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Chapter Text

For some reason, it was always dark and grim in this part of Tokyo. Dirt and trash littered the street, only rarely a bird was heard screeching over the city and not even trees or flowers seemed to want to grow. Of course, there were a few trees in the front yards of the houses seaming along the street, but only a few of them wore leaves and even fewer even bore fruit. A few lone flowers peaked from behind mostly broken or moldy wooden fences. No matter how the weather was, how much sunlight was filling the streets, or which nice breeze was rolling over the city, it always brought a feeling of gloominess to anyone who visited this neighbourhood.

That day, the sun was out on a warm spring day, having already melted the last of the snow and now spending some first warm sunrays. In one of the desolated front yards a small boy of no more than three years, Aizawa Shouta, was playing with a yellow and green ball. His hair was short, black and wavy, and he was wearing a dark grey shirt and small black sweat pants with a hole at the knee. The clothes seemed well-worn but not more dirty than those of any small boy in the middle of playing outside.

He was laughing happily as he nudged the ball over the mostly brown grass and clapped his hands in glee when it bumped into the unsteady fence that separated their yard from the neighbour’s. Then he picked it up again only to throw it in front of him, so he could continue his game of chasing the ball over the grass.

It was a rare spot of colour and joy in these bleak surroundings that not even sunshine could brighten, but for this little boy the world was okay in that very moment. He followed the ball through the yard, kicked it against the fence again, against the weak tree – which lead it to lose one of its last leaves - and even tripped over a rock in the process, which lead him to dive into the dirt with his face, but he still laughed heartily as he wiped off the mud and continued to chase after the ball.

All the while, a man sat in a white plastic chair near the shabby house the yard belonged to and watched the boy playing joyfully. His black unkempt hair was tied to a bun and he sported a full beard, in his hands was a newspaper and next to the chair on the floor was a half-full bottle of beer next to two empty ones. His name was Aizawa Kenma and he was Shouta’s father. From what the neighbours could see, he was a caring father for his son who worked as an author at a small publisher from home since his wife died two years ago. Her death devastated him, and he searched relief in alcohol, but thanks to his son, he was able to reduce the consummation to a more or less reasonable extent.

When the boy fell, the man quickly put the newspaper aside, but soon relaxed again when the boy got up and laughed after wiping off the dirt from his face. There was a gentle smile on the Kenma’s face as he watched the boy running through the yard again with his now dirty clothes, and it didn’t leave his face when he opened his newspaper again to resume reading.

It did leave his face, however, when his neighbours, the Sakazukis, walked past his property. The couple was never the likable one, they were constantly yelling to each other in displeasure, annoyed by anything and everything and they made sure to make everyone aware of their current disfavor. He avoided them as best as he could, but they had the ability to show up right at the worst moment, which proved to be now.

The fence in front of the yard was a wire fence which didn’t hold up well anymore. The fence posts dug into the ground only loosely due to the weathering over the years, which made the fence very unstable. The boy kicked the ball against one of the posts, which caused it to fall over onto the street.

Of course, it had to happen right when the neighbours were walking by, not arguing for once but actually walking in silence next to each other. The fence crashed onto the street with a loud metallic bang, which made the woman jump out of her skin with a screech.

The boy immediately froze upon seeing the fence tip over and as soon as the woman cried out in shock, he broke out of his rigidity and ducked back to the house to his father. Kenma immediately jumped out of his chair upon the sound of the fence and the screech, and despite the beers he apparently had drunken before, he processed quickly what happened.

“AIZAWA!”, Sakazuki yelled from the street, hands balled to fists and the anger visibly rising to his face as it gets redder and redder. “Teach your fucking idiot of son some manners! He just attacked my wife!”

The boy hid behind his father, his small hands dug into the old fabric of his father’s pants as he tried to hide from the sights of the neighbours. His father put his hand protectively on the boy’s head.

“Shouta was just playing ball”, the father tried to explain calmly. “He didn’t shoot the fence on purpose, it just happened. You know how children are.” There was no use in arguing with these people, he knew that, and that’s why he tried the friendly approach. He tried to give them a sympathetic smile but was only met with anger.

The neighbour’s wife had her mouth in a deep frown and her hand on her chest as if to calm herself from the shock, but it was obvious that it was just for show. The sound of the fence might have startled her, that much was probably true, but it fell about two meters away from where they were walking, so there was no way it could have hit her. Also, it was obvious that this three-year-old boy was in no way intending to make the fence tip over. He is way too young, he doesn’t even have the necessary understanding to know that the fence would tilt when it’s hit with enough force.

“Your goddamn runt hit the fence right when we were walking by! Of course, he was doing it on purpose, how dumb do you think I am?!”, Sakazuki gave back maliciously. His wife nodded in agreement.

Kenma sighed in frustration but tried to keep the smile on. “Look, I see you’re upset-”, he tried to reason, but was interrupted by the other man again.

“Don’t give me that stupid talk”, he spat. “You quirkless people are like a spreading disease, doing nothing for our society and just freeload on other people’s tax money! Make sure your failure of a quirkless son stays the hell away from us, or so God help me.”

“That’s not true! Quirkless people aren’t useless and my son will develop a quirk”, Kenma replied, his mouth in a tight line.

