Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

In the hours before a midsummer sunrise, when sunlight was just starting to bleed past the horizon, the sky was the most beautiful shade of blue, turned dusky by a veil of smoke and dust. The silhouettes of far-off skyscrapers stood like shining towers of metal and glass, straining ever upward to the heavens like grasping fingers. Like the other wards were reaching toward better tomorrows. In this ward, though, scattered across the skyline to blot out the silver-edged beacons beyond, were the sad remains of what had once been an attempt to do the same. Half-finished construction projects with sagging frameworks, their cranes standing like gravestones of ambitions left abandoned, crisscrossed the horizon, hiding the great achievements beyond. They were remnants of failure, of an attempt to revitalize a shabby, crime and drug-addled cesspit and bring it up to live among the grandeur.

Forgotten attempts at greatness, neglected and left to rot.

As the sun peeked between the buildings, light started to filter through the rotting newspaper covering Hitoshi’s cracked window, casting his space in sickly, bruised hues of yellow and blue. Where the paper had peeled or torn, though, the first touch of sunlight shone through with shafts of warm orange, illuminating motes of dust that floated through the stagnant air. One such shaft of light found him, blindingly bright and annoyingly unignorable as it dragged him from his meager rest.

No matter where he slept, or how long, and no matter how hard he tried to stay asleep — just a little longer, just a few more minutes — somehow, the sun always found and kicked him bodily from the sweet, peaceful oblivion of sleep to the hells and agonies of wakefulness.

Maybe that was a bit dramatic. As awfully bright as the sunlight was on his poor eyes, Hitoshi had dealt with a lot worse awakenings. Honestly, he was just happy he’d gotten any sleep at all; waking up to the sun stabbing through his eyelids was far preferable to lying awake all night to watch the inky, light-polluted night turn to the pale blue-grey of late becoming early. Even a half-hour of sleep was better than none, no matter how much his body claimed otherwise.

Not to mention how Mr. Aizawa felt about him training on no sleep. His teacher may have been a sleep-deprived workaholic, but he didn’t tolerate the same behavior from his students. Either he’d spend all of their training giving Hitoshi a lecture — ‘If you can’t take care of yourself, how are you going to take care of others? Prioritize your own health so you can be the Hero people need, not a halfassed attempt at it.’

Or worse, he’d send Hitoshi home early.

Groaning and scrunching his nose, Hitoshi squinted one eye open against the light, glaring halfheartedly. For a moment, his sleep-drunk brain struggled to comprehend what he saw, though — his lumpy futon across the room rather than under him, and the room at an odd, off-kilter angle. He felt extraordinarily dumb when the painful crick in his neck and the paper under his cheek informed him his room hadn’t gone topsy-turvy in the night, nor had his futon teleported. No, like an idiot, he’d fallen asleep at his desk, homework crumpled under him, with his head pounding.

It wasn’t the first time he’d fallen asleep face down at his desk, but it always fucking sucked. Hell, he hadn’t even gotten changed or gotten the mask off or even brushed his teeth! The fuck was wrong with him?

His back and neck popped painfully as he slowly straightened, careful of the kinks and twinging of muscles. It took a moment to sit up fully, and even longer for the pain of spending the night bent in half to fade to something manageable. Then, he twisted, bending side to side and arching his back to try to stretch out the sore muscles. Every joint popped like a firecracker in the near silence of the morning.

Everything hurt, and he felt gross and stiff, but somehow, despite all odds, he felt somewhat rested, too. Better than usual, anyway. Sure, he would have vastly preferred sleeping in his bed, but beggars didn’t get to be choosers.

Rubbing at his eyes to clear away the gunk and sleep grit, Hitoshi grabbed his phone, or tried to, anyway. Usually, he put it next to the wall on his desk, if only just to have it close enough to the outlet to charge his phone overnight. This time, though, it wasn’t there. Had he left it in his bag? No, he remembered reading Hero news as he ate dinner, and it’d been nearly dead. So, he’d probably put it on to charge.

He looked to the outlet, and sure enough, his phone charger was plugged in. The cord led straight into the tiny space between his desk and the wall, though. He groaned, hoping the damn thing was still plugged in.

This sucked. Even if he’d slept relatively well, this morning was turning out pretty crappy. In pain, disoriented, phone possibly dead, and his homework a mess — even if it wasn’t his worst start to a day, it still really sucked. Worst of all was the mask, though. He hadn’t fallen asleep in it in years, and the foul combination of his immobilized tongue, dehydration, and his unbrushed teeth had his mouth tasting worse than death.

Most evenings, Hitoshi ditched the mask the moment he got his bedroom door locked behind him, desperate to escape the smothering constriction — his breath trapped against his face, sweat sticking the material to his skin, with his tongue stuck to the bottom of his mouth. He’d never wear the thing by choice — anybody who would was insane — but every day, just before he opened the door to the apartment, it went on.

Last night, he’d had to wear it while he cooked dinner, washed dishes, and cleaned around the apartment while he could — before Ms. Shibukawa got back. Hitoshi didn’t dare take it off before he was safe in his room, even if she wasn’t home — he never knew when she’d come stumbling through the front door, or what mood she’d be in when she did, and he’d long since learned not to be seen without it.

But when he finally closed and locked his bedroom door behind him, the mask had been thrown to the bottom of his bag, where it usually lived — out of sight and out of mind. Finally, he could relax. He’d spent two blissful hours without the thing, eating dinner and studying for the finals, and would have spent the rest of the night with an uncovered face, if not for Ms. Shibukawa.

She’d come through the front door, tripping on the step up from the genkan and cursing colorfully, and her voice sent panicked goosebumps across his skin. He’d left her dinner on the table for her — he figured since he’d eaten at home for once, he should at least make her some, too — but rather than eating and keeping to herself, she’d paced and stalked the apartment. Back and forth, from the front door to check the locks, then back to her bedroom to check it, mumbling all the while. And for that entire time, Hitoshi had strained to track her shuffling footsteps, unable to focus on anything else as his heart tried its best to break through his ribcage and escape his chest.

This wasn’t a completely unusual occurrence, even if it always left Hitoshi so nervous he felt like he was going to be sick. Normally, he’d just wait it out; eventually, she’d get tired and crash.

But, because Hitoshi’s luck always fucking sucked, instead of going to sleep, she’d tried to open his door.

That was when her paranoia turned to frantic, terrified rage. She’d started screaming, rattling the door so violently that Hitoshi feared she’d rip the damn thing right off its hinges, and he couldn’t live without a working door. As she’d shrieked and cursed and slammed into the flimsy wood, he’d scrambled to get the mask out and back on, and the door unlocked and open before she destroyed it, somebody in the neighboring units called the cops, or made another noise complaint. Possibly all three.

She’d screamed at him for locking his door, throwing her hands out erratically as she ranted and rambled and stomping her feet like a petulant child. She’d been half incoherent, and all through her tantrum, Hitoshi had tucked himself into the corner of his room furthest from the door, kept his head down, and endured. He’d been scared she’d attack him, use her Quirk, or even just hit him, but she’d only yelled.

By the time she stormed out, Hitoshi’s head and chest were aching, his heart had hurt from how hard it’d been beating, and he’d felt like he was going to throw up his dinner. It’d have been worse if she’d spotted him without the mask, though. A thousand times worse.

In comparison? This wasn’t so bad. He’d already had the headache, blood pulsing at the base of his skull and behind his eyes from biking through the smog and stink of the ward, the flickering of streetlights and neon signs leaving him dizzy. He’d been sore, too, but not for any reason he was happy about. Aizawa had rescheduled training, so Hitoshi had picked up a half-shift of overtime alongside his normal schedule, and everybody at the cafe had decided to be demanding and ridiculous, running him ragged. What was a little extra agony piled onto a shitty afternoon?

Honestly, he’d been more worried about the possible police intervention or neighbors getting involved. It was a miracle they weren’t on eviction notice with all the complaints he knew management received. Even if Shibukawa only flew off the handle like that a few times a month, and the police only got involved every few months, apartment management had to have gotten hundreds of complaints by this point. Then there was Hitoshi’s Quirk, and all the strange men Ms. Shibukawa brought home at all hours of the night…

Then again, she’d lived there for a long time, and he doubted the whole… screaming thing had started just because of him. And Hitoshi was fairly sure he’d seen the guy he paid rent to leaving their apartment a few times, too…

As long as they still had a roof over their head, he didn’t really care why or how they got to keep it.

He fought to yawn with what little space the rigid mask allowed him — barely a centimeter, even after he’d sawed off the hooked recesses that were supposed to fasten to his molars. It’d taken months for the rough, jagged plastic to wear down enough that it didn’t leave his tongue and cheeks raw every day. No luck, though. Hitoshi’s mouth opened too wide, and the metal dug into his cheeks, nose, and jaw. His whole face felt raw, and even touching the mask delicately made his skin feel like it was peeling. He’d have to check for any visible damage when he got to school.

Of course, he could check now. Take off the mask, check it for blood in the sunlight peeking through his window, feel his face for open sores, but getting the thing off was a pain in his ass, and he’d just have to put it back on to get to the bathroom anyway. No point in taking it off only to put it back on for a three-foot walk, just to take it off again.

Easier to just wait until he gets in the bathroom.

Hitoshi wiggled his desk away from the wall, just far enough to slide his arm into the space up to his elbow. At first, the only thing he found as he groped blindly was paper — probably sheets of homework and study guides that had tried to escape in the night — but eventually he found the charging cord. With a gentle tug, he felt the weight of his phone shift — at least it was still plugged in— and slowly, gently, used that grip to free his phone from the gap.

The front screen of the old, shitty flip phone was broken and dark — he’d dropped it while exploring a construction site, and it’d fallen about four stories to the asphalt below. The explosion of glass had been impressive, sending tiny shards meters away from the impact and leaving the front screen completely unusable, but the inner one untouched. With a flip, it lit up, temporarily blinding Hitoshi once again. He squinted at the tiny numbers and letters on the cracked screen — damaged in an entirely separate incident — and it took way too long to finally make sense of them.

It was half past four a.m., and he had no messages, calls, or news alerts — which was pretty typical. He still had an hour before his alarm, but he’d long since learned that trying for more sleep just wasn’t worth it. At best, he’d lie in bed and waste time reading Hero news — or reading the transcript of Present Mic’s radio show from last night — until his alarm went off. At worst? He’d doze off and oversleep. Hitoshi still had perfect attendance at UA, and he’d never been late. He wasn’t ruining that streak for an hour of mediocre sleep.

Clicking his teeth on the thick, plastic immobilizer, he chose instead — as he always did — to get ready for the day.

At least he’d finished his homework before lying his head down. The mask had left creases in his math worksheet, smearing the pencil marks, but at least the answers were still legible. He took a moment to erase the worst of the smudges, redrawing the numbers as carefully as possible, but the grey smudge remained no matter how he tried. Hoping he could at least get rid of the creases, Hitoshi pulled out his physics textbook and slipped the crumpled papers into the center-most pages.

The rest of his homework had gone the way of his phone during the night, protected by the abyss between his wall and desk, and as soon as he fished them back out, everything went into his backpack. His shiny green pencil pouch — stolen from the lost and found in middle school after a classmate called his zip-top bag organization system ‘weird and creepy’ — had fallen off the desk on the other side, but at least it’d been closed. He didn’t have many pens or pencils, but finding them in the dim light would have been a pain.

Most of Hitoshi’s school supplies had been stolen from lost and found boxes over the years, or bought from thrift stores, all in an effort to at least vaguely match his peers. It was sometimes expensive and always annoying, but being unnoticed was more important than things being easy. He’d been enough of an outcast and a target; he didn’t need his school supplies of all things outing him as strange and off-putting.

After his backpack was packed, Hitoshi finally got to his feet… only to nearly end up falling right back on his ass as the pins and needles rushed back in with a vengeance. He hissed and leaned against the wall, rocking his weight side to side to keep from standing on either tingling foot for too long. The nerves in his feet were on fire, that crawling, prickling feeling from a limb going to sleep, and he could have whined at how badly it hurt.

Only after he’d weathered the pain did he shoulder his bag and turn to unlock his bedroom door. Only it wasn’t locked. Anxiety froze his blood and sent a cold flush of goosebumps over his skin, and his stomach lurched in horror. The world seemed to tunnel, focusing in on his unlocked door, and he suddenly couldn’t breathe.

How stupid could he get? He knew what happened if he left his door unlocked; he still had nightmares about it. The fear that gripped him as he woke up to someone in his room, on top of him, breathing against his neck… It was as fresh and visceral now as it had been back then. What kind of idiot was he that he’d fallen asleep in the mask with his door unlocked? If anyone had come in and tried… whatever, tried anything at all, he couldn’t have even used his Quirk to save himself.

The flood of relief that followed the anxiety like an aftershock — ‘Nothing happened. I’m safe. I got lucky this time and nothing happened,’ — left him dizzy and nauseated with emotional whiplash. His luck was never that good, but after four years of obsessively triple-checking every lock, the first time he’d forgotten had apparently worked out for him.

He was okay. Nothing happened.

Still, Hitoshi’s hand shook as he twisted the knob and carefully pushed the door open just a crack, not even enough to see out into the darkness. For a moment, he just listened, holding his breath so it wouldn’t echo back in the confines of the mask. It was early enough that none of the neighbors were up and making noise, leaving the building eerily quiet, and he hoped Ms. Shibukawa had made it back to her room. After she’d worn herself out pacing the apartment and standing creepily in his bedroom doorway, maybe she’d finally crashed in her bed.

If Hitoshi’s luck held out, she’d be in her room and wouldn’t reemerge until he’d already left for school. It was just too bad he’d probably used up all of his good luck for the entire year — maybe even until graduation — with the unlocked door thing.

When he didn’t hear movement, Hitoshi carefully stepped into the hallway, leaving his bedroom door barely ajar to let the morning light creep and filter out. The rest of the apartment was pitch black, every other window covered by cardboard and cloth, leaving Hitoshi’s doorway the only light unless he wanted to risk the overhead ones. If Ms. Shibukawa had fallen asleep in the living room, though, those would definitely wake her up, and Hitoshi really wanted a quiet morning.

He only let out the breath he’d been holding when his eyes adjusted enough to find the living room blessedly empty. A stained, cigarette-burned couch and the broken, moth-eaten, and sagging armchair were the only lurkers in the gloom. The sight had the tight coil of tension in his shoulders and chest easing — just a little, anyway. If he was alone, he was safe.

Maybe he’d get that quiet morning after all.

Still, Hitoshi stayed quiet on his way back. It’d been too dark to see the front door and its deadbolts among the myriad of locks, so he didn’t know if Shibukawa was even home or not. He couldn’t be careless, not with her, not even for a moment. Easing the bathroom door open just enough to slip inside, careful of the hinges he’d never been able to stop from squeaking, he reached back across the hallway to carefully jerry-rig his bedroom door locked behind him. The latch on his door felt deafening, though, and Hitoshi flinched and held his breath. He counted the seconds, listening — ten… twenty… thirty… — but there wasn’t a sound. It’d probably been quieter than it’d seemed, but his heart still raced.

The bathroom was cramped, with barely enough room to stand between the toilet, sink, tub, and door — he had to move his backpack to the toilet’s water tank to not drag it against the wall behind him. The mirror was long gone, since before Hitoshi moved in — Ms. Shibukawa had a thing about her reflection, so he assumed she’d ripped it off the wall during one of her episodes. Its absence left an imprint on the rotting wall, the jagged, broken mountings jutting out of the square of discoloration.

It smelled, and he could never get anything in there clean, no matter how hard he tried, but it served its purpose. With running water and a working lock, Hitoshi couldn’t rightly ask for more. He’d seen — and used — far worse. That was all he needed, after all. A locked, sturdy door and running water. He just had to convince his stupid, traitorous brain that he was safe.

Finally alone, Hitoshi reached behind his head to take the mask off. The pins were old and dirty, and it took a not-inconsiderable amount of effort to twist and pry them from their settings in the spider-like clasp that matted down his hair and kept the metal frame tight to his skin. It was too small — sized for when he was nine and adjusted to its limits since then — and the edges bit into his face even on a good day. It might have actually cut him this time.

Every tug and shift of the pins jostled the rest of the mask, pulling at the marks across his face, and Hitoshi grit his teeth on the immobilizer to keep it from cutting his mouth or choking him. It didn’t stop the way the clasp pulled his hair, though; there was always some caught in the mechanism, no matter how careful he was. His eyes watered as strands were yanked from his scalp; it felt like he could hear every little pop of the root pulling free. His scalp had always been so fucking tender, and it never got easier.

When he finally felt the last pin slide out of its housing, he could have cried in relief, moving one hand to the mask to keep it from falling as the leather straps came apart. His scalp was so sore, and he wanted nothing more than to yank the mask off and be rid of it, but the immobilizer wouldn’t let him.

Leaning over the sink, Hitoshi grimaced as he worked the immobilizer back and forth, carefully pulling it free. Even if it was small for his mouth, it was still wider than his lips could comfortably stretch. It’d been designed to hook down around his front lower and upper back molars, keeping him from opening his mouth, but when his jaw got too broad, his teeth too far apart for the recesses, he’d tried to remove the immobilizer. He’d never been able to figure out a way that didn’t destroy the mask, though. Instead, he’d had to figure out a way to get rid of the hooks. Now, the edges of the plastic — and where he’d filed parts away — sat awkwardly between his teeth before it narrowed to press down at the root of his tongue.

Some days, he could barely wear it without gagging — sometimes he even ended up puking. He’d had more than a few close calls because of it; one where he’d even cut his face open trying to yank the mask back off to retch and vomit into the sink.

Throwing up in the mask was far, far worse. Probably one of the worst experiences in his life. The slit in the front panel of leather — that they somehow expected people to be able to eat and drink fluids through — was probably the only reason he hadn’t drowned in his own sick. He still had nightmares about stomach acid in his lungs and sinuses, of clawing at his scalp and face to get free, to breathe.

He’d give anything to never have to do that again, but he gagged less and less with every year.

Still leaning over the sink, Hitoshi shuddered at the globs of drool that accompanied the immobilizer — clear, ropey, dehydration-clouded saliva that coated his tongue with a disgusting, slimy film. He spat a few times in disgust, but the taste and feel lingered. Moving his face hurt, but he pushed through it, popping his jaw and working it side to side to stretch the sore, stiff muscles. His tongue had gone half-numb from being held down for so long, and he would never get used to that feeling. It’d been years since he’d worn the mask longer than an hour or two at a time, and this was an excellent reminder of why he preferred to avoid it as often as possible. Every part of it sucked.

Desperately dehydrated, Hitoshi grabbed his water bottle from his bag and drank greedily, glad he’d remembered to refill it at work. He didn’t trust the water from the apartment taps — on good days, it tasted like rust, and on the bad ones? Raw sewage. Lukewarm water that’d been in his bag all night was better than catching whatever diseases were cultivating in the pipes. He barely even tolerated showering with the apartment water.

When he felt a little less like he was dying of thirst after something died in his mouth, Hitoshi grabbed the mask to finally check the edges. The foam and fabric cushioning had long since disintegrated, leaving only the rough metal frame behind, and while it was sharp, there didn’t seem to be any blood — dried or otherwise. The indents didn’t hurt more than usual when he prodded at them, either, so he was probably fine. He’d still have to check the mirrors at school to make sure, but maybe his luck was holding.

Once satisfied, he rinsed the mask and immobilizer and hung it on one of the leftover studs from the mirror. His toiletries had fallen to the bottom of his bag again, but with a little effort, his toothbrush and paste were pulled free, and the minty chill of toothpaste soon replaced the horrid combination of plastic and morning breath.

‘Just a few more years,’ he kept telling himself. ‘A few more years and I’ll never have to wear that shit again.’ Hitoshi wasn’t particularly interested in fire — no more than any other teenage boy, anyway — but damn if he wasn’t looking forward to the day he could soak the thing in kerosene, set it ablaze, and watch it burn.

