Paul mirrors Midoriya's renewed gravity as he introduces Shimura. He listens to her echoed words with absolute seriousness, as though none of the warnings or promises before have bearing on this moment, this request.

They don't. This new person, or her shadow, or whatever she truly is, hasn't come to an accord with Paul. He takes the choices he's made until now, promises made in hope and sealed in blood, and he sets them aside. He weighs what she asks.

He knows grief. He knows its obliterating depths. He carries it everywhere, in all of him. He saw it again today, and he'll see it again tomorrow, visions or not. He catches glimpses of it in the mirror in the shape of his eyes, in how he holds his shoulders, and he hears it in the echoes that haunt his own voice.

What would it be like to lose Midoriya? The end of a world - but he doesn't love the world because it will never end.

"Yes, Shimura-sensei," Paul says, "I'll stay with him through everything. There's nowhere else I'd want to be."

"Nowhere," he repeats, more softly, for Midoriya. "I promise."