“Oh really?”, Sakazuki said with a taunting grin. “Your wife was a quirkless whore who never did anything for our hardworking society. She was just in bed the whole day not lifting a single finger! Do you think we didn’t notice that freeloader? And you’re just the same as her, no quirk and only drinking beer the whole day. No matter you stayed with that fake bitch.”

Kenma clenched his teeth and hid his son even more from his neighbour’s sight as if this would make Sakazuki’s words inaudible for the boy to hear. “She was terminally ill, she couldn’t leave the bed for days. You know that she-“, Kenma tried to reason, but was cut off once again by the neighbour.

“She was quirkless and that is the main reason why she didn’t contribute to our country! Quirkless people are the worst, they’re the scum of the scum and your son is on the best way to follow her down that path!”, he shouted, his wife still backing him up. She was now standing closer to him, wearing a superior grin while he ranted.

Kenma balled his fists and took a deep breath to fight the rising anger in his chest. It wasn’t reasonable to fight against these people, they wouldn’t give up and there were even rumours that they became physically violent sometimes, he knew that. He was just so tired of hearing people badmouthing his late wife, especially with his son around.

It was true that she was quirkless and didn’t go to work, but those two things didn’t correlate – quirkless people could work just as fine as people with quirks could, he knew that and everyone else did too. The real reason was, that his wife was terminally ill from cancer, which was diagnosed too late. The doctors realized her state only because she barely made it through Shouta’s birth three years ago. She died a year later in her sleep on their couch inside the house, but with a smile on her face. Yet, she left exactly these people behind – a husband, and a one year old son who held little to no memory of her. He was simply too young.

Kenma was angry about this man on the street who dared to insult his family because of an accident a little boy was at fault for and which didn’t hurt anyone. Yet, he knew that fighting didn’t make it better, especially with his son involved. So he took another deep breath and opted for the easiest way. “I will make sure he won’t bother you again”, he pressed out, but it was obvious on his tone and the glint in his eyes, that he wasn’t agreeing to what the man said about quirkless people and especially about his wife.

It seemed to satisfy the neighbours though, because the man nodded upon his answer and after a last angry glance at the boy, who ducked behind his father’s legs when he noticed, he and his wife continued their way down the street to their house.

For a moment, Kenma continued to stand on his shabby veranda and watched the neighbours vanish around the corner. It wasn’t until Shouta pulled on his pants, looking up to him with big black eyes. He didn’t let go of his father’s pants but stepped out from his shadow because the danger was gone now.

“Daddy, why do they say such things?”, he asked innocently. He couldn’t really remember his mother, but his father always told him that she was a very gentle and loving woman who spent all her energy on caring for her son, and that is why Shouta didn’t understand how anyone could talk so badly about her. “Mommy was a good person, right?”

His father cracked a small smile and crouched down to be the same height as Shouta. “Yes, Shouta. She was the best woman on the whole earth”, he reassured him and Shouta’s face lit up. But right after he frowned again, bringing little creases on his young face as he thought.

“But why did Sakazuki-san say that she didn’t do anything?”, he asked, a finger rasied to his chin in thoughts. It didn’t make sense to the boy why the neighbour was so hostile towards his deceased mother.

His father sighed. “She was terribly sick and that is the reason why she didn’t go to work. Not because she didn’t have a quirk. Quirklessness isn’t something bad.”

Shouta nodded upon his father’s explanation. “But why did he say that you are quirkless? You have a quirk, right? And I will have one too, right??”, he asked, growing more excited with every word.

Kenma chuckled upon the excitement and put a hand on his son’s head, ruffling his hair as he smiled at him. “Yes, my dear, I have a quirk and you will too. And within the next year you’ll get your very own one.”

Now the genuine smile from ear to ear was back on Shouta’s face. He beamed at his father and soon went off to pick up his ball again to play.

His father meanwhile went to pull the fence off the street and leaned it against a side of their house. It wouldn’t be in the way there until he was able to put it up again. Until then it could just lean there. As he wiped the sweat off his forehead, Kenma looked over to his son and couldn’t keep the smile off his face. It was true, to outsiders it might seem that he didn’t have a quirk. This would indeed increase the chances that his son wouldn’t possess a quirk either, with both of his parents being quirkless. Yet, Kenma did have one, he just kept it to himself. It was a useless quirk, not suitable for anything noteworthy and he used to get bullied for it a lot when he was younger. With his quirk, he can cancel a person’s basic needs - when he touches a person, they forget that they need to eat, go to the toilet or sleep, but as soon as he breaks the contact, the feeling comes back. Therefore, he never uses it, he just never saw the need for something like that.

A sigh escaped his throat, as he sat down again and picked up his opened bottle of beer, which he drowned in just a few gulps.

Now, however, he was glad he possessed this quirk, because it increased the chances of his son being a quirk-user and being able to avoid this injustice some persons showed towards quirkless people.

Chapter Text

Shouta was four and a half when he developed his quirk. It wasn’t anything special, but it scared the little boy a lot when it first activated.