As long as he lived in Shibukawa’s apartment, though, he lived by her rules. Chief among those rules was the mask. It wasn’t legal; laws regarding Quirk restraints were strict, and he was damn sure the outdated mask she forced him to wear didn’t fit their stringent, ethical criteria. Maybe it had five years ago, when the Children's Home assigned it to him — they were a branch of the government, after all — but legislation changed fast. Especially with Heroes like Present Mic pushing for humanitarian reform.

Telling somebody could get her in a lot of trouble — he always had to hide when the police came by — but it wouldn’t be worth it. It’d just make life more complicated than it already was, and with only a few years left until he was legally an adult, he couldn’t be bothered. In a little over a week, he’d be sixteen, old enough to graduate from the Children's Homes they might send him back to. As much as he was looking forward to getting away, she was all he had, and he wanted to at least finish high school before trying to live on his own.

And if they didn’t automatically graduate him from the homes, there was no guarantee they’d place him in one close enough to UA to keep attending. He already lived a two-and-a-half-hour bike ride from school; any further and he’d have to take the train, and there was no way he could afford that.

Hitoshi wasn’t going to risk his dream just because Shibukawa was a complete nut-job and the mask sucked. He wouldn’t give up UA for anything.

On the other hand, if they didn’t send her to jail — or a psych hospital like he knew she needed — and they let him stay in the apartment with her, it’d be a living hell. They’d have to take the mask, after all, and seeing his uncovered face sent Shibukawa into her most psychotic, violent fits. He’d rather be muzzled like a dog a few times a day than deal with the violence she was capable of. The mask meant less fear and fewer headaches — and less of a chance of blood on the floor and police at their door.

Besides, things could always be worse. There was something wrong with Hitoshi’s pseudo-caretaker — something seriously, psychologically wrong between her fugue states, mania, possible hallucinations, and wild outbursts — but most of the time she was… fine. She was relatively normal, or at least lucid. She dressed herself, got around without help, had normal, friendly enough conversations with the cops, and even came and went like he figured normal parents did. He worried when she disappeared for days at a time — he’d checked gutters and even a hospital once when she’d disappeared for almost two weeks — but she always came back eventually. Usually hanging off some guy’s arm or sporting bruises Hitoshi knew came from those guys. Sometimes she came back so strung out he doubted she knew her own name, but she was alive.

Hitoshi didn’t explicitly know what Ms. Shibukawa did for a living — where she got the money for drugs that left track marks in the crooks of her arms or the alcohol that took up more space in the fridge than the food did — but he could guess. He knew she hung around with a bad crowd; he’d seen them pass by his work, or when he was out running, recognizing faces he’d seen coming or going from her bedroom. That same crowd ran with guys who kept hounding him to either join their gang, or do them ‘just one little favor’. He wouldn’t say they were Villains per se, but he stayed the hell away from them anyway. He couldn’t risk somebody seeing him with them and getting the wrong idea.

Instead, Hitoshi kept to himself and let Ms. Shibukawa do the same, staying far away from her associates and anything that might belong to them. Well… Except for the letters.

On the last day of every month, an envelope arrived in the mail, with Shibukawa’s name handwritten on the front, their address stamped, and no return address. Inside was always the exact amount of money Building Management was charging them that month for their rent and utilities, even when they changed the price without telling their tenants. Hitoshi didn’t know where the money came from, or who sent it, but since he couldn’t rely on Shibukawa to pay the rent, he didn’t care. It kept them housed, so he didn’t ask. He just made sure it got to Management before Ms. Shibukawa got her hands on it.

And in exchange for the money addressed to her and her dubious guardianship, Hitoshi took care of her as best as he could when she wasn’t able to. Whether she be in one of her fugue states, in a fit of mania, or completely despondent, whether she was strung out or shitfaced, he stepped in. Usually, that just meant doctoring any wounds, putting her in the recovery position, putting out any still-lit cigarettes so she didn’t burn the apartment down, and making sure she ate at least once a day.

He’d had to protect her from her own guests a few times. More than once, he’d had to Brainwash them through a door to make the violence stop, then weathered Shibukawa’s retribution — usually moments after making her guest walk out their front door half-naked. That happened less and less over the years, though, and usually, all he needed to do was brandish a kitchen knife these days, if they didn’t bail the moment they realized she didn’t live alone. Maybe people were realizing they couldn’t take advantage of her as easily as they thought. Or maybe word was spreading that somebody protected her. Hitoshi didn’t know, and as long as nothing happened, he didn’t care.

Having to wear the mask sucked, but the Children's Homes had been worse. At least she never put the lock on it; she probably didn’t even know where it was anymore. And she only got violent once or twice a month, more if she was having a bad run of it. Ms. Shibukawa was leagues better than sharing a room with a dozen or more kids with at least as many issues as he had, most of whom either hated or feared him — a nasty mixture for teenagers. Here he had his own room, privacy, and plenty of free time, and Shibukawa didn’t care what he got up to or even if he came home at all as long as he kept out of her way. Plus, she signed whatever he needed signed for school without asking a million questions.

And every now and again, she acted how he figured mothers were supposed to. It was rare, and always when she was higher than the fucking sun or so drunk she’d started worshiping the porcelain throne, but Hitoshi would take what he could get. It wasn’t like he had anything better to compare it to, after all…

After finger-combing his hair into some semblance of order — as much as he could without a brush, mirror, and an act of god — Hitoshi washed his hands and put everything back into his bag with the rest of his life, though he did have to shift and squeeze and pull the zippers together to do it.

Ever since his mom died and Hitoshi started bouncing around Japan’s lackluster child welfare system, backpacks had become Hitoshi’s closest constant companions and lifelines. Moving between Children’s Homes and sharing his living spaces with sometimes dozens of other kids at a time — usually close to him in age but not always — made it safer to keep everything he needed and cared about within arm’s reach. It was certainly easier and safer than trying to find someplace it wouldn’t be stolen. Living with Shibukawa hadn’t changed that mindset. Sure, he had his own space, with a lock, but all the unsavory people she brought home — dealers and druggies, drunk and abusive assholes, criminals of most shades — meant even an apartment full of locked doors didn't keep anything safe. Anything he could carry that carried any meaning or had any use went everywhere with him, and if it didn’t fit in his bag? It got hidden as best as he could and locked away.

The years of being stuffed to the brim and brought all over Japan had taken their toll on the thing Hitoshi had bought for middle school. The zippers strained against their contents, and the bottom and straps were threadbare, barely held together with duct tape and poorly sewn, off-color patches. Like everything else in his life, though, none of that mattered as long as it worked. It fit almost all of his clothes, school supplies, toiletries — everything. It was the only place he trusted leaving his important documents in — and the only photo of his mom he’d ever had.

A low, muffled sound and the thud of someone knocking into something down the hall kicked Hitoshi’s heart into overdrive. Why the hell did Ms. Shibukawa have to have as fucked up a sleep schedule as he did? He hastily grabbed the mask and haphazardly tried drying it, wiping down the immobilizer. Wearing it when it was still wet made it even more claustrophobic, but it wasn’t like he had any way to dry it. He’d hoped to have more time, but she’d need the bathroom soon, and the longer Hitoshi went without upsetting her, the better off he’d be.

Once the mask was secured — immobilizer wedged between his teeth, straps and pins pulling at his hair — and while Shibukawa was still in her room, Hitoshi wiped down the counter and sink to erase any signs of his presence. Then, he slipped back out into the hallway and down the hall to the kitchen, steps light and backpack under his arm.

Maybe she’d just go back to sleep. He could hope, right? He needed time to cook breakfast after all.

Hitoshi wasn’t much of a chef. He’d cooked some during his last few months as a ward of the Japanese Government, though to call it cooking was pretty generous. He’d chopped vegetables with a kid-safe knife — under supervision, of course, the knives were locked up the rest of the time — and stirred things for the caretakers. They never gave him anything that he could use to hurt anyone, not that he’d ever want to, just enough things to do busywork for them. Helping the less-burnt-out caretakers and being useful at a time when he was at his lowest — stuck for hours in the mask every day, surrounded by kids who couldn’t or wouldn’t understand him… They were some of his few good childhood memories.

Now, with Mr. Aizawa’s in-depth meal plan — given to him at their first training session, along with a training regimen to do when they weren’t together — Hitoshi was doing a lot more cooking than ever before. And grocery shopping. It wasn’t like he could build muscle living off half-packets of ramen and stale convenience store bents, after all. Mr. Aizawa had even included grocery lists and recipes, so all he had to do was follow the instructions. The only problem was how much the grocery shopping cost. It wasn’t like he received an allowance.

He made do, though. He’d already been working in middle school — illegally, of course, but he’d gotten a Sunday double-shift as a cashier at a convenience store near the apartment, and the manager ignored the illegality of his employment and Quirk as long as Hitoshi handed over half his paycheck. A little bit after he’d started training with Mr. Aizawa, he’d gotten a second job at a cat cafe a half-hour’s bike ride from UA, working as a cat caretaker and waiter, too. Technically, UA students were expressly forbidden from working due to safety concerns, but he hadn’t been caught yet. As long as nobody from UA came to the cafe and he kept his mouth shut, he figured he’d be fine. Though he was honestly surprised Mr. Aizawa hadn’t caught on.

That man was insanely observant.

Having to eat so much more than the bare minimum felt almost wrong, though. Even back when he’d started parkour — and again when he’d taken up extra exercise and training to prepare for the UA Practical and Sports Festival — he’d been able to scrape by with just one or two meals a day. Lunch at school, an occasional snack with the coins he could scrounge together, and sometimes he didn’t even need that much. Now, he felt faint if he missed more than a day of food. Even missing one single meal left him aching with hunger pains. He figured that showed how shit his homemade training regimen had been compared to one a Pro made for him. He’d even done research, too…

Everything in the meal plan was leagues better than what Hitoshi had been eating before, though. He was learning a skill he’d need when he lived on his own, too. A complete and total win-win situation. Not to mention cooking being one of the very few things he enjoyed doing within the cigarette-stained walls of the apartment.

Once in the kitchen, Hitoshi flicked on the lights and tucked his backpack in a lower cabinet, hiding it from Shibukawa should she come in before he could escape. He started rice, using the last of his water to fill the cooker and grimacing when he had to supplement from the tap. It smelled… relatively okay, at least through the mask? At least not like sewage. The fridge was looking a bit barren — it was Saturday, after all, the last day before he went grocery shopping. He still had enough for breakfast today and sunday, but he’d used Saturday’s dinner yesterday. Usually, Mr. Aizawa took him out to eat after they finished training. He hadn’t yesterday because of some teacher thing — something about all the recent Villain activity, probably. To make up for it, Mr. Aizawa had promised to train today and take him out for dinner on a Saturday for once.

The thought of training had Hitoshi smiling, even with the mask on.

Picking through the meager options for breakfast, Hitoshi thought of the recipes and meal plan in the thick packet of papers. Mr. Aizawa had given him some mix-and-match options just in case ingredients were unavailable, and Hitoshi had carefully memorized each and every recipe and combination. Some veggies were about to go, but there were still some eggs, a small amount of natto, half a jar of pickled daikon, and two more servings of instant miso he’d made earlier in the week. To his surprise, half of the mackerel he’d made for Ms. Shibukawa last night had been tucked in among the beer, too. He was surprised she’d even thought to put her uneaten portion up. Honestly, it was a shock she’d eaten at all with all her pacing and paranoia.

With everything he found, Hitoshi decided to make a veggie omelet, miso soup, some daikon on the side, and a half fillet of mackerel. Breakfast of champions.

The subtle smell of rice cooking and mackerel reheating in the oven soon replaced the ever-present stench of stale cigarette smoke, almost making the small apartment feel homey. Almost. With the peeling wallpaper, worrying stains, and depressingly second-hand furniture, the smells of home cooking were fighting an uphill battle. Helping in its endeavor was the low sound of boiling soup, the sizzle of eggs, and the oven humming as it worked to replace the aching, cavernous silence. It was almost enough to let Hitoshi relax — and forget about how badly last night had gone, and how his morning had started.

Beyond helping his training and being kinda fun, cooking had become something close to meditation for Hitoshi. It was just complicated enough to keep his mind from wandering — it had a habit of going to bad places — without taxing him if he had a migraine. The smells got to him sometimes, if he was extra sensitive or the food had a strong smell, but surprisingly, the mask sorta helped.

As the battered but relatively modern rice cooker ticked over to keep warm, singing its jaunty, off-brand tune, the door at the far end of the apartment opened with a squeal. He heard the shuffling of clumsy footsteps making their way to the bathroom and the click of the door shutting.

Hitoshi’s breathing caught, anxiety closing its hand tightly around his throat. It was like flipping some horrible switch: one moment he was okay, moving happily through his routine, and the next he was ready to run, hands shaking no matter how hard he tried to force them to stop. He didn’t have much time left. In fact, by the time the toilet flushed and Ms. Shibukawa stumbled into the kitchen — dazed, barely awake, and moving as if she were only half-alive — he’d only plated half of the food.

When he carefully raised his head, turning just enough to see her out of the corner of his eye, her gaze was dull, vacant, and unfocused as she blearily stared past him. She wasn’t even dressed. All she had on was a gauzy, thigh-length robe, left untied at the front to reveal her otherwise naked body — a smattering of scars, bruises, and stretch marks across sallow flesh. Every rib stood out above her concave stomach, and the difference between her hips and waist was alarming.

Hitoshi quickly looked away — anxious, uncomfortable, and embarrassed on her behalf — to finish plating their food. Staring at the floor to avoid eye contact told him she hadn’t even put on slippers. Her feet were no doubt gathering splinters with every step…

Today was not one of her lucid ones. He clicked his teeth on the immobilizer.

Kiyo Shibukawa was a stick-thin woman, just a little shorter than Hitoshi was, with shoulder-length, ash-brown hair that was so heavily tangled and snarled on one side it’d take scissors to tame — not that her guests ever seemed to mind. Her bangs were sharply angled, nearly cut to the scalp on one side and long enough to brush her chin on the other, all in an effort to hide a scar that cut across her forehead and down toward her cheek. Once upon a time, she’d probably been beautiful, but now her features were gaunt and harried by hard living, drugs, and alcohol. They were awkwardly accentuated by yesterday’s makeup — lingering smudges of shadow that collected in the creases of her eyelids, and dark red lipstick that was smeared across her cheek.

She still sported a bruise from the man she’d brought home almost a week ago, now mottled brown and yellow with age, and the cut on her cheek from the wedding ring he’d worn was probably mostly healed. She probably didn’t need the bandage Hitoshi had given her after scaring the guy off, but that was for her to decide. He was just surprised it was still sticking, honestly.

There were other bruises, too, but Hitoshi tried not to think about them. Even if she couldn’t protect her privacy in her current state, he always tried to respect it anyway.

A lit cigarette dangled loosely from between her long, dainty fingers as she stepped past him, moving so close he felt the brush of her robe against his elbow. It raised goosebumps and set his hair standing on end. Hitoshi shivered and moved carefully away, swallowing around the too-thick, too-oppressive immobilizer and feeling like he was choking on it. He was going to be sick.

Any touch could set her off — especially in this state — whether it was his fault or not. He’d been subjected to her frantic outbursts — the swing from disoriented stupor or eerily calm to focused, violent terror — enough times to be constantly vigilant of it, actively avoiding any possible triggers. He still felt the phantom sting of the time she’d bumped into him and retaliated by grabbing a knife from the counter. The flashbacks — pain in his throat and fear, staring up at a twisted, terrified face…

Ms. Shibukawa had cut him from wrist to elbow as he’d thrown his arms up to protect his neck and face, and he’d run for his room as she’d screamed after him. Even years later, Hitoshi still had nightmares; he still woke up in a cold sweat with her voice ringing in his head — ‘Ruined! You ruined me!’ as she sobbed and wailed, digging the knife into his bedroom door as she collapsed against it. She’d cried for hours outside his room, babbling names he didn’t know and clawing desperately at the wood. He could still hear the scratching sometimes…

It was one more trauma to stuff down. One more to pretend he didn’t have until he was eventually forced to see a therapist when he was too old to care.

Hitoshi turned to keep her in his peripheral vision, shivering so hard it felt like his brain rattled in his skull as she sat in the single folding chair at their tiny kitchen table. He breathed deep, forcing air through the wet mask to inflate his lungs. ‘Breathe. Just breathe, stupid. Put that shit away.’ He focused on that, keeping an eye on her as he finished plating their breakfast.

She didn’t even look at him when he set the table; she just… took a long drag off her cigarette, lipstick leaving creased smudges on the paper as she stared straight past him. Her head lolled to one side like it was too heavy for her neck, letting her bangs hang and reveal her scar. Even when Hitoshi put chopsticks and the least alcoholic beer he could find in the fridge by her food, she didn’t move except to suck on her cigarette.

Muscle memory. That was all it was. She wasn’t even there.

The silence was deafening as Shibukawa righted her head to breathe out a plume of acrid, pungent smoke. Then another pull and her head tipped back to aim at the ceiling, and Hitoshi held his breath as it rolled forward this time, glassy, far-off gaze drifting across the food spread out before her. He nearly let himself hope she’d notice it — snap out of it and just… eat her damn breakfast like a normal-ass-person. A few seconds of awkward immobility dashed that faint, unwelcome optimism.

Hitoshi took a few breaths to quell his nerves — box breathing, just like Mr. Aizawa had taught him. ‘Bite the bullet, asshole. Just do it. Get it over with,’ he told himself, a cold, heavy stone settling in his stomach and trying to drag him down with it. He didn’t want to do this, though. Actually, he wanted to leave, let her fend for herself — she managed just fine when he left before she was up, after all; she didn’t need him to take care of her.

But sometimes she did.

So rather than running away, back to his room to eat his breakfast in safety, Hitoshi steeled himself and moved like he was dealing with a skittish, feral cat. Actually, he would have far preferred that; cats could be reasoned with. He reached out to nudge the half-full ashtray under the burning tip of her cigarette, then rolled the chopsticks closer to her hand. He even tried to scooch her beer closer, shaking off the condensation as he hastily pulled his hand back out of her range. Chopsticks may not pierce the skin, but they certainly hurt.

When she still didn’t react, staring at her breakfast without seeing it, Hitoshi sighed and resigned himself to pain.

Stepping carefully closer, he gently pinched her cigarette between two fingers, close enough to the smoldering tip to feel its heat. How many times had she jabbed one of these disgusting fuckers into his back — his shoulders, his arms, anywhere she could reach — when he wasn’t paying enough attention? How many scars had she given him for no reason at all, just lashing out during one of her fits? He’d gotten intimately familiar with the feeling of a cigarette burning through his shirt, embedding fibers and ashes into his skin. The marks she’d left created constellations of shame and a deep, roiling rage; every single injury was a reminder of how weak and passive he was, cowed and intimidated by a woman a third his weight, just because it was easier than leaving.

Because he was too much of a coward to leave.

His hands shook as he carefully pulled the cigarette away, forcing those thoughts down — to put them into the little trauma box he refused to acknowledge. Ms. Shibukawa didn’t move as he dropped the cigarette into the ashtray.

Until she did. She flinched away from Hitoshi as if his touch would burn her, even though he’d been closer to burning himself — would rather burn himself than chance touching and setting her off. She clutched her robe closed over her bare chest with a gasp, throwing herself back away from him so hard she nearly toppled the chair. It was like she’d only just noticed his presence, or anything else for that matter, hurrying to hide her indecency and breathing as if she’d just surfaced from cold water.

Wild, terrifyingly present and alarmingly focused eyes flicked over his face — the mask, back and forth between his eyes, the mask again — then down to his hands. He held them up in front of his face, palms out to surrender and shield himself as he rapidly backed away. She’d flung bowls of hot soup and rice at him before, and Hitoshi had learned his lesson quick: don’t serve anything that could still scald him, and always protect his face. It was hard to keep people from worrying if he couldn’t hide the marks.

