field trip."
'Nice save!' Ren congratulated himself in his mind.
Sojiro just rolled his eyes and tossed the cigarette into the trash can.
"You should stop hanging out with that Ryuji kid, I think his stupid is rubbing off on you."
Ren chuckled in response and resumed his thought process.
The only significant event that day had been the incident with the spiders and one biting him, that must have been what triggered the change. Ren felt like a moron for not realizing it earlier, the spider that had bitten him had been locked up in a glass container in a lab so it most likely wasn't ordinary. In fact the more he thought about, he realized that this must be what gave Spider-Man his abilities in the first place, the similarities were too numerous to be a coincidence.
Before Ren could further contemplate his situation, Sojiro turned up the volume on the TV and Ren heard the news anchor say "Spider-Man" which immediately caused him to turn towards the cafe's small television.
Written across the screen was the headline, "Spider-Man Found Dead Following Shibuya Terrorist Attack. Man Behind The Mask Revealed"
Above the headline was a photo of a handsome man in his mid 20s with medium length silver hair and grey eyes.
"What?" Ren couldn't believe his eyes. Spider-Man was dead? Did the villain from before beat him? What was going to happen to the city? Would the monster attack again? What if-
"Ren!"
"Huh?" Ren looked over to Sojiro who called out to him.
"You broke the damn plate in half!"
Ren looked at his hands and noticed that he was in fact holding the two halves of a porcelain plate he'd been cleaning, split directly down the middle.
"I'm so sorry Sojiro, I'll clean this up and buy a new one!"
"Don't bother. Kid are you alright? You look like you're gonna be sick."
"Yeah, I just, I can't believe he's gone."
Sojiro looked down, "Yeah, we're gonna miss him. I'm honestly not sure how the city's gonna fare without him." Glancing at the clock, Sojiro hung up his apron and put on his white fedora.
"Futaba's gonna be devastated, she was his biggest fan. I gotta be there for her, are you okay to lock up."
"Yeah… I'll be fine. Goodnight."
Looking back up to the newscast, Ren saw that there would be a vigil held tomorrow night for Spider-Man and all of the people who lost their lives in the attack. Apparently Spider-Man's widow would be giving a speech to the public.
Ren turned off the TV and locked up before heading to bed. He didn't get any sleep that night, only lying there staring at the ceiling, contemplating where to go from here. Could the city really survive without Spider-Man?