It was in the middle of the night when Shouta got up from bed to go to the toilet and walked past the mirror in the hallway on the way back to his room. Right in that moment Shouta saw a shadow hush past the window that was visible in the mirror and startled him to death, suddenly making his eyes glow red and his hair lift up. He let out a strangled cry as he fell to the floor and slid against the wall across the mirror in terror.

Upon Shouta’s yell, his father bolted out of his room and turned on the lights, finding his son cowering against the wall with tears streaming down his cheeks. He scooped him up in his arms and calmed him as best as he could, and when Shouta had collected himself enough to explain what happened, his father bursted in happy laughter.

“Do you know what that means, Shouta-chan?”, he asked as he brushed through his son’s hair, who looked at him with wide and bleary eyes. “It means you just got your quirk! Isn’t that great?”

And suddenly the shock was completely forgotten, replaced by pure happiness.

It took a while for them to find out what Shouta’s quirk exactly did though. Since his father never used his and there was rarely anyone else around, it was hard to find out that he could actually cancel quirks by looking at people.

They found out when Shouta was out in the yard once again and the old nice lady from across the street walked by with her groceries. Shouta greeted her politely as she walked by and she gave him a warm smile as an answer. Her quirk enabled her to make things out of wood float at will, which is why she always transported her groceries a wooden box that was floating in front of her as she walked.

Shouta looked past her for a moment and was just about to go back to the mud cakes he was making, when suddenly the neighbour’s dog began barking and startled Shouta. He was scared of dogs, and this one in particular because it tried to bite him when he was smaller, which made him dislike dogs a lot.

Due to the startle, he unintentionally activated his quirk again, just like at night the other day, and by that he disabled the old lady’s quirk on accident. Her groceries fell to the pavement and in the dirt, leaving the wooden boxes broken from the impact on the floor.

His father Kenma was right at his side when the boxes fell, mostly because of the dog’s bark – he knew his son was scared of them after all – and he didn’t take long to process that the falling of the boxes and his son’s quirk activation were somehow related.

“Just a moment, Haneko-san”, Kenma spoke up to the old lady who was stunned by what happened. She didn’t comprehend why her boxes suddenly fell to the floor, because it worked the last 60 years just perfectly, so why would they fall now? “We will of course help you carry your groceries to your house, right, Shouta?”

Shouta looked up to his father in confusion, but when he saw the happy smile, he couldn’t help but return it. When his father was happy, he was too. He wiped off the tears and jumped to his feet to pick up the stuff that was on the floor. “Yes!”, he exclaimed as he picked up a few cans and a big loaf of bread. His father chuckled and took the bread from him because there was no way little Shouta could carry all of it alone.

“Oh dear, that is very sweet of you”, Haneko said in gratitude. “I really don’t know why this happened just now and I’m very sorry to have to bother you about this.”

“Not at all”, Kenma waved off as he picked up the rest. It wasn’t that much and since Haneko’s house was just across the street, it wasn’t hard to carry it all over. “It was our fault after all. I have to apologize on behalf of my son, his quirk has just manifested and he isn’t in full control over it yet.”

Shouta quickly turned his head around as his father spoke. Quirk? His quirk just did something? “Daddy, what does my quirk do? Did it make the food fall to the floor?”, he sounded a bit terrified of that thought, because that sounded very bad to him. He got taught that food can’t be thrown to the floor just like that after all.

“We have to find out, Shouta”, his father explained as he waited for Haneko to get out her keys for the house. “But I think you can disable quirks.”

Shouta looked at him with wide eyes as if he didn’t really comprehend. He almost let a can of beans slip as he started at his father, but managed to catch it in time and tightened his grip around the few groceries he was tasked to carry now.

“Disabling quirk seems very villainous to me”, Haneko laughed as she finally managed to open the door. “But the little one here wouldn’t do anything to anyone, am I right?”

She let both of them in and have them set all groceries on the shelf in the hall. Then she gave Shouta a kind smile as she always did. “After all, he did something very heroic today by helping me carry my vegetables, right?”

And Shouta beamed at her again. When he watched TV there was sometimes a series about heroes which he enjoyed a lot. He was always fascinated by them, but he never considered to become one himself. But having the old lady tell him, that his acts today were very heroic, set something off in that young brain of his.

“Daddy, I wanna become a hero!”, he said enthusiastically with his balled fists in front of his chest. “I wanna help people like Haneko-san!”

And the adults laughed, his father ruffled his hair and the old lady told him once again that he could do it. She even gave him a piece of chocolate as a thank for his heroic work today, for helping her carry her groceries home.

Yet, Haneko’s initial remark about his quirk seemed to prove as a permanent stigma to the boy, even though she didn’t mean it like that in the end.

Only a month later when the whole neighbourhood got news of Shouta’s newly manifested quirk, people started gossiping. And gossip usually ends in badmouthing a person, especially in grim regions like this.

“Your son will become a villain with that quirk”, was one of the sentences Kenma got to hear during shopping for groceries quite a few times. “He will make our streets even more unsafe than they already are! You should have him wear a blindfold, so he can’t use that creepy look of his!”

Whenever Kenma tried to defend his son, he just met deaf ears. No one wants to hear his arguments how the quirk of his son could save lives by cancelling a villain’s quirk. How he could use it for good deeds, for example to disable dangerous self-destructive quirks. No, the people who accused his son of villainy while he is not even five years old yet, only saw the quirk as a potential threat for heroes.