Hitoshi made himself small, ducking his head and pulling his shoulders up around his ears, curving his back where he pressed it against the counter to make himself less of a threat. He wanted to run again, or at least leave the kitchen, but his feet felt rooted to the floor. Any movement could set her off, and no matter how Hitoshi had tried to mentally prepare himself for this, he couldn’t breathe. Fear had his lungs in a vice grip, and his heart pounded so hard against his ribcage he was almost sure she could hear it. His head actually started to hurt from the tension.

Pathetic. He was so fucking weak, trembling like a child with frustrated tears burning his eyes, the immobilizer creaking as he grit his teeth so tightly his jaw ached. A sudden, violent urge reared its head, urging him to scream at her, to give in to all the violence he’d ever been subjected to and to give her a reason to be afraid of him, but even if he wanted to, he couldn’t. He couldn’t even move; his body had chosen the stupidest third option in the fight or flight dichotomy: freeze. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t break free — couldn’t even think past the fear.

He hated this.

Meanwhile, Ms. Shibukawa breathed in wild, frantic gasps, free hand fluttering across the table like she was looking for something to defend herself with. Even if he’d moved out of chopstick-stabbing range, she could still use any of the plates he’d put in front of her. Hitoshi tensed, waiting for her to throw his kindness back in his face with the shatter of ceramic. Sometimes, he was quick enough to dodge the things she threw at him, and a few times, he’d even caught some of it, but it only made everything worse. She didn’t like it when he defended himself — because of course, she didn’t. This was punishment; you weren’t supposed to mitigate punishment, you were supposed to take it and learn.

He hated this so fucking much. What had he done that he needed to be punished for?

It must have been an eternity that he stood there, waiting, barely able to swallow around the lump in his throat and barely breathing, with his gaze fixed on the cigarette burns marring their kitchen table and the floor around it. It kept her well within his peripheral vision, just in case he needed to dodge or flee, but with his face down-turned to feign submission. He had to fight back the blackness that tried to encroach on his vision, tunneling down to a point as he struggled not to pass out. His muscles ached from the tension, but eventually — finally — her breathing evened out. Moments later, she looked away, glancing back once or twice before she finally noticed the breakfast he’d made her.

“Oh…” Picking up her chopsticks in a shaky grip, Ms. Shibukawa carefully nudged the quarter of a fillet on her plate. She glanced back at him one more time — his mask, then his eyes, back and forth like a caged animal waiting for the abuse, then down to focus on the mask again — before she finally looked away and started eating. “Thank you… Shinsou…” she murmured, voice little more than a croak as she hunched over her food — small and scared.

‘Shinsou’

Even that tiny acknowledgment assured Hitoshi she had a chance of being lucid enough to be left home alone. He’d never skipped school for her before, even when she was at her worst, and he wasn’t about to now, but he liked to know when to worry about the apartment going up in smoke. He had things he’d have to take out and find places for, after all.

Not very Heroic of him to care more about his attendance and belongings than a human life, he knew. The guilt ate at him sometimes, but…

Hitoshi nodded, letting his hands slowly lower and his back straighten, but he didn’t even think about relaxing until there was a locked door between them. He didn’t even turn his back on her as he grabbed his tray and bag. He held them both one-handed, awkwardly balanced, as he used the other to jimmy open his door and slip away to safety. Not once did she stop eating or look up at him, but he knew she was watching him anyway — just as wary of him as he was of her.

Only after he’d locked the door and triple checked it — just to make sure — did he finally let himself breathe. His eyes still stung with hot, unshed tears, and he rubbed at them as he pulled the mask back off to eat. Stupid. This was all so stupid. He should have been used to this by now, right? Five years of the same shit, he definitely shouldn’t have been crying over it like a little kid. And as much as he hated all of this bullshit, hated that he had to put up with it until he graduated, it wasn’t even that bad! He’d seen worse. He’d met kids who’d dealt with things a thousand times worse. He was just being a weak, pathetic baby.

Hitoshi rushed through breakfast, eager to put the morning behind him and get on with his day. He wanted to get in a 5k run, and he’d need to catch a quick shower before he biked to school. He was so close to finishing his run in under 20 minutes. Even Eraser had commented on how much his speed and stamina were improving, and compliments from him were hard to come by.

He was making progress. Alternating long runs with bodyweight exercises, making and eating a real breakfast every morning, training with Aizawa in the afternoons, and teaching himself how to make his way through the city without ever letting his feet touch the ground; everything helped him forward in little ways. Little, but real. Concrete. Sure, he felt like he was crawling on his belly compared to how the Hero Course sprinted forward, but at least he was moving.

And that had to be enough. That had to be something he was proud of, because otherwise he’d just fall to despair.

Things weren’t perfect. Living with Ms. Shibukawa sucked, and money was beyond tight more often than not, but for the first time in Hitoshi’s life, it felt like things were starting to go his way. He was going to UA after all — a place he didn’t hate attending six days a week — and had training with a real Pro Hero who gave a shit about teaching him every weekday. He was working on his Quirk with people who didn’t call him a Villain, and he was getting stronger and faster every day. There was a plan to reach his goal. A definitive, solid plan to become a Hero, one he could follow knowing it had a real chance of working. He may have failed the entrance exam and again at the Sports Festival, but he could see the light he’d been reaching for since he was a kid, and he was getting closer to grasping it.

For the first fucking time in his life, Hitoshi didn’t dread waking up every morning. He didn’t stay out late and awake all night just to postpone his tomorrows; he looked forward to them. Relished them.

He even had friends. Or he wanted to think they were his friends. He liked hanging out with them, at least. It was strange, sure, and he was still getting used to not being the odd one out, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to enjoy the experience. Not that he blamed others for finding him off-putting, though. Hitoshi knew his flaws, knew he was intense and quiet — weird compared to other kids his age, especially the talkative, friendly ones who sought out the new kid in class. Having a ‘Villain’s Quirk’ didn’t exactly endear him to others, either. Even if they didn’t explicitly question his motives, the idea of him being able to control them if they answered him made even the most welcoming nervous.

So, he’d always been a loner. Most of his active tormentors and bullies weren’t in his classes — there’d only been a few classmates who decided to target him over the years — but he still didn’t get along with the ones who didn’t abuse him. As good as Hitoshi was with his words and manipulating people, he didn’t know how to have a casual conversation without any objective, and his dry humor and brutal honesty didn’t make him very approachable.

Then there was the mean streak he could never completely stamp out — how he couldn’t resist stirring the pot, just to see what happened. He liked getting under other people’s skin, pulling at their loose strings and insecurities to figure out what made them tick — and what made them come apart at the seams. He couldn’t blame them for not liking him; he wouldn’t like someone like him either. He was bitter, quiet, manipulative, and mean.

He’d resigned himself to going it alone through school a long time ago. Honestly, he didn’t mind going it alone, and he didn’t fault his classmates for behaving the way they did. People rejected things they feared, and with his Quirk, he didn’t blame them for being afraid. It’d be easy for him to do exactly what they worried he might, and how were they supposed to know he wouldn’t? Mind-Reading was a very rare ability, after all.

Then he started at UA. Even before the Sports Festival, where he became the unofficial star of his class, his classmates — all the students he’d met, honestly — had been… Friendly? Amicable, at least. Even after they learned what his Quirk was, they didn’t act afraid of him, and while nobody went out of their way to interact with him outside small talk and greetings — something he’d been infinitely thankful for in the first few days of school, when he’d been trying to get his footing — they didn’t obviously ostracize him, either. Things had been… neutral. Not a bad neutral, though, it was the kind where things aren’t good, but they weren’t bad either. Things had been… comfortable.

After the Sports Festival, the story changed drastically. It felt like they all wanted to talk to him, now. They asked about homework, how his Sunday had been, invited him to participate in class discussions, and asked him to have lunch together. They laughed when he couldn’t get his mouth shut fast enough to smother one of those mean little comments and asked his opinion on everything. It almost felt like… Well…

It still felt presumptuous to call them his friends — he wasn’t sure they felt that strongly about him, no matter how he felt — but he’d found something akin to companionship with Class 1-C. They’d even asked for his number to add him to the group chat.

It was weird. A good kind of weird, most of the time, but still really weird.

Besides his class, UA had intense anti-bullying and Quirk Discrimination directives. They didn’t play around with that shit, snatching up bad actors before they could get halfway through an infraction. Hitoshi swore Nezu was omniscient or something; the rat was always watching. He knew there were cameras everywhere, but surely he had better things to do than watch all of them all at once all the time. Maybe that was his Quirk, though. Besides the whole… animal with sapience and far above human intelligence thing. Psychic surveillance had to be a Quirk somewhere in the world…

The proactivity of UA’s solutions had made Hitoshi’s time walking their halls — however short so far — downright pleasant, though. There were still people who didn’t trust him or Brainwash — there always would be, and he’d made his peace with that — but there wasn’t any outright hostility. It made attending worth the long bike ride, no matter the weather.

UA was everything he’d hoped for and more, and in it, he had so much to prove. He needed to show he deserved this, deserved to be there, working through his dream. He didn’t want to waste a second. He couldn’t. His dream couldn’t bear it.

After eating, Hitoshi carefully returned to the kitchen, carrying everything he needed for his run. He eyed Shibukawa as he put the dishes in the sink, considering if she’d be done before he left for school. Judging by how she was eating one grain of rice at a time and flaking her fish rather than eating it, he decided to just wash dishes after school. That settled, he booked it for the front door, his backpack in one hand, and his shoes in the other.

The moment the front door was locked behind him, Hitoshi dropped his shoes to the concrete and tore the mask from his face. A light breeze cooled his sweaty skin, brushing at the marks on his face and playing with his hair. The sun had finished rising, peeking between the buildings to give the ward’s faults the same shining glow it had the city at dawn. The crisscrossing beams of construction sites turned to a spider’s web of warm red and blue metal, softened by the morning light, and the cranes stood like sparkling, dew-crowned beacons. Every apartment and gutted building that started as dull, forgotten, and falling reminders of failure were slowly outlined in gold by the dawn.

The gentle warmth of morning welcomed him like an old friend, always there for him when he finally got free, uncaring of his cowardice or inaction. It didn’t fault him for how or who he was. Hitoshi turned his face to the hazy, too-bright sun and stretched wide. He felt alive. He was finally awake and free as he slipped the mask into his bag and pulled on his shoes, taking deep breaths of fresh, if still smoky, stinking air.

The sky was awash with color — orange, blue, purple, and pink spread in wide, irregular brush strokes — as the ward started to wake up. The hum of cars echoed from the highway across the river, and a train rattled along its track like blood through the country’s veins. Somebody was shouting down the street, slurred and barely audible from where Hitoshi stood six floors from the asphalt below, but they sounded drunkenly jovial. On a rooftop in the alley across from him, a stray tomcat stretched and plodded its way to a nice dry spot to sprawl and bask.

Hitoshi vaguely recognized him and chirped a greeting out of instinct. It felt good to make noise, and he laughed. The relief of hearing himself after being trapped for so long soothed that lingering fear that sat just out of reach in Hitoshi’s mind. He still had his voice. She couldn’t take it from him, even if she stifled it.

His face hurt, and he was still nauseated from the spike of adrenaline Shibukawa had oh so kindly gifted him with her little freak out, but things were good. He felt good — light. Hopeful.

Dropping from the apartment’s railing to the one below sent a fresh flush of adrenaline to banish the first, and in no time at all, he’d scaled down the side of the building and hit the concrete below running.

Today was going to be good. He could feel it.

After a mostly uneventful run — just under 23 minutes, over his goal but not by a lot — a shower where Hitoshi only felt slightly grosser afterward, and a leisurely bike ride, Hitoshi arrived at school with a little under a half hour to spare. He was grateful for the time. It always took a bit for him to get into the right headspace for school, especially now at UA. Social interaction was exhausting, especially when they were all so happy to see him.

At least none of his classmates spotted him on his way into the school through one of the side entrances. Thankfully, it was early enough that few students were even there yet. Each hallway was as empty as the last, and thankfully, so was the bathroom outside Hitoshi’s homeroom. He was thankful for the privacy as he ducked in, still unsure of just how messed up his night in the mask had left him. Hitoshi hung his backpack on the hook on the back of one of the stall doors, hidden from view but close enough that he could grab it and run if he needed to, before leaning in close to the mirror.

No bruises… no blood… not even a scrape. There were some red marks that were still fading, but he splashed them with cool water to urge the color to dissipate, at least enough that nobody would notice. Unfortunately, with how pale he was, red showed up on his skin like a beacon, and he didn’t exactly look forward to the idea of trying to come up with a lie to explain the shape of the marks away.

He vaguely tried to get his hair to behave, but as always, it was a lost cause. Maybe he should just get it cut…

It’d probably still stick up; it always had. Even when it was wet, his hair attempted to defy gravity, though it was slightly more manageable in that state. Until it dried and flew up into its usual wild state. Maybe it wouldn’t look so wild if it was cut short? Hitoshi tried to imagine it. What sort of haircut would he even get? He didn’t think he could pull off the super short, shaved look, and he really didn’t want to try a bowl cut. Maybe something like most other boys his age had? Just long enough to touch his ears? Or maybe like the tailed asshole in 1-A? Nah, it’d just end up sticking straight up on end and he’d look like a hedgehog… Undercuts were popular in magazines these days; maybe he could try that?

It wasn’t like he could afford to go to a barber, though, and there wasn’t anyone he knew and trusted to cut it for him. So, with a sigh, he abandoned the pipe dream of hair that wasn’t an absolute rats’ nest. All he could do was pat at his hair with wet fingers, trying to smooth it down into something less… everywhere. It didn’t work — it never did; he was honestly wondering why he kept trying — and he was left staring into the mirror in resigned irritation.

White pupils stared back at him from the streaked and speckled surface, surrounded by a purple slightly lighter than his wild hair — the same as he’d always been. Bags under his eyes… tired no matter what he did. But… there was something else, too.

For a moment, he studied his reflection, wondering why he looked… Not different, not exactly. Not familiar, either; of course, he’d look familiar to himself, but… Maybe it was because he avoided mirrors, too, though in a far less neurotic way than his caretaker. Not having one in the apartment made that easy, and he only really looked up at the ones at school when he needed them, or when he got a whim to try to tame his hair. Even then, he usually only glanced, but this time… He poked at his cheek, angling his face to the side, then up.

Then it hit him. All at once, Hitoshi knew what he was seeing. Sure, his jaw was broader, his eyes slightly more lidded, but his nose and cheekbones… the white pupils… the deep, purpling bags under his eyes…

He looked like his mom…

Hitoshi’s throat closed up, and his eyes burned. When was the last time he’d pulled out her picture? He couldn’t even remember, but as he forced a shaky smile and held his head at just the right angle, he could see her there, looking back at him. He had her smile… Would she smile at him, now, seeing who he’d become? Someone bitter… and quiet… manipulative and… mean…

The scar across his throat peeked out from the high collar of his button-up shirt, and he couldn’t handle it anymore.

He turned away, blinking rapidly to fight back the tears he should have finished shedding years ago. It was too early in the morning to cry over this, and almost a decade too late, too long removed from that life, from those people — the person he’d been and the person he’d lost. He could barely remember her, so what was he even mourning? There was nothing… No birthdays, no happy trips to the beach or the park, no memories of wandering around the markets with her. There was nothing to mourn. When he forced himself to think past the day she died, all he got was…

A smell, maybe. Sometimes, when he went shopping or was working at the cat cafe, somebody would smell like what he thought might have been her perfume, a light sort of citrus and white tea, soft and sweet. If he thought really hard, he could sometimes remember her hands when she’d helped him with his uniform in kindergarten. They’d been cold, with long fingers and short nails as she’d tried to finger-comb his hair. Maybe she’d have had as much trouble with it as he did now… but he couldn’t remember.

That was all he had left of her… a smell, cold hands, a scar, and a picture. And now his reflection, he supposed…

Hitoshi took a long, slow breath, trying to force his heart to calm. He didn’t need to go to class with red-rimmed eyes and blotchy cheeks, and he felt stupid getting choked up in the school bathroom because of a family resemblance. Of course, he’d look like her; she was his mom. That’s how it fucking worked. If he knew what his dad looked like, he’d probably notice he looked like him, too. There was absolutely no reason to get upset and weepy over this shit.

The idea of embarrassing himself further by showing up to class a wreck might kill him, and honestly, he’d rather die than suffer their questions and concern. He vastly preferred keeping his humiliation private.

Even after all that — washing his face again to try and look a little more normal, breathing until his chest stopped feeling tight and awful, and even contemplating pulling out his mom’s photo before deciding against it — Hitoshi got to his desk with fifteen minutes left before the bell. Ms. Midnight wasn’t even there yet. Actually, that was pretty typical. Hitoshi was habitually the first one to class, and Ms. Midnight usually arrived about 10 minutes before the bell, saying she wasn’t going to work earlier than she absolutely had to. It’d been said playfully, complete with a flirty wink, but Hitoshi could relate. Mornings kinda sucked, after all.

While he waited, he double-checked his English homework, trying to remember everything Present Mic had taught him, then read through his Classical Japanese essay for Cementoss. His Math homework was still wrinkled, but not as badly as before, and the book hadn’t made the smudges any worse. He still tried to carefully smooth out the paper, even if there was no way it would help. If a few hours in a heavy physics textbook couldn’t fix it, what was a few seconds of manhandling going to do?

Not long after, Ms. Midnight finally arrived, carrying a massive travel tumbler of what smelled like herbal tea. “Morning, kiddo,” she cooed, smiling sleepily, and he gave her a shy wave. She always greeted him on her way in, and sometimes she even teased him about always being early. The only time he’d even been close to late was when a Villain attack forced him on a detour that nearly doubled his travel distance. She’d actually been worried that day, fussing over him when he finally arrived a minute before the first bell, sweaty and exhausted. Everyone had fussed, actually, and he’d been grateful when Midnight let him run to the bathroom to ‘freshen up’ and get himself put back together.

It was… nice. Ms. Midnight was a better homeroom teacher than he’d expected — knowing her public image, anyway — and she really did seem to care about him the same way she did all her other students. And she was great with every single one of them. Homeroom was about announcements and such, sure, but she also made sure it was about everyone catching up. She asked if anyone had plans they wanted to share or accomplishments they were proud of. When nobody else wanted to talk, she’d ask questions or talk about her own work as a Hero.

Sometimes, she would motion to him to speak up, but she never made him talk, seeming to know how little he liked the spotlight. She never acted like she didn’t want him to talk, though, or that he wasn’t welcome in her class. She responded immediately to him when he did talk — always when spoken to first — and encouraged him to ask questions. Nothing would make him test her generosity on that topic, but it was a relief.

Hitoshi couldn’t remember ever having a teacher like her. Most of them were burnt out and indifferent to his existence, and the rest… well, adults were just as capable of being schoolyard bullies as kids were.

Soon, his classmates started filing in — one here, another group a few minutes later — and their light conversation pulled him away from compulsively double-checking his homework for stupid mistakes. Every single one of them called out to him or waved, and a few stopped to talk for a bit. They talked about the finals coming up, asked his opinion on news he was only vaguely aware of, and gossiped like he was just… one of the gang. He didn’t talk much, but… being included when he didn’t even know how to pretend to be normal was nice. There was no way he’d ever get used to the way they filled the silence when he faltered, but they made it seem so natural… no big deal. They never took his silence personally.

Sometimes, it made him so fucking mad. Was it really that easy to treat him like a human being? Why were some high schoolers treating him better than teachers ever had? Than people who were paid to care for him had? Than his fucking guardian? Why did it take 15 years and an elite school for anyone to give a shit about him?

Why wasn’t he worth it before? Why hadn’t he deserved at least that much?

The bitterness ate at Hitoshi, no matter how hard he tried to stuff it down. It made him resentful, stirring up that ugly, mean streak, and causing hurtful things to bubble up in his throat. He had to keep them there, though. There were finally people who didn’t hate him; he didn’t need them finding out how much of an asshole he really was.

Their friendship made school less lonely… Selfishly, he’d rather trick them than lose it.