So, Kenma did everything he could to keep up Shouta’s enthusiasm. There was no way a little child could use their quirk for malicious things, after all.

It wasn’t until five months later that made Kenma reconsider. He lost his job as an author at his publisher because they went bankrupt, making him and his son running very short on money. It was hard to come by at the moment, and he fell back into his old behavior after his wife’s death. He began to drink more alcohol again and since he didn’t need to write anymore, he was sitting outside the house almost the whole day, trying to shut away his thoughts. None of his applications at different publishers bore fruit, mostly because of his son who prevented him from working away from home. Kenma couldn’t pay for a daycare and Shouta was still too young to go to school.

But no matter what, it didn’t stop him caring for his son though. He still supported his fascination for heroes as before, because to him Shouta was the most important person in life.

In their district it was rare that a hero came through. It was like a forgotten part of the city, where the crime rate was high and a lot of robberies and violence happened, lots of the inhabitants were alcoholics or addicted to gambling – or both. The more sensational it was, when a hero’s patrol brought them here. That day was one of those.

The hero on patrol was a rookie who became popular very quickly within the last two years. His hero pseudonym was Expanse and his quirk allowed him to stretch his limbs at will, which enabled him to climb up and down anywhere quickly. To the inhabitants it was obvious that he wanted to gain even more popularity and hence extended his patrols to this part of the city, where no one else ever bothered.

Most of the inhabitants weren’t impressed by his performance of holding onto street lamps and swinging from one to the other, but for small children’s eyes it was the most amazing thing they have ever seen. Shouta’s eyes sparkled and he ran out to the front yard when he saw the hero swing by.

“Daddy! Daddy, look!!”, he shouted in awe as Expanse swung by right in front of their property.

Kenma smiled at his son and nodded. He was currently drinking a bottle of beer, the fifth already today, as he joined Shouta at the border of the grass patch.

“Look how he can use his quirk!”, Shouta was clearly stunned by the performance of the hero. Expanse now sat on a street post and looked around on the hunt for a villain. For any person with only a bit of common sense, it was obvious that there was no villain nearby with that flashy performance he was holding, but it seemed to be just a PR-thing anyway, so nobody cared in the first place.

But for Shouta it was the real deal. The closest he ever was to a real hero.

“Daddy, I wanna show him my quirk! I wanna tell him that I want to become a hero too!”, he insisted again and pointed at the hero in the air. Before his father could even say something, Shouta began running towards the street to have a better look at the hero. Kenma wanted to run after him, but due to the alcohol intake, he swayed a bit and had to take it a bit slower. Nonetheless, he hurried after his son.

“Hero-san!”, the boy shouted. “Hero-san, I wanna become a hero too! I have a really cool quirk!”

And for a moment, Shouta’s heart stopped because the hero really turned around to him and even responded to him! Expanse wore a big grin pointed both of his thumbs up. “That’s great, kiddo! You can do it!”

It took a moment until Shouta found his words again, he was beaming like the sun at Expanse now. “I can show you!”, he said enthusiastically.

And just when Expanse grabbed for the next lamp and swung high into the air to grab the next lamp, probably in order to land right in front of the boy who just spoke to him, that very boy activated his quirk. Suddenly, the stretchy arm shrunk again to the normal length and there was no way Expanse could reach the next lamp.

It was too high up to get away unscathed but too low to be able to turn around for a proper landing. Expanse fell and landed on the sidewalk with his back, the kerbstone digging into his lower back.

Shouta released his quirk immediately in shock. It was right then when his father had reached him and pulled him behind him. The neighbours who stood by or had pulled aside their curtains to look, also stretched their necks to be able to see more, just like the attention-seekers they all were. Of course, this was just what they were waiting for. Something they could use as a justification for Shouta’s villainous quirk.

Some of the bystanders were close already and tried to help Expanse up, but he just bellowed at them to leave him and call the ambulance and his agency instead. There were also scraps of conversation about not feeling his legs, which made Kenma’s blood run cold, but he just hoped that it was just his imagination to have heard such things. Instead he apologized to Expanse, shielding the trembling Shouta from the malicious glances of the other people

Only a few days later they got a letter. It was from the agency of Expanse, an invitation to a court date. Apparently the phrase Kenma caught proved to be true and the fall really did paralyze the expansion hero permanently, according to what was written in this letter.

For a few moments, Kenma just sat at the cluttered kitchen table, full of papers, job advertisements and unfinished application forms. The letter was in front of him, next to it a bottle of whiskey and a glass that was already half empty. His face was buried in his hands as he was thinking about what to do now. It wasn’t on purpose, it was an accident. Shouta did not intend to sabotage the hero. It was done by a child who didn’t have full control over his quirk yet. He was just excited to speak to an actual hero, just as every other child with a fascination for heroes would be. He just happened to have an unfortunate quirk and activated it at the wrong time, because he wanted to show it to a pro. He was only five, he didn’t know about right or wrong yet, and neither did he understand the concept of possibly severe consequences because of something he did.