After homeroom was Math, where they continued covering the study guides Mr. Ectoplasm had custom-designed for each of them. With it so close — only two weeks away — he was working hard to help them shore up the areas they still struggled with, using his clones and taking time with each student to address their issues. He spent little time with Hitoshi, though not out of any indifference or malice. There just wasn’t anything he really needed help with — he’d always been good at school, and now that he was trying to excel in everything, his good subjects just became great.

When Hitoshi turned in last night’s homework, the Hero didn’t even mention the creases and smudges. He’d probably gotten assignments back in far worse condition, but the lack of remark soothed the anxious twist in Hitoshi’s stomach. Some of his old teachers would have made a fuss in front of the entire class, harping about how this wouldn’t be accepted in High School. Why didn’t he keep better care of his things? Why didn’t he respect the teacher’s time more? Blah, blah, blah… So much for all that. Ectoplasm just seemed pleased he’d done his homework and turned it in.

Classical Japanese Literature was next, and probably his least favorite of the year. It wasn’t difficult as a general rule, and it definitely wasn’t the teacher -- Mr. Cementoss was great. He was nice and soft spoken, and ensured everyone had a chance to go over anything they didn’t understand or failed. He even gave extra credit opportunities in the form of analytical essays on books outside the curriculum. The only problem was that… ‘analytical’ bit.

Abstract topics like Literature and Modern Hero Art History — something he was absolutely dreading taking next year, no matter how much he liked Ms. Midnight — meant uncertain expectations. Did they want his opinion or the widely held one? His interpretation, the author’s intentions, or a historical interpretation? Or did they want their interpretation parroted back to them like good little opinionless children? Usually, adults had an expectation of how you should answer, and while Hitoshi hadn’t been reprimanded for having a wrong opinion yet, uncertainties never worked out in his favor.

At least Cementoss usually kept tests to concrete (hah) details. He mostly wanted to make sure his students actually did the reading and understood the concepts; the rest he left for essays and oral exams.

Despite Hitoshi’s hatred of oral exams and unease about what answer he was expected to give, he was still in the top ten in Cementoss’ class at midterms.

Physics and History passed by without a hitch — more studying, Mr. Snipe leading them through a rousing game of something resembling an American game show, and Thirteen scaring the ever-loving shit out of a few of the less prepared students by handing out an all-new study guide. Then, finally, it was lunchtime. The crowded cafeteria always sort of made Hitoshi want to skip — the noise alone would have made him bail, but add on top how often people just stood directly on top of him in line? No thanks. He may not have been claustrophobic, but close proximity with others made the hair on his neck stand on end. But… he had to eat. And there wasn’t a chance in hell he was turning down free — or at the very least comped — meals.

Standing in line for food after losing track of his classmates in the sea of students, Hitoshi spotted Midoriya waving excitedly to him from across the room. He was surrounded by his Hero classmates and smiling like he was the very source of sunshine itself — like Hitoshi hadn’t brainwashed him and nearly knocked him out of the Sports Festival. Like Midoriya hadn’t done his level best, and nearly succeeded, at destroying any chance at Hitoshi’s dream. Like they weren’t two of the most different people to have ever existed.

He always did that, too. These… long-distance attempts at friendship, waving at Hitoshi across crowded rooms and hallways, calling out greetings, and always grinning like an idiot. Hitoshi was pretty sure the guy didn’t have a single mean bone in his body with all the camaraderie he was throwing out to a former enemy, and his enthusiastic friendliness threw Hitoshi for a fucking loop. He’d never even implied he wanted anything to do with the kid, and yet, any time he was spotted, Midoriya made obnoxious attempts to catch his eye and wave.

What was he supposed to do with that?

It wasn’t like he hated the kid — no matter how much losing the Sports Festival had hurt — but he had no idea how to respond to the weirdo. Hitoshi could handle the rest of the Hero Course kids; most of them ignored his existence unless Midoriya’s wild waving caught their attention. Sparkly French bellybutton-laser ignored him even then, and the two who’d selfishly thrown away what Hitoshi had risked everything for — like it was nothing, like he was nothing, some Villain who’d used them, given them a free pass that they couldn’t allow — treated him like a live bomb. They kept their distance and kept an eye on him.

That was the usual response to him, in his experience. Indifference, wariness, outright disdain, and hatred? Those he could deal with. He’d had years of practice, after all.

Midoriya’s over-the-top affability was too new. Too much.

At least it was still long-distance. Dealing with that energetic puppy dog-peppiness when Hitoshi was still struggling to socialize with normal people — let alone before he figured out how he felt about the freckle-faced nutjob — sounded exhausting. He was a nutjob, too. He had to be; only a crazy person would do what he did fighting the fire-and-ice guy, all with a big ass fucking smile on his face. And now they were besties, running around with engine-legs and gravity-girl, acting like the festival didn’t happen. They were all nuts.

Someday, he’d be among those nutjobs. Depending on where a spot opened up, he might be in the same class as Midoriya, with Eraser as his homeroom teacher. He’d have to deal with the tailed-asshole and sparkle-boy, too.

Honestly… it’d be worth it. Mr. Aizawa was the best teacher he’d ever had, and it’d be a privilege to be in his class when he transferred.

When… not if.

Not so long ago, he’d had to force himself to say ‘when’ instead of if, correcting himself every time because if he didn’t believe it was going to happen, it wasn’t. That kind of thinking was a trap of self-fulfilling prophecies, making him doubt himself and conform to all the bullshit that’d ever been said about him.. Now, with Eraser’s training, the word ‘when’ came naturally. He finally didn’t have to force himself to believe his own dream.

It still wasn’t a certainty — nothing in life was — but the fact he was even thinking ‘when’ instead of ‘if’ felt… important. It made him feel light and warm, a smile threatening to spread across his face right then and there, still standing in line for lunch.

If he ended up in Class A, he’d have to deal with Explosion-boy, too. And Mr. Hot-and-cold — Endeavor’s kid — and the guy with the shadow thing in his gut — all of them. A class full of powerful, lucky brats who’d been given everything Hitoshi had ever wanted. He hoped he’d be able to keep his mouth shut and his jealousy in check… No, he could. He had to. No matter where he ended up, he’d keep proving he deserved to be there, even if that meant keeping his mouth shut. No matter how difficult that would be…

After using his student ID for the formality of confirming he got comped lunches, Hitoshi took his tray outside to sit in one of the few spots he’d scoped out early in the school year. This one was warm and shady, facing east— toward the forested area around school grounds — so the grass was warm but shaded by a small copse of trees this late in the day. It was probably one of his favorites, with the added bonus of being far from the crowded, noisy doorways to the school and any other group that sat outside. While he ate, he studied for Thirteen’s Physics final, carefully reading each page before filling in any answers.

The second workbook the Rescue Hero had handed out was mostly examples of alternate study methods and more practice questions, but Hitoshi was thankful anyway. Physics was a lot more complicated than his mind was really able to wrap itself around, and he wasn’t looking forward to how intense Thirteen was hyping up the test to be. Besides all that, he liked Thirteen. They were awkward and passionate like him, but instead of being mean, they cared about everyone and everything. They deserved his best effort.

Besides, somebody would want to look at his notes.

As if summoned by his thoughts, Kanmori and Iwamoto — two of his classmates and probably the ones he was closest to — called to him from the cafeteria doors, asking to join him. Kanmori was one of the few boys in their class taller than Hitoshi, with short, straight brown hair that was 90% of the way to a bowl cut, and a worried-looking smile. Iwamoto was the Class 1-C Representative, with her hair hanging just past her shoulders, wide eyes, and a straight, broad smile. Even though she’d been chosen for Class Representative by random — 20 names in a bag, and Hitoshi had nearly made himself sick worrying Midnight would pull his name — she was popular enough to split her lunches among all the little groups in their class.

Iwamoto was just that kind of person, friendly and fun, ready to help and cheer people up. She would have been one of the people scared of him in middle school, but would still smile and fake at being nice anyway, if only out of pity. Sometimes Hitoshi worried that was what she was doing now, just spending time with the pathetic loner, but… Spending two or three lunches a week with Hitoshi and walking with him on Saturdays was a lot of work to put in out of pity.

Kanmori, on the other hand, was nervous around big groups, and he tended to prefer less attention. Hitoshi could definitely relate. Kanmori spent more lunches with him than not, often comparing notes or chatting, but sometimes they just sat in silence. He seemed to enjoy a lazy, quiet lunch in the sunshine as much as Hitoshi did, and it was a relief.

Either way, Hitoshi could barely comprehend why they chose to sit with him at all at any point, and he’d never be courageous enough to ask.

The moment Kanmori sat down, he asked if he could look at Hitoshi’s physics notes, and Hitoshi could only stifle a laugh as he handed them over. Iwamoto gossiped about the goings-on at UA and complained about how her Sunday of studying was ruined since her cousins were coming over. Kanmori grumbled about how unfair Mr. Snipe’s questions had been during the game show in class as he obsessively looked between his physics notes and Hitoshi’s. Sometimes, they’d ask Hitoshi’s opinion on whatever subject they were talking about, and Hitoshi could usually only shrug. He wasn’t exactly privy to any gossip, nor was he able to talk about his weekend plans, and calling Mr. Snipe’s questions unfair was really just code for Kanmori being really bad at History. Besides that, he didn’t exactly have much he wanted to talk about, either, content to simply listen to them.

The three of them sat in that warm patch of grass for the rest of lunch, studying, talking, and relaxing the time away. Neither of his classmates seemed to mind when Hitoshi dozed off for the last fifteen minutes of lunch, lying on his back in the sunshine, hands folded over his chest. They just took his tray back to the cafeteria, and gently woke him — calling his name softly since touching his shoulder had garnered a very poor reaction the first time — so they could walk back to class together.

The warmth of that short nap and their easy companionship carried Hitoshi through the rest of his classes, starting with Gym. Hound Dog never pushed him as hard as Mr. Aizawa did on physical education days, so it was always a little boring, but afterward, it was English. The moment everyone was seated, Present Mic handed back their tests, and Hitoshi’s had full marks and a little smiley face in bright purple ink tucked into the corner. It even had silly little triangular sunglasses rather than dot eyes. Cute.

English was Hitoshi’s favorite class, and yeah, it was Present Mic’s fault. The Voice Hero had been his favorite since he’d been a little kid, listening to “Put Your Hands Up Radio” every friday night when he should have been asleep. Sure, his over-the-top performative persona and loud personality grated on Hitoshi’s nerves some days, especially if he had a headache, but that wasn’t all there was to Present Mic as his teacher. Sometimes, he was quiet — thoughtful, even — as he crouched beside people’s desks and helped them sound out vocabulary. He even let students redo worksheets with his help, more focused on helping everyone learn than on test scores. He was constantly coming up with new ways to teach and be understood, and he was really passionate about what they were learning.

That passion was infectious, and it made Hitoshi want to try harder.

The Hero’s assignments skewed toward being too easy, since this was supposed to be an introductory English Language course, but he offered harder assignments as extra credit. Usually, it was Japanese Literature pieces translated into English, and the assignment was to identify the story, then find and document new vocabulary and grammar. And Cementoss accepted the analysis of those translated works — in their original Japanese, of course — for his extra credit. Two birds, one book. They’d probably collaborated on that, actually, once he thought about it.

Despite how much of it he did, Hitoshi didn’t need the extra credit for his grades in any of his classes. He was second in the English midterms and at least in the top ten in all of his other classes. He’d only gotten below 80% on any assignment once so far, when he took a test on 48 hours without sleep, and Present Mic had somehow known he was running on empty. After Hitoshi got some rest, he let him retake it and changed his grade.

But to get into the Hero Course, Hitoshi had to have not only impeccable grades but an undeniable drive. He had to prove that he wanted this and was willing to put in the work.

Thankfully, drive was something Hitoshi had in spades. He didn’t let himself give anything less than 110%, truly embodying UA’s ‘Go Beyond; Plus Ultra’ mentality. He always pushed himself harder and further than anybody else cared to on everything he tried. It was the only way he’d get anything in life — the only way he’d prove that he deserved what he achieved, even if he was the only one who’d accept it. Hitoshi had long since learned he had to find his own way, drag himself to the starting line so he could prove he could win, because nobody was going to hold his hand and pull him forward.

For as long as he could remember, Hitoshi had figured out his own shit. When he doubted himself, he just worked harder. When he failed, he figured out why and made sure it didn’t happen again. When he needed to learn something, he taught himself. Nothing had really changed at UA. He was going to push and work until he caught up with the Hero students, even if that meant waking up earlier, staying up later — not that his body let him have much choice in either matter — exercising and studying until he was exhausted, and borrowing second-hand textbooks for Heroes Only classes — ‘Hero Informatics and Law’ and ‘Foundational Heroics and Ethics’. He’d train every day, long after everyone else went home, and Hitoshi wasn’t going to rest until he achieved the dream everybody told him he’d never achieve.

Even if nobody believed in him. Even if nobody helped or guided or even cared. Even if Eraser Head had told him no when he’d asked for help training, his heart wanted to be a Hero. Not even Hitoshi was cruel enough to deny himself a dream.

Then there was Eraser Head… He wasn’t holding Hitoshi’s hand or giving him a free ride, but he wasn’t telling him he didn’t have a chance either. Everything he’d told Hitoshi was realistic: ‘You can become a Hero, if you work hard enough,’ and as long as Hitoshi proved he wanted to work hard enough, Mr. Aizawa was willing to help him try. He cared enough to push — to teach and correct.

It was more than anyone else had ever done for him.

After their final class, Hitoshi walked out to the gates with Kanmori and Iwamoto, listening to Iwamoto explain why her aunt and uncle were leaving their kids with her family over the weekend. Kanmori offered to babysit as long as he got paid for it, and they argued for at least a minute or two about how Iwamoto wasn’t even getting paid, so why should he? This was sort of their usual routine, allowing differences for different conversations. Banter. The sort of thing friends did.

Most Saturdays, since Hitoshi didn’t stay to train with Mr. Aizawa, they’d all walk down the hill together, Hitoshi rolling his bike alongside them, enjoying the summer sun dappled through the leaves. When they reached the crossroads at the bottom of the hill, they’d split up, waving and calling their goodbyes and ‘see you on monday’s. Today, though, their routine was more like every weekday, and the three of them stopped at the gates instead. Other students passed them without notice, laughing and chatting as they headed for home.

“It’s weird not walking together on a Saturday…” Kanmori complained, shifting his weight from foot to foot. The break in norms made him visibly anxious, and he raked his hand through his hair, huffing a sigh. He liked routines — even more than Hitoshi did — and he’d said any breach of them made his skin crawl — ‘like I’m covered in bugs! It’s not funny!’ He’d also said he was getting better about it, though, seeing some therapist about it. It didn’t stop him from looking close to crawling out of his skin now, but working on your issues before you were old and didn’t care was admirable.

Hitoshi laughed awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck with a helpless shrug. Iwamoto elbowed the other boy in the ribs gently, giving him a big, encouraging smile. “Yeah, but he walked with us yesterday! It’s just switch-a-rooed, that’s all!” she reminded him, then turned her hardest, most stern look to Hitoshi. “Don’t work too hard, okay, Shinsou?”

He held his hands up placatingly. “I gotta if I wanna be a Hero someday, right? I can’t afford to fall any further behind,” he reasoned, smiling shyly.

She rolled her eyes and sighed, hands on her hips. “That doesn’t mean running yourself into the ground! Seriously, you gotta take a break sometimes, ya know? If you push yourself before you’re ready, you’ll get injured and actually fall behind! My dad says, ‘Recovering from an injury always takes longer than preventing one from happening’.” She sounded like Aizawa… It was good advice, too, but Hitoshi couldn’t not push himself. It was the only way he’d make progress…

How was he going to argue with such sound logic, though?

Iwamoto sighed, seeming to sense she couldn’t convince him, and changed the subject before he had to think of something. Her stance relaxed, and she rocked back onto one of her heels as she smiled. “Anyway, I don’t know if you were paying attention during homeroom, but everyone was talking about doing something after finals — as a class? Celebrate the end of the term together? So… you in?”

For a moment, Hitoshi could only stare — several moments, actually, enough of them that Iwamoto started to look uncomfortable. She shuffled her feet, laughing nervously as she rocked side to side.

“Shinsou? You there?” Kanmori asked finally, leaning to catch Hitoshi’s gaze and waving a hand a few inches from his face.

Hitoshi flinched — just a little — and felt stupid for it.

“Uh… yeah, sorry. You just… surprised me. I’m-“ He hesitated, looking away as their easy, patient smiles became too much — too kind, too understanding. He felt vaguely ill. “I’ve never gone to that sort of thing. We’ll see? I dunno what I’m going to be doing over break.” Probably picking up extra shifts, honestly. He was running low on some things, and his shoes definitely needed replacing, but his current paychecks barely covered groceries every week. Not that he could tell them that. He rubbed the back of his neck, gently tugging at the baby curls at his nape as the guilt festered.

Iwamoto shrugged, still smiling — too bright, always too bright. “Alright, just let us know? You really should join the class group chat, by the way. Even if you never talk in it, I make class announcements and stuff in there, too.” She put on her stern face again, straightening so she wasn’t quite so much shorter than him. “Just because you’re working towards being a Hero doesn’t mean you can slack off in General Studies!” She pointed at him dramatically, her other hand still on her hip as she feigned severe and scolding. The sparkle of barely contained laughter in her eyes betrayed her.

Holding his hands up again, this time in surrender, Hitoshi could only laugh nervously and try to force the cold, guilty twist in his stomach to go away. “Okay, okay, I wouldn’t dream of it, class rep.”

Satisfied, she grinned.

“See ya on Monday, Shinsou!” Kanmori laughed, nudging Iwamoto with his elbow, and she waved as they both turned to leave. Hitoshi watched them from the gates until the path curved and they disappeared out of sight, chest tight and stomach tied up in intricate knots. His eyes burned, and even if he knew, he didn’t want to articulate why.

It was more than a month after the Sports Festival, and his classmates still confused him. It felt… wrong, somehow, that they treated him so well. Like there was a punchline coming that he hadn’t figured out yet, and he was about to be the butt of yet another awful, hurtful joke. But so far? Nothing. Not even an inkling of anything. They’d only ever been supportive, every single one of them.

He wasn’t sure he deserved it.

Hitoshi worried how they’d feel when they found out he was trying to leave them. Thinking about it made him nervous, and he wondered if he should have kept his distance, kept everyone at arm’s length the way he’d planned at the start of the year. But it was so nice to not be ignored and feared. People didn’t hesitate — or flinch — when he talked. They seemed to actually, genuinely want him around. Inviting him to go out with them as a class, sitting with him at lunch, talking to him between classes… Sometimes, the attention made him uncomfortable and skittish, like a cockroach with the lights turned on, but even then, it was… comforting.

As a ‘just in case’ before middle school, Hitoshi had gotten his shitty flip phone, with a plan where you had to pay for your minutes and data at the end of the month. It was only now that he had any reason to use it for anything but Hero News. He didn’t even need one hand to count how many texts he’d sent before this school year, and the first contact he’d ever put into his phone was Iwamoto’s… Now he had 22. A few of them had even texted him. The Class 1-C group chat invite sat in his messages, waiting to be accepted.

Hitoshi had never had friends before. At least not real ones. Some of his classmates had pretended in an effort to get him to use his Quirk, or to ‘stay on his good side’, or even just out of pity, but the kids in Class 1-C were different.

He’d planned to intentionally not make any friends at UA, but… It seemed plans change.

At the end of every school day, the Hero Course students had an extra period of class — from 15:20 to 16:10. Eraser Head had told him in passing that it was for more practical instruction, such as rescue training, Quirk practice, and combat practice, which had just made Hitoshi incredibly jealous. It gave him some time to waste before training, too. He meandered campus, half-hoping he could find the Hero kids training somewhere so he could watch — or more accurately spy, he supposed. When that didn’t pan out, Hitoshi stopped to watch the other after-school activities and make small talk with the patrol bots as they passed. He enjoyed their weird, snarky, misanthropic personalities.