Kenma laid his head on the table and closed his eyes, the whiskey still sitting on the table, ready to get drunk. He hated to think like this, but maybe his neighbours had been right to some extent all along. Shouta’s quirk could be dangerous and needed to be kept in control. Of course, he could as well use it on villains and knock one out like that, but he had just recently proven that it worked perfectly on heroes as well, even if unintentionally.

He grabbed the glass and drowned it in one go. He had to make a decision and the only one he could think about now, was the obvious one. “Shouta”, he called his son who he heard tapping over from the living room right after.

“What is it, daddy?”, he asked innocently when he appeard in the door frame, in his hands a worn-out hero action figure and a kitchen rack in the other. Apparently he had been playing hero again. For him, the happenings a few days ago left a mark and he was very aware of his fault at the whole thing, but he didn’t comprehend that it would have consequences. He was terribly sorry, as much as a five year old could be, and he wanted to apologize to Expanse, he made that clear several times during the last few days, but other than that he didn’t know what he had actually done.

His father looked at him “I want you to stop using your quirk in public”, he said and it was a tone Shouta was not used to. It was an ordering tone, there was a demanding edge in it, unlike the usually kind and gentle one his father used when he wanted something.

“But daddy, wh-“, Shouta began, but got cut off by his father.

“The hero from the other day will never be able to walk again because of it”, Kenma said a bit louder and Shotua flinched upon this statement, watching his father with wide eyes. Expanse would never be able to walk again because of something he did? But he just wanted to show how cool he could be! How can it be bad to use the quirk?

“But …”, Shouta tried again, and Kenma shook his head.

“No, Shouta”, he said. “You made a mistake and we have to live with it now. It can very well be, that they put you in a reformatory because of a dangerous quirk, or even worse, put you in foster care to learn some discipline.”

Shouta’s eyes widened even further upon what his father said. He opened his mouth but couldn’t find any words at first. He couldn’t completely comprehend what it meant, but foster care meant that he had to leave home, had to leave his father, right? “No! I don’t want that!”, he shouted.

“That’s why you mustn’t use your quirk again. It’s true, it can be used for good, but …”, his father sighed as he looked to the side, unable to look his son into the eye. After all, he was the one who encouraged him to develop the dream of a hero in the first place, who helped him maintain the enthusiasm and courage to follow his dream. “… it can also used for bad things as well, and that is why people call it the quirk of a villain.”

Shouta bit his lower lip as his father spoke, his eyes glassy, and when his father came to a close and basically called his son a villain, Shouta’s tears bursted and he took a few steps back, only to run to his room upstairs a few moments after.

Kenma looked at the now empty doorframe for a moment, biting at his lower lip just like his son did before. “DAMNIT”, he yelled and smashed his fist into the table, making the glass and the bottle clank and a few sheets fall to the floor. It broke Kenma’s heart to see his son like this. It was exactly that thing he never wanted, to break his son’s dream. Yet, he didn’t know a different way out of this, and so he took a large gulp directly from the whiskey bottle to numb his nerves and to silence his thoughts.

The court hearing went by and nothing like the predicted consequences happened. The judge deemed Shouta to be a reasonable boy who was indeed not able to control his quirk that well yet, and who also didn’t understand the concept of villainy due to his young age. Hence, he didn’t assign him to a reformatory or to foster care for discipline but let him live with his father just like before.

However, Expanse’s advocate managed to enforce a large sum of money because of his gained disability from the accident, which exceeded Kenma’s income by far, especially now that he lives off unemployment benefits alone. Additionally, Expanse’s former agency claimed compensation for their hero’s early retirement, because they lose a lot of money due to the loss of their flagship hero.

It was a much larger amount of money than Kenma would be able to pay even if he was still working as an author, and now that he was even jobless, there was no way he could get out of this without taking out a loan. A loan which he could never pay back within the next few years, even if he found a job quickly again.

This evening was the first time where Kenma hit Shouta. He did it out of frustration because of their situation, leaving a red mark on Shouta’s cheek where he hit him hard.

“You will never be a hero, Shouta! You can only be a villain”, he yelled at him, lunging out for another hit.

It was only Shouta’s tears and his pleas that he was sorry – despite the fact that he didn’t even know what he was sorry for, but he must have done something bad, since his father was mad at him, right? – which made Kenma relent and realize what he just did.

He pulled Shouta in a tight embrace, tears now also running down on his face, and they sat on the kitchen floor crying into the night, both of them muttering “I’m sorry” over and over again.

Chapter Text

Shouta was four and a half when he made the decision to become a hero. Nothing could waver his determination. Not the charges pressed against his family due to the accident he was responsible for, involving Expanse and his permanent paralysis due to his fall. Also not the constant discouraging words coming from his neighbours and classmates at school who just kept telling him that his quirk is only suitable for a villain. And also not the suddenly changed behaviour of his father.

Ever since the accident with Expanse, Aizawa Kenma started to drink excessively again. It was even worse than right after his wife’s death, his mood swings were unpredictable and most importantly, they involved Shouta on a regular basis by now.

Shouta was now 15 years old and his determination to become a hero was stronger than ever. Coming from a neighbourhood like his, he wanted to spend his energy on securing less wealthy areas, where not many heroes come to. He believed, if he made it as a hero, he would be able to make his father proud of him again since he called him a failure almost every day by now.

He had trained hard to come this far, he trained his body every day with strength and agility exercises, excelled in all his classes – except foreign languages, but who needs English or any other language anyway when they don’t intend to leave their city? – and possessed a certain level of wits and logic, which can come in handy during strategy planning. Due to the nature of his quirk, he had to rely on his sole physical abilities when it came to combat. His quirk can only disable other quirks after all, and not even all of them, since mutants are excluded from the effect. He had to provide a certain level of physical strength and strategical thinking to be able to succeed.

The more devastated he was, when he spent years on preparing for the entrance exam of UA, the most prestigious hero academy in Japan, only to face off against robots. His quirk doesn’t work on robots, since they don’t possess a quirk, and no matter how good his physical constitution was, there was no way a 15 year old boy, especially one who was rather scrawny built in general as if he still had to experience the full effects of puberty, could take down robots that were about 3 to 4 times as tall as him without the help of a physical quirk.

In wise foresight he enrolled into the education’s course at UA as well though, because he already thought there could be complications during the entrance exam for the hero course. Thanks to his marvellous marks in maths, physics and chemistry, he was accepted into general education right away, as these were the subjects other students usually have troubles with. The bad marks in English and the average mark in Japanese could be corrected and wouldn’t endanger his passing grade.

Yet, it was still frustrating to know that he did make it into UA – which no one ever thought was possible – but not into the desired hero course, but only into General Education.

His classmates were nice enough, but Shouta didn’t feel the need to socialize much with them. He never the sociable guy to begin with and he could stand morning persons even less – and to his dismay, basically the whole class consisted out of exactly such people. This only added up to the fact, that he was stuck in a general education course, while only a few doors down the hall two classes full of soon-to-be heroes are being trained. It ate him up from the inside to know that he had failed, he had failed the one exam he was preparing for over the last years.

Every time he tried to calm himself by repeating the same thought over and over again: the exam was unfair, it was biased towards people with flashy physical quirks and people like him, people with mental quirks which did not enhance any physical features, were at a total disadvantage.

But he couldn’t quite convince himself. His brain simply refused to accept this explanation. Instead it tried to tell him that he should have trained better, developed a better strategy, have a better idea of how to take on an enemy that seemed undefeatable. These are the things that came back to his mind every time he had finally managed to calm down.

These thoughts, as well as the old ones from home came back all the time. Almost from the very beginning when he got his quirk, people told him, that his quirk was not suitable for becoming a hero. His quirk, however, was suitable for a villain, especially because he had ruined another hero’s career at the age of only four and a half, and if he had been older, he would have been put into jail for sure. That’s what the neighbours always told him, that’s why they always avoided him when they met him on the street, and why they had always told their children to stay away from him at all costs. They didn’t want their children to be associated with a villain after all.

For Shouta, getting into UA would have been a major success in his life, like a goal he needed to reach to be able to tell all the people of his childhood that he was indeed capable of becoming a hero. Failing the entrance exam crushed this dream he worked so hard for in an instant. The fingers pointed at him when the news spread that he got rejected from the hero course, no one cared that he was indeed accepted into UA. For them, it only mattered that it simply wasn’t the hero course. And honestly, it was also the only thing that mattered for Shouta.

He only remained in the general education course, because he needed the degree he would get from successfully finishing this school. He worked on his grades, made sure he kept excellent marks  in natural sciences and passing grades in languages, since that was the best he could do. Even if he was stuck in the general educations course now, UA was still a remarkable school to graduate from and it could only benefit his future if he managed to stay here.

It was like salt rubbed into the wound though, when their homeroom teacher told them about the annual sports festival that was held at UA. Of course, Shouta had heard of it before he entered UA, he saw it on TV the last few years. He knew it was an important event for all students in the hero course, because it was a possibility to gain publicity early on and make hero agencies aware of them, which could benefit their future career a lot.

But what could it do for Shouta, except for downing his spirits even more? No one from general educations ever made it remarkably far in the sports festival when they were all up against hero course students, who spent weeks and months on harsh training at this school already.

So he just bedded his head on his arms and closed his eyes, not really interested in this thing at all when his teacher explained when and how the festival will be held.

The thing is, Shouta really didn’t think high of the sports festival from his current position. If he was in hero course, he would be much more determined to win, but right now he just wanted to get it over with and sit back into the classroom to sleep.

The first rounds were a teamwork exercise and an obstacle race, which he magically managed to pass, much to his wonderment. He probably was lucky with his team and obstacle races were about physical fitness, which he was actually pretty good at from his years of training.

The third round, however, was organized like a tournament. One-on-one fights in a ring, the winner fights the winner until only one person remains.

Shouta’s first opponent was someone from the hero class – of course – and it was a pretty cocky boy with a very flashy electricity-related quirk. Shouta didn’t know exactly what his quirk did, but he saw him use it during the obstacle race several times and apparently the boy likes to blind his opponents momentarily by inducing a flash for a split second. In general, he seemed like a person who had a very big ego from what Shouta could tell.