He even spent some time trying to plan a way up onto the roof of the school, just in case he needed one. It’d probably get him into trouble if he tried — there were almost definitely alarms of all sorts on the roof, for a lot of different reasons — but it was fun to think about. Where would he find foot and hand holds? Where could he jump to even start the climb? He didn’t have anything to help his mobility when he became a Hero and needed to get somewhere, so he had to start thinking of ways around that limitation now to train his brain for later.

Even after all that— and changing in a nearby standalone locker room — there was still plenty of time to lounge around the exercise fields as he waited. He picked a spot near the center, where it was sunny, well-lit, and surrounded by the crunchy, coarse dirt that might tell him if anybody tried to sneak up on him. The afternoon sunshine warmed him to his bones, relaxing him and tempting him toward another nap as he pulled out his books to study.

Time seemed to pass quickly then. One moment, Hitoshi was flipping through his Physics workbook, annotating which concepts he needed to review and dog-earing them in his study guides, and the next, his heart was trying to launch itself out of his chest as a shadow fell across him and his work. He couldn’t quite suppress his full-body flinch and gave the wry twist of his mentor’s smirk a glare as he squinted up at him. Judging by how amused he looked, Hitoshi hadn’t been nearly successful enough at hiding his surprise as he’d hoped, and Eraser enjoyed scaring the crap out of him. His mentor was one of the few people Hitoshi had ever met who could routinely sneak up on him, no Quirk needed.

Even wearing heavy-soled boots and walking across the noisiest, crunchiest terrain Hitoshi could find, the Pro Hero moved as silently as a cat on carpet. If it wasn’t so impressive and enviable, Hitoshi would have been a lot madder about it. He was still pretty mad, anyway.

“Your battlefield awareness needs work,” Eraser mused, hands in his pockets and chin tucked into his Capture Scarf. Hitoshi rolled his eyes. It was true, but he was pretty sure nobody’s awareness was good enough to keep Eraser Head at bay. He was practically a ninja.

Edgeshot had nothing on him… probably.

Rather than arguing any of those points, though, Hitoshi grumbled, “Didn’t know I was on a battlefield…”

Eraser Head’s response was immediate: “You’re always on the battlefield. Just because you take off the cape and mask doesn’t mean you stop being a Hero… or a target.” He was right, but Hitoshi hated that he always got the last word. His mentor jerked his head, and Hitoshi hastily shoved everything back into his bag before scrambling to his feet. In seconds, all sleepiness and irritation were gone as excitement buzzed under his skin — electricity in his veins.

Training was the highlight of his day, no matter how sore and frustrated it left him. He’d loved it ever since he got a taste of it, after the break following the Sports Festival. He’d somehow worked up the courage to ask Eraser Head to train him, and the Hero had agreed to three days of training every week after school. They’d increased it to five days a week — every weekday — after an… incident, but they kept the same basic structure: agility, strength, and combat, with a sprinkling of more focused topics related to Hero work thrown in. Every other day had been designated a rest day, but rather than Hitoshi returning home to pretend his life didn’t suck the moment he left school like he had when they first started, Mr. Aizawa had started helping Hitoshi train his Quirk.

And it always scared the ever-loving shit out of him.

Hitoshi had plenty of experience with how authority figures — or anyone, really — felt about Brainwash. He’d been subjected to their feelings on it — and how badly they handled those feelings — his entire life. And most of them only knew what it did. He’d been convinced Mr. Aizawa would change his mind about training him once he felt its effects firsthand, and finally realized the extent of what Hitoshi was capable of. The thought of it nearly broke Hitoshi. There was only so much disappointment his heart could take; if Aizawa decided to stop teaching him because of his Quirk…

He didn’t want to think about it. Even now, Hitoshi was waiting for the other shoe to drop — for Aizawa to have that epiphany and come to the conclusion everybody else had: that Brainwash would be an awful Quirk for a Hero. That Hitoshi didn’t have what it took. ‘How stupid could he be to think he could train someone like Hitoshi? How could he think Brainwash could ever help anyone? What sort of Hero controlled people?’ Nobody else saw what Hitoshi did when he looked at his Quirk; they jumped straight to Villainy and left Hitoshi’s dreams in the trash.

Mr. Aizawa had to have looked up his file in the school system before agreeing to train him; he’d have been stupid not to. And if that was the case, Hitoshi was surprised the Hero wanted anything to do with him after even a glance at that behemoth of a folder. The thing was packed with all the reasons he shouldn’t even be at UA, much less why he couldn’t be a Hero. His disciplinary record alone ‘spoke for itself’, after all. All the things he’d been accused of or goaded into, every assumption made and ‘confirmed’ without an ounce of proof… It all led to the same answer: Hitoshi wasn’t suited for this.

Every time they practiced with his Quirk, Hitoshi was sure it’d be the last.

Even with that fear, he still did Quirk training every time Mr. Aizawa demanded it. If his teacher hadn’t given up on him yet, Hitoshi wasn’t going to disappoint by refusing to put in the work. He’d already disappointed the Hero enough in those first few training sessions, what with how bad he’d been at everything else. At least he understood how to use his Quirk… everything else, on the other hand…

Every session in their first week together had been designed to test Hitoshi’s capabilities and correct his form. And, besides his agility, Hitoshi’s capabilities had been thoroughly lacking. The only reason he hadn’t tanked that, too, was because he’d taken up parkour so many years ago. The first time they’d trained in the twisted facsimile of Training Ground Gamma, Aizawa had seemed… dare he even think it, impressed. The look his teacher had given him that day sat warm in Hitoshi’s chest every time he thought of it.

“Remind me of your Saturday routine,” Aizawa said, starting their warm-up stretches. Hitoshi hurried to follow suit without prompting.

He had a feeling his mentor remembered; the guy had a scary good memory for everything — inconsequential details, Hitoshi’s schedule, little snarky comments he hadn’t even been sure Mr. Aizawa had heard… Not to mention the man had designed Hitoshi’s training regimen, and it wasn’t like Hitoshi was going to deviate much. He answered anyway. “5k run in the morning, parkour in he evening with a focus on upper body strength, agility, and grip.” He nearly didn’t say the next part — it felt too close to boasting, after all, he shouldn’t want praise for something he should be doing anyway — but… he couldn’t help himself, “Ran the 5k in 23 today…”

The grunt and slight nod Aizawa gave him in response were as close to outright praise as he usually got, and as small as it was, it still had Hitoshi stifling a smile and glowing with pride.

The day everyone came back to school after the Sports Festival — after the very short break that mostly consisted of a long weekend — Mr. Aizawa had invited Hitoshi to the Administration Office to review his performance. They hadn’t yet ironed out the specifics of Hitoshi’s training — actually, Aizawa hadn’t said he would train him, he’d just told him to meet on Monday — and instead of doing any of that, they’d watched a custom-made video focusing on Hitoshi’s performance, using angles and cameras that hadn’t been used in the national broadcast. As Hitoshi sat there, Aizawa had torn him to shreds. He pointed out mistake after mistake, slip up after slip up, everything that he could count as a misstep, he made sure Hitoshi saw it.

It’d hurt, and Hitoshi had wanted to lash out at the Hero for pulling him aside just to try and cut him down — though he’d mostly been angry at himself for hoping — but then the Hero turned the meeting on its head. They’d watched the video again, and instead of tearing it apart, Aizawa had shown him every glimmer of potential under the shit: how he’d used his agility, his intelligence — everything he’d done right that just needed a little polish.

The praise — and it had been praise, even if the words themselves had been brusque and harsh — had been said with the kind of flat surety that made it seem like fact, not anyone’s opinion. It’d given Hitoshi so much hope he’d nearly choked on it. Even now, Hitoshi remembered every second, had it tattooed on his mind to remind him that there was hope. He couldn’t let it go, couldn’t ever forget it.

But if every day was like that, he might have actually died by this point.

“Alright… yesterday would have been agility and stamina, so… we’ll adapt,” Aizawa murmured, more to himself than Hitoshi as he interrupted his stretches to bend backward at the waist. He arched his back, popping a worrying number of vertebrae in the process and nearly folding himself in half. It wasn’t part of their routine, so Hitoshi didn’t follow his lead, simply watching his mentor in his periphery. As he stood straight again, Aizawa reached up into the sky, flexing his hands to pop his knuckles and wrists. He looked all at once like a cat waking from a nap, claws extended, kneading the air, head back as he stretched. Even the little noise he made as his back popped one more time was cat-like.

Hitoshi couldn’t help the soft snort of laughter, ducking his head to suppress his smile when his teacher gave him a curious, suspicious look. Hands dropping to his side, Aizawa motioned to the track around the dirt grounds. “Five laps, go.”

That was probably for laughing. Hitoshi rolled his eyes as he grabbed his bag and hustled toward the benches nearby. “Why do you never have to run laps?” he grumbled, half-hoping his teacher wouldn’t hear him.

“Seven laps, and because I’m not the one trying to get into shape. Besides, I train 1-A before this. They’re my warm-up,” Eraser shot back without hesitation, crossing his arms. Hitoshi groaned, dropping his head in dismay as he tossed his bag down next to Eraser’s and started a brisk jog.

Today was going to hurt if Mr. Aizawa was already in that sort of mood.

The summer heat — previously a pleasant balm that threatened to lull him to sleep should he lose focus for even a moment — turned sweltering with the exertion. Hitoshi had to concentrate on his form and breathing to keep from getting a stitch for the first dozen or so meters — just long enough to get into the rhythm of it. Then, it was down to muscle memory. Aizawa kept saying it’d get easier; that it’d take less and less time and distance to get into that rhythm the more he practiced. He was honestly just lucky his form hadn’t been too bad to begin with.

At least it wasn’t a large track to run. It didn’t have markings like the actual track the General Studies Track Team used, but Hitoshi figured it was probably about as long — 400 meters, maybe? He did the math of how many meters he was running as he went; it was a mental exercise he’d started with parkour, learning to estimate the distances of jumps and falls. It was good to keep in mind.

When Hitoshi finally finished, Eraser was waiting for him, still standing in the center of the field with his face turned toward the sun. His eyes were shut like he was basking — or maybe he was trying to sleep standing up. He definitely looked well on his way to it, his breathing slow and even, completely relaxed.

Before Hitoshi got within 10 feet of him — even using all the tricks he’d learned to sneak around the apartment, and following the flattened path he and his mentor had already left to make as little noise as possible — the Hero’s eyes opened, and he turned to face him. Hitoshi’s mildly frustrated disappointment was immediately washed away by his mentor’s next words, “We’re sparring. I want to see if you remember what we covered on Monday.” He jerked his head toward Hitoshi’s bag, shaking his hands out at the wrist.

Hitoshi grinned, running to grab his mouth guard from the front pocket of his bag. He loved fight training. It was one of the most important things to learn to be a Hero like Eraser Head, and fuck if it wasn’t fun, no matter how many times Eraser threw him on his ass.

After Aizawa had evaluated Hitoshi’s capabilities, he’d started giving Hitoshi tips on how to fix his mistakes. From running with the correct form to how to stretch safely, what exercises helped with what muscles, and what strength training he needed to focus on. How to throw and take a hit had been a key part of those lessons.

He may not have been stupid enough to break his thumb throwing a punch, but he didn’t have much else going for him. Aizawa had seen as much in the Sports Festival — everyone had. He may have gotten off a sloppy reversal on Midoriya before being judo-thrown on his ass, but it’d been just that: sloppy. Not to mention complete and total dumb luck. Every fight Hitoshi had ever been in had been exactly that: sloppy dumb luck, a mad scramble to get away or make his opponent want to stop. What little he knew about combat came from scrapping with schoolyard bullies and running off assholes who harassed the local strays: fight dirty, get in any kind of hit that hurt, and make them want to leave. That was it. Technique never mattered.

One of the few times he’d instigated — at least in defense of something other than an animal — was to protect a middle school classmate who’d been targeted by some dropouts a few years older than them. He’d been too angry and high on righteous adrenaline to think past every punch and tackle. For his trouble, he’d ended up fracturing two knuckles on one of their faces, gotten the shit kicked out of him, and been tossed in a dumpster. The cops who wandered by moments later had the audacity to blame him as they hauled his ass out of the garbage. It wasn’t exactly a fond memory, getting detained and yelled at for a few hours, but at least it hadn’t gone on his permanent record.

The classmate he’d tried to defend had run off while the bullies were distracted pummeling Hitoshi, and then pretended Hitoshi didn’t exist when they saw them next. That was fine, though. Hitoshi had been pissed for a while, wondering if he should have just let them kick the crap out of the kid for their pocket change or whatever, but he figured he’d have to deal with saving ungrateful assholes as a Hero someday, too. He still preferred protecting the strays in his neighborhood over people, though. They were worth getting his ass kicked.

With Eraser Head’s help, though? Hitoshi hoped to never get chucked into the garbage by no-name assholes ever again.

Hitoshi’s mouth guard was in the front pocket of his bag, inside a protective case that kept it from getting dirty from whatever was running around in there. He popped the case open and shoved the clunky plastic in his mouth, slotting his teeth into their form-fitted grooves. The thing was bulky and rigid but far more comfortable than the immobilizer insert on the mask, even if it was bigger. It’d been a little amusing — and probably sad if he thought about it — when Aizawa warned him it’d take some getting used to, and Hitoshi had had to refrain from telling his mentor why it hadn’t. He doubted the Hero would be happy to learn what Hitoshi wore at home.

The guy seemed like a stickler for the law and child welfare, being a Pro Hero and teacher, after all.

Aizawa had his hair tied back and had shifted into a loose fighting stance by the time Hitoshi turned back to him, looking deceptively relaxed. Those sharp, dark eyes watched his every move, though, focused and intense. The sight had a thrill burning under Hitoshi’s skin, every bit of him ready for this.

Hitoshi forced himself to breathe evenly through the mouth guard, matching the slow rise and fall of his teacher’s shoulders. Everything else was at a standstill; it felt like the wind wasn’t even blowing, the distant noise of after-school activities and students fading away as even the clouds waited with bated breath. He couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his lips, and it almost looked like Aizawa was fighting a smile of his own — there was a certain fire in his eyes.

They both stepped forward and reached out, tapping the back of their knuckles together as a silent ready signal.

Over the next forty-five minutes, Hitoshi almost managed two takedowns, a half dozen decent hits, and got his ass handed to him about eight times as much by his mentor. He’d been right; today hurt. Every time he went down, though, Hitoshi rushed to scramble back to his feet and square off again, listening intently as Mr. Aizawa explained what went wrong and how to prevent it. The handful of times Hitoshi had had to take a moment, groaning in pain or gasping from getting the wind knocked out of him again, Aizawa had given him the mercy of only snickering a little as he waited. The guy was a real jerk when he wanted to be.

It was exhilarating, even when frustration had him so angry he wanted to scream, burning his eyes and clogging his throat. He could see what he needed to do, and Mr. Aizawa was so patient in showing him how to get there. Sometimes, he got it right on the second or third try, but Aizawa never got angry, no matter how many times it took. It was amazing to not be so on edge around an adult — constantly afraid of the consequences of his first failure, terrified of proving their prejudices right. He was scared of proving himself right, too — that he didn’t deserve this, and it really was pointless. It scared him almost as much as the idea of truly becoming a Villain.

Aizawa didn’t seem to think that way, though. Every time Hitoshi failed, he just… kept teaching.

By the time Mr. Aizawa waved off Hitoshi’s fighting stance and announced they were stopping, Hitoshi was completely exhausted. His muscles shook with adrenaline and fatigue, and he could barely keep himself from collapsing as he eased himself back to sit in the dirt. From there, he threw himself back, arms to the side, back flat on the ground with a melodramatic groan. Mr. Aizawa snorted at Hitoshi’s dramatics, walking over to the benches while Hitoshi could only whine and wheeze where he lay.

After a few moments of letting himself hurt, Hitoshi wiped his sweaty, dirty hands on his gym shirt and reached up to fish his mouth guard out. It may have been easier than the mask — by leaps and bounds, practically infinitely so — but when he was winded, it was a relief to breathe unimpeded. He focused on his breathing for a bit, inflating his diaphragm and lungs to their fullest before letting the air out in a slow, controlled stream. He thumbed at the ridges on the outside of the mouth guard thoughtfully as he lay there, tapping his nail against the plastic like he would his teeth on the immobilizer.

Since Hitoshi’s Quirk relied entirely on his voice, Eraser had refused to do any sparring or combat training until they got him a mouth guard to protect his teeth and jaw, and a good one at that. When Hitoshi had tried to suggest one of the off-the-shelf ones from a sports store or something, the disgusted look on his mentor’s face had been nearly enough to make Hitoshi laugh. He would laugh if it had happened now, but that’d been only their second week of training — the monday after all of Mr. Aizawa’s assessments.

The next time they’d met, they’d spent at least half an hour of their allotted training time in Lunch Rush’s kitchen, Eraser Head hunched over a molding kit for a professional mouth guard — one that would be sent off to an actual Support Company that apparently owed the Hero some favors. Hitoshi had spent most of that time sitting on the floor as he watched Mr. Aizawa try to read the tiny printed instruction, feeling out of place, doted on, and ignored all at once.

When Mr. Aizawa finally gave up and handed everything over for Hitoshi to figure out, Hitoshi had laughed. It’d been one of those ‘surprised out of him’ laughs, one he’d tried to hide behind his hand and by ducking his head. He was still confused as to why the wry twist of the man’s smile — his head similarly tucked into the loops of his Capture Scarf to hide the expression — had had him feeling fit to burst with pride.

For some reason, Mr. Aizawa’s worry and insistence made the mouth guard feel… like a treasure. He cared enough to protect Hitoshi’s Quirk, and even if the thing was clunky and uncomfortable, and reminded him of the thing at the bottom of his bag — the thing he pretended didn’t exist outside the apartment’s stifling walls — he cherished it. Cherished what it meant.

Clouds drifted overhead, slow and lazy in their travels as they moved to collect into thicker clumps over and behind the school. Hitoshi watched them as he recovered, eyes slowly closing — weighted by exhaustion. Even with the rough dirt under him, his clothes sticking to him with sweat, and the sun far too hot to be comfortable, he longed to just let his eyes slide shut and succumb to sleep.

If only it were so easy at night…

He let his mind wander and fret. Clouds had a knack of making him worry… The way they moved through the sky only to disappear into nothingness, shepherded along by the breeze. They didn’t have any control over what happened to them or where they went, completely at the whim of the sky. They were unanchored… lost. They did as the wind told them and then… disappeared. Hitoshi closed his eyes to keep the thoughts at bay and took another deep breath.

“Hey. Water. Drink,” Mr. Aizawa called from near the benches, tossing something over to him. It landed about a meter away, sounding heavy and metallic when it hit the dirt, then rolled the short distance to nudge against Hitoshi’s bare forearm. He flinched away from the freezing, damp metal, cursing as he twisted to sit up and look. “Language,” his teacher told him crisply, and Hitoshi grimaced and ducked his head away from the half-hearted scolding.

The offending object that’d touched his arm was a purple, metal water bottle with a green lid and a silicone strap. It had landed on its side and rolled to him from where Eraser Head had tossed it, condensation and coarse dirt clinging to its otherwise pristine exterior. Hitoshi scoffed, even as he picked it up and took a slow drink of blessedly cold water. He considered the bottle as he swallowed, brushing his fingers through the dirt and thumbing at the logo, still covered with its protective plastic sticker. Brand new…

“Fancy… I have my own water. You know that, right, Eraser?” It was a cracked, scuffed, hard plastic piece of shit with a mouthpiece he’d chewed to hell and back, but it’d been bought to bring water home, and it did its job. It held three liters, didn’t leak, and it’d been cheap and on sale.

Aizawa had come back to stand near him, holding a bottle just like the one he’d tossed Hitoshi, but dark grey and obviously older. The bottom was dented and scuffed from being dropped a few too many times. “You can call me Aizawa, you know. I’m your teacher…” he said, voice soft and… weird. Well, not weird, but Hitoshi couldn’t quite put the word to it — to why it felt different. “And yeah, I’ve seen your water bottle. It’s garbage and probably hot from being in your bag all day — if you even remembered to refill it at all,” he added more gruffly, shrugging one shoulder easily as he unscrewed the lid on his own water and took a few slow sips.