Shouta wanted to just give up, because it was a drag to continue this even longer, and he really just wanted to get some rest. The commentator was still doing some talking to the audience about the data of the two opponents, when the flash-boy spoke up.

“Hey”, he started and Shouta took a while to look up, because he didn’t realize he was being talked to at first. “You’re that guy who wanted to get into the hero course so desperately, right? Isn’t your quirk something like deleting someone’s quirk?” The boy wore a mocking grin, his hands on his hips and the tone in which he called out to Shouta, was taunting, if not degrading, even.

For a moment Shouta didn’t even know if it was worth responding. He knew about people like him, he knew this tone the guy was using just too well and he knew he was just trying to mock him. It just wasn’t worth it.

Yet, he decided against his better judgement, because he had nothing to lose anyway and he would give up in not even a minute when the referee gave the starting signal. “It erases quirks, but only temporary”, he corrected the boy in an absolutely neutral tone, and he had to smirk inwardly, because the grin of the boy fell a bit. Apparently he felt undermined by Shouta’s statement, since he was corrected by this guy from the general course.

“Whatever”, the boy huffed, keeping up the grin though, but Shouta could definitely see an annoyed glint in his eyes now.

Apparently the fact about his ego was true and he didn’t like to be outsmarted by anyone who he just deemed to be his next victim. Shouta found this highly amusing, because such people were usually also absolutely annoyed if they didn’t get what they wanted. And this guy apparently wanted a fight with the kid from general education, to show him his place. Or at least, this is what Shouta deduced from his behaviour, because otherwise his mocking statement didn’t make sense.

“Your quirk sounds a lot like a villain’s, don’t you think?”, the boy picked up again and Shouta tensed upon this statement, now actually lifting his eyes from the floor, putting his whole focus on the other boy. Did he really just say that? “How did you think you could make it through the hero course? To get a job afterwards? No one would employ a hero who can do nothing but take away other people’s quirks. That would be way too scary for hero work!”

Shouta just started at the other boy, actually at a loss of words. It was like a déjà-vu from home, he heard these phrases way too often, he basically grew up with them. Yet they stung even more, because he actually thought here at UA he would maybe, just maybe, find people who accepted special quirks.

“You’re best suited for a villain, so it’s good they put you into general education instead”, the boy laughed tauntingly.

The referee lifted the flag he was holding to give the signal for them to start. The boy took one of his hands from his hips and held it out towards Shouta, mockingly telling him to come closer to get a beating.

And while this was in fact the moment in which Shouta wanted to give up, that last statement changed his mind completely. It fuelled his anger, the anger he carried with him for years. Anger towards everyone who labelled him as a villain, mostly without even knowing him at all, only because of the nature of his quirk.

Instead, Shouta sprinted forwards and ended the fight within about eight seconds, give or take.

As soon as Shouta took off towards the boy, he wanted to send off a flash, but Shouta erased his quirk, leaving the boy dumbfounded why his flash didn’t work. If it wasn’t for Shouta’s concentration, he would have found this funny, since it was exactly this dumbfounded guy who called him out on his quirk not even a minute ago. He knew what Shouta’s quirk could do, yet he acted like he was taken by surprise.

Shouta ducked down as he activated his quirk for that moment and slid over to the other boy, wiping him off his feet with a spin with his leg stretched out, and sent him flying out of the ring by punching him straight into the face. Pure physical action was his speciality after all, since he couldn’t rely on his quirk in that matter. Also, for that statement before he didn’t feel the slightest form of pity when he felt the nose of the guy crack under his fist.

When he got back up, he looked over at the boy he just sent flying out of the ring. He didn’t say anything, he only gave the boy a cold look when he saw the terror in his eyes as he was trying to sit up, holding his hands over his bloody nose. The paramedics were on the way to him already and Shouta took it as his sign to leave the ring. He didn’t even properly realize that the referee announced his victory as he walked out.

If this round was useful for one thing, then it was for getting Shouta’s motivation back. He knew it wouldn’t help him in the future, but it definitely helped to ease his anger when he connected his right with this idiot’s face. Maybe he should just try and see how far he could make it in the tournament, because – after all – he had nothing to lose, right?

He made it further than he ever anticipated, because in the end he found himself in the very finals against some guy from the heroics course named Yamada Hizashi. He was the genius of his class, top marks in every subject, very sociable, hyped for literally anything and liked by everyone. An exemplary student, and with that, someone Shouta couldn’t stand by default.

Now that he made it this far, he definitely wouldn’t give in. He would give his best and show the heroics course what he was made of, what they were missing out on. He would take down their best student and no one could stop him. His pride wouldn’t allow otherwise.

Yamada was waving to the audience, as if he was bathing in the attention, until he turned towards Shouta, giving him a wide and toothy smile. “You know, your quirk is really cool!”, he exclaimed excitedly.

Shouta couldn’t help but squint his eyes, his mouth in slight frown. Yeah, right. No one ever told him his quirk was anything remotely cool. It was just useless, creepy or villainous, and nothing else.

“I saw you during the entrance exam! Your moves were hella rad!! It’s a pity they had robots, because your quirk doesn’t work on them, right?”, Yamada continued as if he didn’t notice Shouta’s reaction upon his previous statement. “I mean, you beat the hell out of the guys before, although they were all students from hero class! You’re so much better than most of them!”