Hitoshi groaned. He’d forgotten to fill it one time, and the man was never going to let him forget it.

The idea of calling him Aizawa… Sure, he did in his head, but out loud, where somebody could overhear… The idea of it ate at him. He wasn’t one of Mr. Aizawa’s students yet, no matter how much he wanted to be and no matter what the man said. Until he was… He didn’t feel… worthy, maybe. Hitoshi fiddled with his mouth guard.

“Besides, my husband got that for you. I’m just the delivery guy.” Ah, a welcome subject change: Mr. Aizawa’s husband…

Even after all this time, spending his after-school hours and going out to eat with the Hero, Hitoshi knew very little about the man named Aizawa — and he probably knew more than the man’s entire first-year class combined. What he did know, he’d learned slowly, gleaning bits and pieces over many short conversations and dinners.

For example, Mr. Aizawa liked salty foods and had an alright spice tolerance, but didn’t have a favorite food he’d admit to. Hitoshi argued it was probably coffee or coffee-adjacent since that was usually all he ever ordered. His mentor also liked cats, having four at his and his husband’s home. At least one of which was named Lemon. Despite the horrendous name, Hitoshi was insanely jealous. He loved cats. Loved watching them jump and run in ways Hitoshi could only hope to mimic, envied their peaceful sleep, and the truly relaxed and royal way they seemed to take on every day. Even strays and feral colonies moved through life as if they owned it, ferocious and cunning.

Hitoshi had spent more time around cats than he had people before attending UA.

Dogs, on the other hand… Aizawa said they made him nervous, but he could have been lying to make Hitoshi feel better. On their way to a ramen shop after training, a dog had scared the ever-loving crap out of him by jumping up on its gate and barking its head off. Hitoshi had been incredibly embarrassed at the panic attack it’d given him. He’d been bitten before, badly enough that he’d had to go to the hospital, not to mention the way loud noises or fast movements triggered his deeply ingrained fight or flight — or more accurately freeze — response.

Mr. Aizawa, meanwhile, had just let him calm down, watching him with that passive understanding Hitoshi had mistaken for bored disdain for the first few weeks of training. ‘I’m not fond of them either. You get bitten enough times trying to do your job, and you tend to get a little nervous around them. It’s fine. All Heroes have things like that. You’ll learn to handle it better,’ he’d said, like Hitoshi was already a Hero, reacting the way young Heroes did. Like it really was just fine that he’d gotten scared of some yappy little terrier trapped behind an iron gate.

Hitoshi didn’t believe a second of it, but it’d been comforting nonetheless.

The biggest reveal — the existence of Mr. Aizawa’s significant other — hadn’t been learned over dinner or walking together, or even from Mr. Aizawa himself. No, it’d been an accident and entirely Ms. Midnight’s fault.

One afternoon, about halfway through their second week of training, the R-Rated Hero had stopped by to observe — though, after the fact, Hitoshi realized it was primarily to harass his mentor. Aizawa had been hesitant, probably realizing Midnight’s actual intent, but as she was Hitoshi’s homeroom teacher, he couldn’t rightly deny her without cause. For the first half or so, she’d just watched from the sidelines, tossing in a comment here or there — mostly encouraging, sometimes vaguely inappropriate, but he doubted she could stop that if she tried; being inappropriate was as inherent to her existence as breathing.

When they finally stopped for a break, that was when the heckling truly began — and it’d been glorious. Hitoshi had watched in a quiet mix of awe, wonder, and horror as Midnight effortlessly wiggled her way under Mr. Aizawa’s skin, annoying him and letting his barbed comments slide off her like water. She’d slung her arms around the man’s shoulders and played with his hair with such familiarity and ease that, at first, Hitoshi had wondered if she wore the matching counterpart to the wedding ring around Eraser’s neck.

It was just a slim metal band, or at least Hitoshi hadn’t seen any stone or inscription, and Mr. Aizawa didn’t seem the type for either, anyway. It looked like a typical man’s wedding ring, kept on a simple chain and hidden under Eraser’s jumpsuit and scarf. The only reason Hitoshi had seen it at all was because his mentor had shown him how to do push-ups properly, and it’d slipped out of his shirt in the process. Hitoshi had only seen it or the chain it was on one or two times since.

While Midnight badgered him, Mr. Aizawa had almost seemed to be physically restraining himself from reacting, making half-aborted attempts to throw her off of him, only for the other Hero to lean into him so hard it’d nearly toppled them both. When he told her to get lost — multiple times, and rather emphatically at that — she’d kept talking as if he hadn’t spoken at all. Eraser Head’s usually unflappable demeanor had crumbled before Hitoshi’s eyes under the relentless agitation and affection of Ms. Midnight.

Then, to Hitoshi’s horror, she’d pulled him into it, asking if he wanted to see pictures of Eraser Head from their time in high school — when he’d, and this was a direct quote, ‘still been cute’. Going to school together explained their familiarity, at least.

Mr. Aizawa had shot back immediately with a brusque, grumpy, “I was never cute,” like it was an argument they’d had many times.

That was when Midnight dropped the bombshell, giggling from behind her phone with a smile so evil it was no wonder Villains feared her. She’d leaned against Eraser’s back, breasts shoving his head forward and her weight bending him nearly in half as she said, “Don’t let your husband hear you say that, Shouta~!”

The look Eraser had shot her as he yanked out from under her weight, nearly sending her tumbling to the dirt without his support, had been murderous. She’d seemed at least a little apologetic about the slip-up, letting herself finally get shooed away, hands held up in surrender. Her barely stifled laughter echoed long after she’d left. In the tense, prolonged silence that followed, Hitoshi had finally asked, “So… husband?”

And Aizawa had sighed, long-suffering and exhausted, glared at him, and said, “Yes. I’m married. No, we’re not discussing this,” and Hitoshi had done him the favor of not mentioning that wasn’t new information.

He just let that be the end of that.

Since then, Mr. Aizawa mentioned his husband somewhat often, even if only in passing moments like these. Hitoshi had of course never met the man, and he probably never would if his mentor had anything to say about it. Hitoshi understood. Eraser Head had a lot of enemies, after all, and if his husband was a civilian, it’d be dangerous for people to know he even existed, much less who he was. Anybody could go after Mr. Aizawa’s family to get to him; it was why most Heroes didn’t talk about their personal lives. Aizawa obviously didn’t even want people to know he was married — though he hadn’t tried particularly hard to hide his ring, either, besides keeping it in his shirt.

So, Hitoshi would probably never know the person his mentor had married, but he knew the man liked him. Or, at the very least, he liked that Aizawa was training him. Enough to send little gifts for Hitoshi, anyway.

“Tell him thanks for me,” Hitoshi murmured, cradling the water bottle in his lap. He’d learned the first time — when his mentor tossed him a paper bag bundle containing a half-dozen protein bars and twice as many of those electrolyte powders you added to your water post-workout — that trying to turn down the gifts was pointless. He’d tried repeatedly anyway, that day and many days after it. Every time a paper-wrapped gift was thrown his way, Hitoshi had told him no. He was fine. He didn’t need the charity. They didn’t need to waste money on him.

But Mr. Aizawa shot him down every. Single. Time.

“I’m not taking those back to him. If you don’t want them, throw them away,” he’d said with a shrug.

“He bought those for you, and he’s not going to return them. They’re yours,” he’d scoffed, waving off Hitoshi’s pleas.

“He does whatever he wants, Shinsou; I can’t stop him. I don’t think anyone can. I’m just the courier,” he’d sighed, giving Hitoshi an exhausted look, as if having those arguments was as tiring to him as losing them was to Hitoshi..

It was embarrassing, and beyond infuriating, but arguing with Mr. Aizawa’s point-blank rationality was next to impossible. Arguing with his husband was apparently even worse if his mentor was to be believed. Hitoshi had eventually given up. Everything he’d gotten from them was nice; it was the kind of stuff he couldn’t dream of affording without a third or even fourth job, so it wasn’t like he was going to throw away perfectly good food.

After Eraser started taking him out to eat, the gifts stopped for a while. It made sense… Why would his husband send Hitoshi food a few times a week if they were already paying for him to eat every day? And it wasn’t like they were getting the least expensive food or even comped food from UA; they were visiting proper restaurants after training. Hitoshi had been caught between the hope that it was over — to save himself from the embarrassment of his teacher’s husband’s long-distance charity — and the paradoxical worry that it was over.

It felt good to be cared for, even from afar and by a stranger. Every gift had been a little thrill, melting his heart, even if the embarrassment quickly followed.

Then, the very next week, Aizawa had come to training with a new mouth guard rinse and case, and that’d been his answer. The gifts weren’t going to stop; they just weren’t going to be food anymore.

Hitoshi tried his best not to wonder how much each gift cost them. The water bottle in his hands alone was on the pricier side, and it was obviously for him — almost the color of his hair, with a strap the same shade of green as his shoes. He thought about trying to tell Eraser no again, that he couldn’t accept it… Having two water bottles would make the weekends a hell of a lot easier, though. He could ration it out to make rice for every meal and never even need to leave the district.

Guilt curdled in his stomach, and he tried to quash it with another sip of water. It sat cold and heavy deep inside him long after he swallowed.

Aizawa was watching him. Hitoshi could feel his gaze even before turning to look, eyebrow raised in question. For a moment, neither moved, caught in an awkward staring contest, before Aizawa hummed and finally looked away. He scanned their surroundings with an unreadable expression.

A sly smile curled Hitoshi’s lips, and he cocked his head to the side as he considered the man. Something about how Aizawa had turned away… An idea formed in his head. “Maybe he’s trying to tell you something, Eraser,” he mused, tapping his mouth guard against the bottle and listening to the dull clang, clang of hard plastic against metal. Aizawa turned back to him, eyes narrowed with suspicion and hackles proverbially raised. Hitoshi let his smile spread into the one people didn’t like — the wide, unsettling sneer he used when he wanted to get under someone’s skin — and went in for the kill.

“Sounds like he wants kids.”

Honestly, Hitoshi had no idea if that was what Aizawa’s husband was angling at, but saying as much had his teacher’s nose wrinkling, a pained, exhausted expression twisting his features, and his shoulders dragging down with visible despair.

And that was all Hitoshi really wanted. Laughter bubbled up in his chest, warm and bright, and he turned away to smother the sound in his shoulder and wrist, hiding his too-genuine smile.

When he calmed enough to look again, he caught the tail end of Aizawa ducking to hide a wry, fond-looking expression of his own in the coils of his Capture Scarf. “Brat,” he grumbled, and Hitoshi could hear the smile. And it felt… good. It always felt good to make his mentor smile or laugh, and Hitoshi was still getting a handle on that feeling. A nod of approval or a soft, amused hum… it all eased some ugly, needy thing in his chest he didn’t want to think about.

It felt like getting a smiley face on his English papers, and the thumbs-up Present Mic gave him sometimes, and it felt like Midnight saying hi to him every morning with a soft, sleepy smile. It felt like Kanmori nearly snorting juice out of his nose because of some inappropriate comment Hitoshi made about the Hero kids or some Hero news, and the way Iwamoto kept inviting him to the group chat. The way they all tried to take care of him…

It left his chest aching and full of a warmth that drowned out the anxiety and guilt and bitterness.

He wondered if Mr. Aizawa’s Hero students felt that way when they made him smile. He wondered if this was how it’d have felt to make his mom proud — if her approval and laughter would have left him feeling warm and fuzzy and so fucking happy, too.

Hitoshi wondered what kind of parent Mr. Aizawa would be.

Shame slapped him across the face no sooner than the thought crossed his mind, dropping Hitoshi’s gaze where he folded and twisted his fingers around his mouth guard and the gift he didn’t deserve. He hoped the exertion reddening his skin would hide the ruddy, humiliated flush that climbed across his cheeks and heated his ears. Hoping to chase the warmth away, he rubbed the back of his neck, but it did little to soothe the mortification that prickled at his scalp.

How pathetic to be so desperate for kindness — for a single stupid ounce of affection — that he was projecting his lack of parental figure onto the first adult to show him any modicum of positive attention. How stupid was he to even think that kind of shit? He’d been without a parent for almost 8 years and was better off for it; he didn’t need parents… So why did he want so badly?

Mr. Aizawa only saw him as just another student, but he was the closest Hitoshi had ever come to having a father. He’d been thinking of him that way more and more recently, and every time it left him hating himself — hurt and embarrassed. But… as long as the Hero never found out, it was probably okay. Hitoshi figured he could take what small comforts he could from their interactions, no matter how pitiful and miserable it made him feel.

He just had to make sure he didn’t cross any of those invisible lines; that he didn’t scare his teacher away by being too needy. Nobody wanted to deal with a clingy kid. A Pro like Eraser Head wouldn’t have the time for one.

But now he was thinking about it again… about Aizawa and his mystery husband as fathers… Whatever kind of parents they would be, they’d be better than anything Hitoshi had ever had. He bit his lip and forced himself to breathe through the stinging in his eyes and the lump in his throat.

“Shinsou.” Hitoshi looked up by instinct, responding to the tone his mentor reserved for instruction and momentarily fearing the man had somehow noticed. He wasn’t convinced the man wasn’t psychic, and he’d just about die of embarrassment if his mentor called him out for thinking of him as a father. Aizawa just nodded back toward the benches, though, turning away. “C’mere. I’ve got something else for you,” he said, and Hitoshi let himself breathe as he scrambled to close his water and follow.

Normal. Things were normal. Nobody was going to call him out — nobody even knew, least of all Mr. Aizawa. Hitoshi was safe. Safe. The buzz of anxiety that always sat at the base of his skull eased a little, and he let himself relax.

“You know, all these gifts are going to spoil me, sir,” he said dryly, but he couldn’t help but be curious. He only got a hum in response, soft and nearly lost on the gentle breeze. Mr. Aizawa grabbed his bag when they reached the benches, sitting with it in his lap. It looked bigger than usual, though his teacher moved it around like it weighed nothing, anyway. It was easy to forget how strong Heroes were — especially ones without strength Quirks — even after getting thrown around by one for nearly an hour.

Hitoshi eyed the bag, standing awkwardly until Aizawa motioned for him to sit, too. Even then, he kept a decent distance between them, careful not to make his teacher uncomfortable now that he’d realized he was close to that invisible line again. He couldn’t overstep it. It’d just hurt worse when Mr. Aizawa… Eraser Head made him back away.

The guilt still prickled at his nape, but if he was careful…

Mr. Aizawa didn’t give him a choice. Turning to face Hitoshi, he pulled one leg up onto the bench, his thigh across the warm metal to close the distance between them into something more casual. Hitoshi turned, mirroring the position and fidgeting with the tape holding his shoe together. He could only watch as his teacher unzipped his bag, shoving folders out of the way and grumbling about having too much junk.

Finally, he uncovered a large, plastic-wrapped bundle, the same kind of heavy-duty plastic packages got shipped in. It was soft, squishing under Eraser’s fingers as he wriggled it free of his backpack, and flat, maybe the size of a hoodie folded for storage. Eraser grunted when he finally worked it free, laying it across his knee so he could force his cooler into its place. Then, he zipped up his bag, set it aside, and turned his entire focus back to Hitoshi, package in hand.

“Here,” he said, handing it over with an expectant look.

It was heavier than it looked — several times heavier than if it were a hoodie — and for a few dumb seconds, Hitoshi just stared, trying to figure out what it was. It was summer, so he definitely didn’t need a heavy coat or anything, and that was what it felt like, some sort of stiff, flexible fabric with folds and layers. He glanced up at Eraser in confusion, only to find the man still watching.

Mr. Aizawa motioned, glancing at the thing in Hitoshi’s hands. “Open it.”

Why did that make him nervous? Was it how his mentor watched him, sitting in judgment? Maybe it was because this was from him? He’d explicitly said, ‘I’ve got something for you,’ rather than it being from his husband? Or maybe he was reading into the wording too much… Either way, this felt important — something he shouldn’t fuck up, though Hitoshi wasn’t sure how he could fuck up opening a package.

Knowing his luck, Hitoshi would find a way.

It had Hitoshi’s heart beating hard and fast in his chest and his hands shaking as he flipped the bundle over and felt along the edges for a seam. It had the insignia for UA on it, as well as the name for the Support Company that’d made Hitoshi’s mouth guard. That made him hesitate, but only for a moment before he forged onward. “I was going to give this to you on Monday, but the Support Company got it finished yesterday. Wanted to give it to you then, too, but with the staff meeting…” Mr. Aizawa trailed off, almost sounding uncomfortable — hesitant — but Hitoshi could barely hear him past the blood rushing in his ears.

His entire world had narrowed down to the contents of the package: an incredibly familiar length of crisp, bright white fabric, loosely coiled into a pile inside the plastic bundle. It was shorter, only made up of one piece rather than the dozen or so Eraser Head’s had, and definitely cleaner, but there was no denying what it was as it slid into his hands.

A duplicate of Eraser Head’s signature weapon. A Capture Scarf.

Holy fucking shit.

It took several moments for Hitoshi to realize he was still being spoken to, and he didn’t even want to think of what expression he might have been making. He felt like the world had stopped spinning — or maybe he’d stopped while time kept going, and he was struggling to catch up. He turned to look up at Eraser, wide-eyed and stunned, hands shaking where he loosely held the Capture Weapon.

“Kid… say something; you’re making me nervous,” his mentor huffed, and he sounded nervous — worried, almost — even if he didn’t look it.

Hitoshi hurried to answer, but fumbled over his words, “You-! Yo-you can’t be se-serious, right?” Er-raser, I-!” He thought he’d gotten over the stutter. He hadn’t done it in front of anyone since he was a kid — after he got out of the hospital — but here he was, barely able to get a word out of his stupid, traitorous mouth. He felt dizzy and pressed a hand to his forehead, looking down at the scarf again like it might disappear if he looked away for too long. It didn’t feel real. Nothing did, actually. Maybe he was dreaming, and the whole day had been nothing but a fantasy?

Eraser seemed to relax a little, managing a quiet, relieved chuckle. “Yeah, I’m serious. You’ve got the aim and coordination for a thrown weapon, and it’ll aid in your mobility. This was the rational choice. I didn’t want to tell you too soon, just in case…” he trailed off with a shrug, and Hitoshi hesitated to ask what it was ‘just in case’ of. It’d probably been dependent on whether Hitoshi was worth the man’s time and effort or not… “But you’ve been doing well. Introducing a support item for you to use is the next logical step.”

Tears prickled and burned behind Hitoshi’s eyes, closing up his throat as heat collected in his sinuses and cheeks. He didn’t even know why this was making him feel like crying, but it was. He rubbed at his face hastily, taking a few deep breaths that hitched in his chest a little. He had to fight down the urge to hug his mentor — fuck, he wanted a hug so badly it hurt deep in his chest, like a shard of something twisting next to his heart and dragging everything around it into a painful knot.

But this was Eraser Head’s signature weapon. He was the only one who used it — he’d invented it — and if anybody saw Hitoshi with it, they’d know who taught him to use it. They’d connect the dots and know who was helping him — who was in his corner. It was irrefutable proof that Eraser Head believed in him. That Mr. Aizawa, teacher of future Heroes at the prestigious UA High School, believed in him — that he was helping Hitoshi become a Hero.

“You can call me Aizawa, you know,” echoed in his head, and that was what the man’s students called him, wasn’t it? Aizawa. He was holding evidence of being one of the man’s students right there in his hands — proof of his mentor’s faith.

Nobody had ever believed in him before. How many times had he been told to give up on his dream? How many times was he told his Quirk wasn’t suited for it, that only Villains did what he could do? Every comment and sneer had cut deep, and though they’d driven him to prove them wrong, they’d also urged his bitterness and cruelty to bloom and curl thorns into his heart, but…

He was so thankful for Aizawa.

Slowly coiling the Capture Scarf between his hands and running his thumbs along the white metal and fiber mesh, Hitoshi felt himself smile so wide his cheeks hurt — broader and happier than he could ever remember a smile being. Warmth spread through his whole body like he’d lain in the sun, and his eyes felt wet. He blinked hard to try to keep from crying. It felt funny that the scarf was so clean; Aizawa’s must have been the same shade at some point, but it was so old and dirty it was stained grey, now. Hitoshi couldn’t help the soft, disbelieving laugh that bubbled out of his throat, still choked with tears he kept swallowing down.

If Aizawa thought the laugh weird — or had any feelings about Hitoshi’s reaction — he kept them to himself. “The rest of our training today will be getting a feel for the weapon and getting a handle on the basics: the throw and pull. Come on,” he said, clapping Hitoshi gently on the bicep as he stood. He tugged his own capture scarf loose as he moved back to the scuffed and cleared center of the training field, half-turning to put himself in something like a fighting position, and looking to Hitoshi expectantly.

In his hurry to follow, Hitoshi nearly threw his mouth guard and new water bottle into the dirt, barely remembering to shove them into his bag. His mouth guard didn’t even get put in its case; he just hastily dropped it into the front pocket so he could run after his mentor.

If sparring was the height of excitement before, it paled in comparison to the idea of training with the Capture Scarf.

By the time they finished, Hitoshi was beyond exhausted. His hands and fingers were striped with raw, ragged red marks like rope burns, but a thousand times worse. He’d even managed to split his palm open, forcing them to visit Recovery Girl before she left for the evening.

She made it abundantly clear they could have just bandaged it — that it’d heal fine on its own as long as he kept it clean and covered — but since it was his dominant hand, she didn’t mind helping him out. Honestly, she was probably just happy he wasn’t too exhausted for her to help for once — every other time he’d come in with an injury too worrisome for Aizawa to let him get away with, she’d glared at him so fiercely Hitoshi had wondered if she’d ever killed someone with her eyes alone. In comparison, she’d seemed nearly ecstatic to be able to heal him for once.

With one uncomfortably wet usage of her Quirk to the back of his hand, the angry, open gash — red and oozing clear liquid like a burst blister — changed to a pale pink scar that stretched across the width of his palm. The rest, sore and burning but satisfying in what they meant, were left to heal naturally, the way he hoped she’d leave them. Judging by the twinkle in her eye as she said, ‘I’ll leave the rest for you,’ she knew he didn’t want them gone too soon.

Ever since they’d left her office, Hitoshi had been flipping his hands back and forth to admire them, grinning like an idiot.

As they walked back to the locker rooms, so Hitoshi could change — Hitoshi’s backpack slung over his shoulder, Aizawa carrying his own much the same way — Aizawa offered his own hand up for comparison. “You’ll have a bunch of those if you stick with this,” he said, sounding amused as Hitoshi half-turned to walk sideways beside him. Aizawa’s hands were littered with scars and calluses, and in nearly the same spot as Hitoshi’s, he had a scar of his own, faded and pale from time. Hitoshi eagerly held his hands up alongside for comparison.

Their skin tones weren’t much different — maybe Hitoshi was a little paler — and their hands were roughly the same size, but that was where the similarities ended. Aizawa’s fingers were crooked, twisted, and gnarled from being broken and reset a thousand times over. Alongside the Capture Scarf scars and callouses were more minor marks from cuts and burns — the evidence of over a decade of Hero work.

In comparison, Hitoshi only had one slightly twisted finger, not quite sitting flush with the ones beside it — from one of those knuckles he’d fractured on that one bully’s face — and scattered calluses and scars from his parkour. He wondered if the other angry red lines criss-crossing his fingers and palms would become scars, too. Would he have the same markings as his mentor alongside his own? They already had one scar that matched, and Hitoshi found himself looking for potential others.

The idea of sharing those scars — from a weapon shared and entrusted to him — had a rush of something warm welling up in Hitoshi’s chest, and he tried to ignore the shame that followed.

“Someday, your hands are gonna look as messed up as mine, so you can look forward to that,” Aizawa teased, flexing his fingers a few times. One of them jerked halfway through the motion like it’d never healed right, and there was a catch in the movement. Hitoshi wondered how he’d broken it — nearly asked how.

He never got a chance, though. Before a word could pass his lips, Hitoshi was falling. He felt one shoe catch on the other and heard the sound of tape coming unstuck from itself and the ground. Trying to untangle his legs so he could at least catch himself on his knees, he twisted, hands snapping out to brace for the inevitable moment he hit the ground. This was going to hurt — landing on concrete always did.

Out of his peripheral vision, Hitoshi saw Aizawa’s hand snap out toward him, and he braced instinctively. For the briefest of moments, he was caught between expecting the pain of hitting the ground and the pain of being hit — punch, slap, smack, shove; he didn’t really know what he expected. All he knew was that when hands came at him fast, it was never with good intentions. On the tail end of that expectation, though, was the knowledge that this was Aizawa. Not Shibukawa, not the teachers at his old schools, or the disciplinarians at the group homes, or the bullies, or the drunk assholes who’d long since taught him to cross the street lest they target him for cruelty. There were so many people who would take any sign of vulnerability to heap on more hurt, but Aizawa wasn’t one of them.

He wouldn’t hurt him. Hitoshi wanted to believe that; he needed to believe that. If he was wrong…

Aizawa didn’t let him down.

The man’s hand caught Hitoshi around the bicep to arrest his fall, tight enough to hurt but only for the few seconds it took to stop him. One moment, Hitoshi was suspended by that grip, his insides bouncing with the sudden stop, and then he was pulled sideways and up, into Aizawa’s chest. Another hand came up to brace against his back to keep him steady, pressing between his shoulder blades. They were close to the same height, but Hitoshi felt so suddenly small, half-tucked into his mentor’s chest.

The fabric of his jumpsuit was softer than he expected, and the man was warm, but Hitoshi’s face burned with humiliation. “Easy…” Aizawa murmured as Hitoshi swayed and hastily untangled his feet to stumble away — away from the hand on his back that eased the thundering of his terrified heart and the grip on his arm that’d kept him from cracking his skull open. His mentor let the hand on Hitoshi’s back linger until he stepped out of reach.

“Sorry…” Hitoshi muttered, blushing bright and hot as he glared down at his traitorous shoes — and the tape hanging raggedly off one of the soles. He’d have to buy more to smooth it back down, and it was starting to become more tape than canvas or rubber. Humiliated shame curled in his stomach as he glanced up at Aizawa sheepishly, scuffing the offending shoe back like he could somehow hide it.

For his part, Aizawa just shrugged, even as he glanced down at Hitoshi’s shoes with a critical, raised eyebrow. “Nothing to be sorry for.” Then, he reached over, palm flat to Hitoshi’s cheek, and shoved him gently to the side. “Go get changed, kid; I’m starving.

And just like that, the moment was over. No mocking, no questions… just playful affection that banished the sick feeling in Hitoshi’s gut. Everything was fine — normal.

Hitoshi huffed, stumbling with the shove but smiling. Why his body didn’t react to the motion or touch like it usually did, he didn’t know, but he was glad for it. “Like you’ll eat anything,” he shot back, hurrying ahead and ducking into the locker room as Aizawa called after him — calling him a brat again.

Reaching up to touch his arm, Hitoshi could feel the impression of his mentor’s grip, warm and tight — a spark of pain before easing into something reassuring when Hitoshi wasn’t actively falling. It’d surprised him, and made that warmth in his chest blossom even on the heels of the mortification. He wondered if he’d ever get used to how Aizawa treated him — the affection, the protection, the trust and care… Honestly, he wasn’t sure he wanted to; it would hurt too much when it stopped. He’d expect it even after it was taken away, and no matter how Hitoshi dreaded that day, he knew it’d come. It always did.

Fuck, he wanted a hug. The need for it made his chest ache; this had to be what the phrase ‘touch-starved’ meant, right? The bone-deep longing for anything that didn’t hurt. ‘Get a grip, asshole. Force that shit down and move on; thinking about it only makes it hurt worse,’ Hitoshi thought bitterly, the warmth of training and Aizawa’s reassuring affection forced into another one of those boxes he didn’t think about — the one with all the things he shouldn’t hope for.

He had his dreams, and he chased them with all the fervor and desperation of a starved dog, but even he knew what was unattainable. There was trying to prove people wrong, and then there was just torturing himself.

Hitoshi unzipped and tugged at the collar of his gym shirt, grimacing as the A/C rapidly cooled his sweat-damp undershirt where it stuck uncomfortably to his skin. Everything he owned needed to be washed, but at least tomorrow was laundry day. He’d go down to the coin laundry and do his homework while he waited, then visit the grocery store to start next week fresh.

He carried his bag back to the showers, hanging it on a towel hook and tossing his dirty clothes over top as he stripped down to rinse off. During the school day, or at least when other students were around, Hitoshi always tried to keep at least his undershirt and boxers on when he was forced to change. Even that wasn’t ideal since he hadn’t been able to replace his undershirt since the last round of surprise cigarette burns Shibukawa had subjected him to. At least they were small — easy to blame on the shirt being old. Sometimes, though, he had to do something after PE. Hound Dog ran them ragged some days — when he wasn’t teaching them about self-care and emotional regulation — and Hitoshi hated going to his last class stinking and sticky with sweat. In those most dire of circumstances, he opted for a washcloth in one of the shower stalls, but even with that privacy, he never did more than reach under his clothes.

It wasn’t so much because of his self-esteem as it was his anxiety. Sure, he hated that he still hadn’t bulked up much, even five weeks into Aizawa’s training. He was still thin and gangly, even if he’d started noticing his ribs didn’t stick out as much, and there was some noticeable muscle in his arms and shoulders. It bothered him plenty that he looked the way he did, and he’d have preferred to not be any degree of undressed around others because of it, but that wasn’t what had him hiding in stalls and waiting until after school.

No, the things that kept him as clothed as possible whenever possible were his scars.

He didn’t think his classmates would be assholes about them. Hell, he doubted any of them would say anything at all, and if they did, it’d probably be out of concern rather than anything malicious — and wasn’t that an insane thought? — but Hitoshi didn’t even like thinking about his scars. If he had his way, he’d never have to think about himself — his body, scars, hair, eyes, anything he couldn’t control. The idea of others seeing him, though… his history and life painted upon his skin in scar tissue and protruding bones…

Some of the scars didn’t bother him as much, like the pocked and speckled ones from half a decade of scraping his knees, elbows, and forearms across concrete and rusted metal, running and climbing through the district. He had just as many from falling off his bike; one time, he’d even been hit by a car, and the scar turned out pretty bad for how minor a crash it’d been. A small section of his outer thigh at his knee had turned leathery, furrowed, and pebbled, several shades lighter than the rest of him from the low-grade road rash. He was proud of those sorts of scars, though, of trying things even when he failed and surviving when he really shouldn’t have. They were interesting stories, even if he was too afraid or too alone to tell them.

The others…

There was a burn in the small of his back from his second summer in the group homes — when one of the older kids aimed fireworks at Hitoshi, ‘just trying to scare him’ but ended up setting his shirt on fire instead — and cuts from broken, rusted fences he’d crawled through to escape, or been shoved into. He’d been thrown down onto concrete and asphalt, cornered in alleys, and slammed against walls or floors. The older the scar from those assholes was, the more it’d faded, but the rest? The ones Ms. Shibukawa had given him? Nothing he tried seemed to make them any less dark and gnarled. The gash down his forearm, and the burns, and the cuts and embedded shards of glass… No matter what he did, they sat there like glaring, ugly reminders of his failures.

Every scar, new or faded, stood out like a fucking neon sign against his skin, a biological condemnation of his abilities — a reminder of a time he couldn’t defend himself.

A time when he was too weak or cowardly or trusting.

Then there was the one on his neck… How the hell could he even explain that one? It was nearly the same color as the rest of him now — eight years of stretching and fading — and low enough that his shirt collars hid it when he wore his tie, but it was there. The location was so obvious, glaring with its intent. He still had a hard time even looking at it, even almost a decade later. If anybody asked about it…

The thought left his stomach so twisted up and sour he thought he might vomit, and he turned the water to cold to try and breathe through the nausea. By the time it finally passed, he was shivering, hair drenched and sticking to his neck and face, and his teeth were actually starting to chatter. He turned off the water and grabbed his towel, scrubbing at his skin probably harder than he needed to as he dried off. The heat and slight burn made it easier to refocus on anything but his body.

Hitoshi pulled his last clean pair of boxers on before holding his bag to his chest in a half-hearted attempt to cover himself as he made for the lockers. They weren’t secure enough for his backpack — he’d never risk leaving his life in there unsupervised, even with a lock — but it was good enough to hang up his uniform. Even then, it was only to keep it from getting wrinkled and dirty in his bag like everything else. Hitoshi went to an elite school; he couldn’t afford to look like a slob while representing UA. To look his best, he went through the trouble of ensuring his tie wasn’t twisted or folded when he hung it on the hanger, every crease was crisp and carefully aligned, and that his socks were tucked into his shoes — the whole nine yards.

Usually, Hitoshi even wore an undershirt to make sure he didn’t get his uniform sweaty just spending time in the sun — or to stay a little warmer in the winter — but since it stunk from an especially grueling training session, he left it off for once. His uniform was getting washed tomorrow, anyway, so even as he pulled it on — skin and hair still slightly damp — he didn’t mind so much. When he went to put his sweaty, dirty clothes in his bag, though, he hesitated. On top of everything else was the Capture Scarf, one section smeared with blood.

He smiled, dropping his clothes onto the bench to pull the weapon back out. Besides the blood and some dirt, it was otherwise just as pristinely white as when he’d gotten it, and he took it to the sink to try to rinse even that little away. He couldn’t exactly let it get as dirty as Eraser Head’s before he even learned how to use it, could he?

They hadn’t done much with it yet; he’d learned how to safely hold it ready between his fingers, how to throw and yank it back, and he’d managed to figure out how to curl it mid-air toward a target — without needing to be told, even! — though that was how he’d torn his hand open. It was a lot more unwieldy than he’d anticipated. Even just holding it taut hurt his hands, and the fabric went from stiff to flexible when he least expected it. He could see himself getting easily frustrated with it, but still, it was his, and he was learning how to use it from Eraser Head himself. Hitoshi wondered how it’d help him move through the construction sites and abandoned buildings he ran through — if he could learn to use it as fluidly as Aizawa did. The image of swinging through the ward, crossing gaps and barriers he couldn’t without it…

Hitoshi gently scrubbed the dirt and blood away with his thumbs, then held the sections under one of the hand-dryers until the entire thing was almost completely dry. He could only fold it up so small as he moved to put it and his dirty clothes into his bag.

Did Aizawa want it back, though? The thought stopped him in his tracks, scarf half-stuffed into his bag. It was probably dangerous to take home; it was a weapon, after all. He pulled the scarf back out, shaking it out across his other hand to keep it from touching the ground as he inspected it for any more stains. He even brought it back to the hand-dryer to make damn sure it wasn’t wet, and gave the mass of cloth a cautionary sniff to ensure nothing had transferred sweat stink to it.

When he was satisfied he wasn’t handing back his mentor’s property in an embarrassing state, Hitoshi packed his bag without it, filling both water bottles and trying to ignore the guilt that still curled deep in his stomach, cold and heavy as a stone.

He definitely needed a new bag, no matter how much he hated to admit it. There wasn’t much else he could safely leave at the apartment, and it was a little small compared to some of his classmates’… Maybe he had enough in his emergency fund to get something from a second-hand store tomorrow? It wasn’t the only thing that needed replacing, not by a long shot, and though he’d been saving up to get new shoes, maybe his bag was a bit more of a priority…

Sure, he’d tripped in front of Aizawa — which was embarrassing as all hell, something he’d be haunted by for probably forever — but… After briefly considering his worn-out shoes, the tape holding them together, the holes in the canvas, and the sections of heel that were nearly worn completely away, Hitoshi sighed. They could probably handle being patched at least one more time, but if his bag’s zipper broke or a seam tore too badly for his lackluster sewing abilities to repair, he’d be shit out of luck in the worst sort of way. He’d get a new backpack tomorrow. Besides, if his sneakers finally gave up the ghost, he still had his school shoes to fall back on, even if he loathed the idea of messing them up.

Aizawa was waiting for him when he finally emerged, head down as he typed away at his phone, and he only looked up when Hitoshi held the Capture Scarf out to him. “Hm?” He raised an eyebrow, not making any move to take it. Hitoshi faltered, fidgeting with the still slightly damp fabric. A moment passed, and Aizawa shifted his gaze to look at Hitoshi instead, his brow still raised.

“I thought…” Hitoshi trailed off, letting his hand drop. Was he really allowed to just take it? Did Aizawa really not want it back? He worried the stiff edge of the scarf between his fingers anxiously. “Wa-wait… really?” He couldn’t help how incredulous he sounded, and his cheeks lit up with heat at that damned stutter, made all the worse by Aizawa’s soft, amused snort.

A smile pulled at the corner of Aizawa’s mouth, even as he ducked to hide his expression and turned away. He did that a lot — hiding in his Capture Scarf. When Ms. Midnight had been harassing him, he’d practically burrowed into it as if he could just disappear into its coils. “Yeah, kid. As long as you aren’t stupid about it, you can take it home. Don’t try to scale any buildings or use it while doing your parkour — it’s still support equipment, and it’s illegal to use in public without a permit or license, but…” He rolled a shoulder in an easy shrug, tucking his phone into his pocket and shouldering his bag a little higher. “Practice holding it… Get used to its weight. Just be careful.”

Hitoshi stared at him, then down at the scarf in his hands, squeezing the stiff carbon fiber and alloy weave until it hurt his sore hands and he felt his muscles shake. Swallowing around the sudden lump in his throat and cursing at the burning in his eyes, he nodded and bowed. “Thank you, sir,” he murmured, voice a little thicker than he would have liked — choked by emotions he tried to push down, that he was usually so good at keeping in check, and yet today it felt like he’d nearly cried every few minutes — before he hastily put the scarf away with his school supplies. The zipper nearly didn’t move at all this time, and he cursed quietly as he pinched the edges together to get it to slide. Even then, it only did so in fits and starts.

Now he definitely needed a new bag,

When he finally got his bag zipped and on his back, Aizawa was giving him a funny look. This time, it was Hitoshi’s turn for proverbially raised hackles, and he squinted at his teacher. “What?”

“Your backpack is nearly as garbage as your old water bottle. How old is that thing?” As refreshing as Aizawa’s no-nonsense, point-blank way of speaking was, being called out so blatantly was beyond embarrassing.

Hitoshi huffed, looking away to hide how he blushed bright red, and all he could do was shrug. “A little over three years… I’m getting a new one this weekend,” he offered lamely, walking with his teacher toward the bike racks.

“So, before middle school?” Rather than answer, Hitoshi just gave a noncommittal hum, looking anywhere but at his mentor. He hoped the conversation was done — Aizawa certainly went quiet for a bit — but as they stopped so Hitoshi could put in his combination and stuff the lock into the only place in his bag with any space left, Aizawa spoke again. “You should really get new shoes, too, kid. Yours look older than your bag, and they probably don’t even fit. Your parents didn’t get you anything new for high school?” There wasn’t any outright judgment in Aizawa’s tone, though Hitoshi had a feeling his mentor wasn’t overly fond of his… ‘parents’. Mostly, he just sounded curious, maybe even worried. Hitoshi couldn’t help but subtly wince.

Ah, the awkward subject of his family. Hitoshi had tiptoed around the topic for so long that it was nearly second nature. Lying was easy at this point, or at least it usually was. He just didn’t like the idea of lying to Aizawa, even if it was only by omission. It made Hitoshi feel like he was betraying him somehow — like he was taking all the trust his mentor showed him and throwing it in the garbage. Like maybe he was acting like a Villain who used people rather than a Hero people were supposed to trust…

The truth was too complicated and uncomfortable, though. Living with a woman who didn’t really take care of him and wasn’t his mom because his real mom was dead, and who the hell knew who his father was… Working — illegally because of his age and worse, against UA’s code of conduct — to keep up with groceries and school supplies… Besides, this was just polite conversation. It wasn’t like Aizawa actually wanted to know the whole story. He was just… being a good teacher. Making conversation to pass the time.

“I didn’t need a new bag until now… and money’s always tight,” he said evasively, and that was at least the truth. It was only because of how many books and papers he had to carry now that his bag needed replacing. His middle school hadn’t been nearly as academically intensive as UA — he’d gotten through all three years with just a few composition notebooks and a few folders for paperwork. Now, he carried textbooks, several notebooks, the books for English extra credit, and Cementoss’ class, plus the second-hand textbooks he was borrowing for the Heroics classes he was studying for on his own time. Not to mention everything else he had to carry around…

At least he wasn’t bored in school anymore.

His shoes, on the other hand… Somehow, things just kept being more important than shoes.

Hitoshi got another hum for his trouble, and thankfully, the conversation moved on. They started the slow walk through the gates — some of the last to leave campus, as usual — and down the steep hill through the woods, making idle conversation as they went. Aizawa asked about Hitoshi’s day and his plans for tomorrow, and got bare-bones responses. Hitoshi asked how class 1-A was doing.

He listened to Aizawa vent and grumble about his class — about how he knew some of them had only started thinking about the written finals in the last few days, and Aizawa knew precisely who, too. And then there was the practical test they had to worry about. “They’ve probably asked around about what the finals for first term were last year and think it’ll be robots again…” he said.

Something about the tone of his voice had Hitoshi looking over at him, and the smile that split Aizawa’s face in half had chills running down Hitoshi’s spine. “Judging from your expression, I’m guessing it won’t be robots?” Sounded good to Hitoshi — he had a special hatred for the things since the entrance exams — but Aizawa’s expression just got even wider — more sinister.

“Nope. No robots.” The man didn’t elaborate.

‘Those poor bastards…’ Hitoshi thought unsympathetically, wanting to ask what his mentor had planned but knowing it wasn’t any of his business. He wasn’t in the Hero Course, after all. He’d have to wait until after finals were over to know, and that had a violent twist of jealousy kicking him in the chest. He hated it. He wished more than anything to be a part of those classes, to be learning Heroics alongside future Heroes rather than chasing their shadows.

But he wasn’t ready yet. He worried he never would be, crawling along behind as they ran ahead, but… Aizawa was helping. He had to believe that with Aizawa’s help, he’d get there.

So he didn’t ask what had Aizawa looking so damn pleased with himself, and the conversation moved on. Together, they walked to the little building down the street from the end of UA’s drive. It was a two-story building sitting at the crux between UA’s main feeder road and a side street, with an apartment over top of a retro-style tea shop. Kitschy decorations hung in every window and sat on every surface inside, and the decorations definitely belonged in the last century, but it was quaint. Small. It was probably Hitoshi’s favorite place Aizawa had taken him, even with its limited menu.

He’d never done anything in the areas around campus before, but now everyone at Cafe Chiyoko at least knew him by proxy. The young woman who usually worked the hostess counter always smiled and waved when they arrived, and just about everyone seemed to know at the very least his name. Not only at Chiyoko, either: the chef at the ramen place a few streets over always called out to him, and the waitresses at the yakiniku stand cooed and fussed over him any time they even wandered by. Hitoshi was very glad they didn’t go that way often, but Aizawa had warned him they saved up all their doting just for him, waiting for his return…

The idea made him shudder. It was always unnerving how friendly people could be in the wealthier neighborhoods, though they did have the advantage of not knowing his — however undeserved — reputation.

As Hitoshi rolled his bike to the far section of the patio, leaning it against the railing to sit at their usual table, Aizawa stepped into the shop itself to get menus and order their drinks. He’d be a minute, held up by the friendly hostess who had to have a Quirk related to pulling people into conversations — nobody else was quite as adept at it at any other place. With the man’s back turned, Hitoshi leaned to look around the awnings that shaded the patio, up at the open windows of the apartment, and he smiled wide when he spotted what he was looking for.

A fat calico cat was lying on one of the open window sills, basking in the late afternoon sun with her face tipped up and her eyes closed. Hitoshi trilled in his throat, letting the noise build into a cat-like chirrup he’d spent years perfecting with the strays in every ward, and after a moment, it got her attention. She looked around curiously and soon spotted him, blinking sleepily, before answering with her own soft noise.

Stretching languidly — complete with grasping, kneading paws outstretched — she stood and made her way down from her lordly perch. Her not-inconsiderable weight caused the awning to sag and stretch under her, straining its triple-reinforced seams. She hopped down as she reached the edge, padding over to rub against Hitoshi’s leg with a loud, rumbling purr — though it was a sound more akin to an old, ailing engine than that of a cat. The bell on her collar jingled noisily as she impatiently paced, waiting for him to sit so she could make herself comfortable in his lap.

The tag attached to her collar may have read ‘Chibi’, but there was nothing small about her. She had two extra toes on each massive paw and was much fatter than was healthy for her age and size, belly swinging with every step. Her coat was long and luxurious, as was her fluffy tail, and her whiskers stretched out far enough to drag the ground unless she held her head up imperiously high. She was the queen of the cafe, coming down to see her favorite customers and demanding affection at her leisure, with a personality as big and beautiful as she was.

When Hitoshi got to live on his own, he wanted a cat just like Chibi.

“I see our third has already arrived,” Aizawa snorted, placing the menus on the table and sliding into the bench opposite Hitoshi. He leaned his cheek on one fist as he watched them, face mostly expressionless but still somehow looking amused. Hitoshi chuckled, carefully skimming his palm along Chibi’s back and stopping to scratch her rump just above her tail. Her purring got louder as she pushed against his fingers, kneading his aching thigh with her massive front paws. “You know, I was her favorite before you came along.”

Hitoshi didn’t doubt it. He’d seen the way his mentor interacted with the strays they encountered while walking together. Aizawa had a way with cats, carefully drawing them closer with soft motions and even softer words. Even ones he hadn’t even looked at seemed to know they could trust him. He talked about taking Hitoshi to a cat cafe sooner or later — though Hitoshi desperately hoped it wasn’t the one he worked at. It was further away than Aizawa was usually willing to walk, so he might be safe…

More than once, Hitoshi had been tempted to show off his little trick — making near-perfect cat noises to get them to come closer, or at least to relax enough for him to approach — but he’d always lost his nerve at the last moment. He didn’t know how it’d be taken, and he didn’t know if he could take the dismissal of a talent he was sort of proud of, especially by someone he desperately wanted to impress.

It felt good to be chosen over his Hero teacher, though, even if it was just by Chibi. “Hmm, sucks to be you, huh, Eraser?” he drawled, giving Aizawa another one of those cocky, smug smiles everyone hated. “I’m the favorite customer now,” he teased, and Aizawa scoffed, rolling his eyes as he looked away. If he was upset to have lost Chibi’s favor and attention, he didn’t show it.

“The ‘new toy’, more like,” his teacher quipped, lips quirking up into a half-smirk as he watched Hitoshi out of the corner of his eye. Hitoshi laughed.

“Yeah, she’s a gold digger. Only wants me for the pets and bits of chicken, but I think I’m okay with that,” he admitted, stroking along Chibi’s head and back in long, slow passes. Her weight across his thighs was soothing, grounding him after all the work they’d done in training. Even her fur felt nice against his hands, despite all the friction burns.

Aizawa chuckled, shaking his head as he picked up his menu and held it up one-handed, still balancing his cheek against the other hand’s knuckles. It wasn’t like he needed the menu, though; he always ordered the same thing. It was probably for want of something to do with his hands while they waited, since Chibi had chosen Hitoshi.

Hitoshi had met Chibi the day they switched from three times a week to every weekday, after what Hitoshi had taken to calling the ‘incident’.

At the beginning of Hitoshi’s second week of training, Ms. Shibukawa had gotten hold of their rent money before Hitoshi could get it to management. The morning after, while Hitoshi was still scrambling to figure out what happened — though the new beer in the fridge and the party Ms. Shibukawa had thrown the night before were certainly clues — they’d gotten a note pushed under their front door: ‘Pay your rent or leave before the end of the week.’

Hitoshi had had to get an advance from the convenience store — a whole month of wages in exchange for giving the man 75% of his weekly wages from then on, rather than the 50% he paid to keep his secret — just to pay most of his rent. He’d used all of his emergency stash and had to sell most of his winter clothes just to make up the rest. He had no idea what he’d do when winter came along…

For the entire week afterward, while he waited for his next shift, Hitoshi had lived off free school lunches and spare change, like he had in middle school. But instead of going easy on his workout routine — which would have been the smart thing to do — he’d pretended everything was fine. And it was. Or… it had been. He’d managed just fine that whole week, scrounging for meager snacks and having sleep for dinner, stomach grumbling constantly but never loud enough for anyone to hear… until he missed lunch that friday, helping Iwamoto with research for a paper.

And for his trouble, it’d all fallen apart.

In the middle of the exercise fields, under the watchful eye of his mentor, Hitoshi had fainted. It’d only been for a few seconds, just long enough to fall flat on his face in the middle of warm-up laps, but it’d been more than enough to scare the hell out of them both. Aizawa had insisted on taking him to see Recovery Girl, no matter how Hitoshi insisted it was nothing — it was fine, he was fine, and he had been — but his teacher was worried about a concussion. When Hitoshi hadn’t been exactly forthcoming about why he’d collapsed, it’d stopped being a negotiation.

The look on the man’s face when the school nurse explained it was from low blood sugar and hunger? And then, when Aizawa heard how long it’d been since Hitoshi last ate — ‘lunch… yesterday’…

Hitoshi hadn’t been convinced his teacher wasn’t going to kill him with his glare alone. If he didn’t, Recovery Girl would…

They’d ended up sitting across from each other in their booth outside Cafe Chiyoko, Chibi wandering across their table as Aizawa grilled him — why he hadn’t been eating at home and why he’d ended up passing out because of it. Hitoshi had assumed he’d screwed everything up. That Shibukawa really had ruined his dreams like he’d always feared, but in the stupidest way possible. He’d been preparing himself for his mentor to drop him like a bad habit and cut his losses — who needed a kid who couldn’t even take care of himself? What kind of Hero couldn’t even do that much? Aizawa was always harping on him about getting enough sleep and eating healthy, and often, and then he’d gone and blown it.

He hadn’t even been able to appreciate Chibi’s affection, tears stinging his eyes as they threatened to fall while she curled up against his side. Even as he explained — sort of, anyway — about how money had gotten really tight, and they hadn’t been able to afford groceries for the week, he’d curled terrified fingers in Chibi’s fur, guilt and shame tearing him apart from the inside. He’d been prepared to beg Aizawa to keep up his training, to promise he’d do better, figure it out, be more careful — he’d have gotten on his hands and knees, forehead on the floor if he needed to, but he hadn’t.

Aizawa had just sighed, said he understood, and said he’d help: dinner after training, at the very least.

That day, Chibi had sat in Hitoshi’s lap as Aizawa ordered for them both, purring quietly and rubbing against his hand like she was trying to comfort him. She’d kept secret the way he shook and how his breathing hitched in his chest — how shock and relief had left him heartbroken and near tears for completely new reasons.

The following Monday, Aizawa announced they’d train every weekday instead of three times a week — ‘To accelerate your improvement and give us more time for more varied training’ — and handed Hitoshi an adjusted meal plan — ‘For when money gets tight… You won’t advance as quickly on it, but you won’t pass out. If you follow it. If you can’t afford anything for this, tell me.’

Hitoshi still didn’t know what he’d done to deserve somebody like Aizawa in his life. He wondered why everyone talked about the man like he was some devil incarnate — a monster of a teacher you should avoid like the plague and hope you didn’t have for a single class, somebody to fear. Either Aizawa treated Hitoshi very differently, or people really didn’t understand the man, and Hitoshi seriously doubted the former. The humiliation of being a charity case still had him squirming, but just like with the gifts, it was hard to tell his mentor no. He hadn’t deserved the second chance to prove himself — hell, Hitoshi was pretty sure he hadn’t deserved the first one — but he’d taken the opportunity with both hands and applied for the job at the cat cafe that afternoon. He wasn’t going to have to tell Aizawa he couldn’t even afford the cheapest meal plan the man could think of. He wasn’t.

Michiko, the owner of the shop — and Chibi’s mom — was always the waitress who took care of them, and she came over with their drinks after only a few minutes of waiting: a cup of coffee and a glass of orange juice. Hitoshi wished it were two cups of coffee, but after downing four cups while neither she nor Aizawa had been paying attention, she’d put the Juice Rule in place: if Hitoshi wanted coffee, he had to finish a glass of juice first.

It was idiotic; he wasn’t a little kid. He could drink as much coffee as he wanted, but… it was Michiko’s cafe.

“How are you two doing? I was worried when I didn’t see you two pass by yesterday,” Michiko cooed, reaching down to rub behind Chibi’s ears after she’d put down their drinks. Hitoshi bowed his head in greeting, dropping his hands away to let her dole out affection to the fat cat in his lap unimpeded. “Little Chibi here was worried, too, weren’t you, pretty girl? Missed her favorite Hero-in-training!” she grinned, nudging her hip against Hitoshi’s shoulder affectionately.

Hitoshi felt his face and ears redden, and he scratched the back of his neck with an awkward chuckle as he ducked away from the praise. Michiko didn’t know much about him — she hadn’t even watched the Sports Festival, saying it was far too much excitement for her heart to handle — but she knew Hitoshi went to UA and that Eraser Head was training him. That was all she needed to assume he was a Hero student. She didn’t even know his Quirk!

It’d been four weeks, and Aizawa still hadn’t corrected her, and it’d definitely been too long for Hitoshi to try and do so himself. Besides, it was something to aspire to: to be the Hero Michiko thought he would be.

Aizawa hummed, watching Hitoshi for a moment before turning his attention to Michiko. She was probably a little older than Hitoshi’s mentor, with dark hair barely long enough to stay back in her messy, short ponytail and warm eyes that were so dark they were nearly black. She was almost always smiling, showing off crater-like dimples in both cheeks, the crows’ feet that creased the corners of her eyes, and the laughter lines around her mouth.

Twice now, as Aizawa and Hitoshi left, Michiko had pulled Hitoshi into a hug so tight he’d felt the bones in his back pop. Then, she’d tried to do the same to Aizawa, and both times she’d been fended off until he relented to a one-armed hug across her shoulders, her arms around his waist — she only came up to Hitoshi’s shoulders when they both stood straight. When she lifted Aizawa right up off his feet with her hugs, the Hero always looked like someone had yanked the rug from under him.

Hitoshi couldn’t remember the last time someone had hugged him before her and felt profoundly pathetic for it. He felt even more so for looking forward to the next one.

More than he liked, he found himself comparing Michiko to Ms. Shibukawa, even though the two couldn’t have been more different, even if they were separate species. Where Ms. Shibukawa was spindly and violent, afraid of Hitoshi without him having to do a thing, and prone to screaming fits, Michiko was plump and friendly, full of laughter and affectionate teasing that even got a laugh out of Aizawa sometimes. She was bright and boisterous and so full of life, while Shibukawa was… not. Hitoshi couldn’t remember a time Ms. Shibukawa had smiled or laughed without her being on something, and she moved through life like a ghost while Michiko seemed to enjoy every second.

“I had a staff meeting yesterday, so we postponed training,” Aizawa explained, handing over his menu. She nodded sagely, tucking it into her apron pocket and taking Hitoshi’s when it was offered. She caught his eye with a mischievous sparkle, hiding her smile behind the edge of his menu. When Aizawa spoke again to order, “Coffee jelly, no whipped cream,” she said it right along with him, giggling like a schoolgirl when she got his cadence and tone just right, their voices synced.

Hitoshi ducked his head to hide his own shy smile and huff of a laugh.

“You know, someday you’re going to have to order actual food from us, Eraser Head,” she teased, motioning at him with Hitoshi’s menu. “I know our coffee jelly is good, but you’re setting a bad example! What about you, Shinsou, dear? What can I get you?”

It wasn’t like Hitoshi was any better. Sure, he ate actual food rather than just getting the one dessert Aizawa always defaulted to, but there were only two things he ever ordered at Chiyoko: their omurice, which wasn’t objectively better than Lunch Rush’s, but he definitely liked it more, or… “Oyakodon, please,” he murmured, still shy even after a month.

She seemed pleased anyway, motioning at him as she turned her attention back to Aizawa. “See? Real food! Chicken, egg, rice, onions — everything a growing Hero needs!” She used Hitoshi’s menu to slap Aizawa’s shoulder with every listed ingredient, the laminated paper warbling with the motion, only to have the offending thing waved off with a put-upon huff. “No wonder you’re still stick-thin; meanwhile, Shinsou here is growing big and strong! Soon, he’ll be bigger than you; then you’ll see!”

Michiko gave the Hero one more playful smack, dodging when Aizawa played at snatching the menu out of her hand, and giggling as she turned away. She gave Hitoshi a conspiratorial wink as she practically skipped back inside. Even Aizawa looked amused by her antics, turning to watch her take their orders back to the kitchen, and Hitoshi could only shake his head, looking down at Chibi where she was still sprawled across his lap.

Now that Michiko’s larger-than-life presence was gone, he felt like he could finally relax again. He liked her — a lot, actually, in a way that reminded him achingly of a woman who hadn’t been anything like her, but how he hoped, maybe, she could have been if things had been different — but he didn’t really know how to act around her. She was so much all at once, smiles and laughter and affection at every turn, everything Hitoshi wasn’t used to. It was exactly the same feeling as when he was with his classmates…

Offhandedly, he wondered if they’d ever want to go out to eat together… Maybe for their after-the-semester outing? He could suggest Cafe Chiyoko, though they’d probably fill every seat, both inside and out…

Time passed lazily in their corner of the patio, clouds drifting overhead to collect in the east as the sun slowly set to the west. Another patron arrived, a man with dark hair and a coat that was too heavy for the warm weather, walking with a limp, but he didn’t bother Hitoshi or his mentor, moving to sit inside where there was air conditioning. The bell over the door jingled softly as he passed, the sound mingling with the gentle rustle of wind through the trees.

The quiet of the afternoon, turning slowly to evening as the sun edged down past the tops of buildings, was comfortable. Hitoshi found himself utterly relaxed as they waited for their food, Chibi purring loudly in his lap as he loved on her.

After a long time, Aizawa finally spoke, “Something on your mind?”

Hitoshi hummed as he looked up at him, head cocked to the side as he scratched delicately along Chibi’s cheeks. He blinked slowly, considering. “Why?” His voice was soft, as if speaking any louder would disturb the peace they’d found themselves in.

“Curiosity,” Aizawa hummed, shrugging as he watched Hitoshi with an expression Hitoshi could have mistaken for fond.

He gave it some thought, looking down at Chibi in his lap and his overfull backpack between his feet. He thought about his new water bottle — about Aizawa’s husband spending money he didn’t have to on a kid he didn’t even know — and of his classmates wanting to invite him for an outing after the term ended — when they could be rid of him until the end of summer vacation. He thought about his mentor trusting him with the Capture Scarf and the way it got easier to exist every day he got closer to his goal.

Hitoshi smiled and cocked his head to the other side as he gently thumbed at Chibi’s nametag. The day had been amazing. Training had been intense and painful, but he’d learned so much. School had been fine, enjoyable even, and he was pleasantly exhausted. Heck, he’d even slept the night before, even if it was bent over his desk, and eaten a good breakfast. Two full meals down, one on the way, a full night’s rest behind him, easy friendship and hard training… It’d been as close to a perfect day as Hitoshi could imagine. The capture scarf in his backpack — his, for him to train with to become a Hero — had been icing on an already iced cake, and still had him on cloud nine.

“I’m happy,” he finally decided, and he was. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been able to truthfully say that — the last time his life had been this good. He wasn’t sure it ever had been.

A few moments passed before Aizawa spoke again, voice so soft the wind nearly carried the words away. “Good.” It sounded like he was smiling, his voice warm and maybe affectionate.

Hitoshi didn’t look up to check, instead watching Cihbi stretch and purr in the afternoon sun.