Shouta clenched his fists and took a deep breath. “Right”, Shouta said with a disbelieving tone. “Look, let’s just get this over with, okay? I’m not here to talk.” Or otherwise he might have to lash out and silence that guy without playing fair and square, within the rules of the tournament. It was just hitting close to home what Yamada was saying – Shouta was being mocked all his life and now someone would actually call him cool and capable of being a hero? This was a very bad joke and Shouta was sick of it.

“Ooookay”, Yamada chirped, but got into a fighting stance nonetheless. “I’m not gonna fall for your trick though, I paid attention to your last matches! Just be warned!” He grinned at him, but for once it wasn’t a malicious or taunting grin, but an honestly challenging one. Like he was taking him like a real opponent.

It was weird and foreign to Shouta, but he wouldn’t underestimate this guy. Hence, he also took his fighting position, waiting for the referee to announce the start of the match.

This match was by far the hardest of the tournament – of course, since it was the finals. But Yamada kept his word, he didn’t fall for Shouta’s traps and didn’t come straight at him with his quirk. Shouta knew Yamada had a voice quirk he had to look out for, that he was capable of shattering his eardrums with just one yell. Therefore he reminded himself to not let his guard down during this fight.

It was a fight about stamina. Whenever Yamada tried to find an opening to use his quirk, Shouta was quicker to activate his own to silence Yamada. And whenever Shouta tried to find an opening to get into hand-to-hand combat with Yamada, the latter slipped away and brought some distance between them.

It wasn’t until Shouta made a mistake, that changed everything.

Yamada used his quirk a few times but it was never severe because it didn’t reach Shouta before he could rease it. It did, however, destroy the stone tiles of the arena in some places and this is where Shouta made his mistake. It was the mistake of a rookie, he had to admit, because he eyed Yamada carefully, but didn’t pay attention to where he was walking. He slipped on a loose rock close to the edge of the arena, as he was dodging one of Yamada’s screams, and couldn’t keep his balance, falling on the floor, which Yamada took as an opening for a new attack.

Yamada screamed loudly and directly at Shouta, and the latter was too slow to activate his quirk or move out of the way. The scream was painfully loud and Shouta fell back on his back, his hands over his ears to shield them at least a little bit. He could already feel the blood coming out of his ears and down his neck.

The scream was too weak to actually move him from where he was lying though, so Yamada had to come closer to actually push him out of the ring. He carefully moved closer, quickly but aware of every movement Shouta did. He didn’t break his scream as he reached down to Shouta, to push him out of the ring, but what he didn’t notice, was that Shouta didn’t just fight with his hands.

Because suddenly Shouta’s lower body snaked upwards, wrapping his legs around Yamada’s legs and made him lose his balance, bringing him down on the floor next to Shouta. The latter quickly sat up and rolled over towards the edge of the arena, Yamada still trapped between his legs. In that moment Shouta made a mental note that leg training was indeed important and he was seriously glad that he pulled through, even though he hated it so much.

He struggled to keep Yamada under control, he used his legs and now also his hands to keep Yamada in his grip, activating his quirk whenever he noticed Yamada was taking a breath to scream again.

It didn’t take long until Shouta managed to roll them over to the closest edge of the arena. Yamada’s struggling became stronger, but before Shouta could muster up more strength to keep him in control, the referee blew their whistle and raised the flag that deduced the end of the match.

Shouta’s blood ran cold. He didn’t hear quite well right now because of the extensive damage he took from Yamada’s quirk, but he could make out the whistle and saw the flag. The match was over.

Was he out of the arena? Did he not notice that one of his limbs touched the floor? Did he accidentally break one of the tournament rules and was disqualified now?

He let go of Yamada and took a deep breath, closing his burning eyes. The usage of his quirk always took a strain on his eyes and he was in desperate need of his eyedrops right now. Now that he lost, there was no use in staying anyway.

He was about to get up to leave, when suddenly two hands were on his shoulders, holding him in place. “Oh my god!!!”, Yamada yelled at him – without his quirk, this time. But he was definitely speaking louder than usual, because Shouta could hear him more or less clearly. “You won! Dude, you made it!!!”

For a moment, Shouta didn’t comprehend what Yamada said to him. He won? But Yamada wasn’t out of the arena, so he couldn’t have won the match. He just stared at the blonde blankly, too slow to process what he just said. “… what”, he said, but he wasn’t sure in what volume his voice came out because of the current state of his hearing. “No, I can’t have. I didn’t make you leave the ring.”

“Holy cow”, Yamada sighed with a chuckle, and wore the same toothy grin from before the match again. “You rolled me over towards the edge, remember? I struggled and accidentally touched the grass with the tip of my foot.” He laughed and let go of Shouta’s shoulders, instead extended his hand. “It was an awesome match!! I’m so glad I got paired up with you, you’re a totally super cool guy!!”

Shouta stared blankly at the hand in front of him. He … won? Because Yamada touched the grass and hence technically left the ring? But … he was just a student from general education, while Yamada was the best of both hero classes. It didn’t make sense at all.

He tried to process what just happened, when Yamada pulled back his hand a bit embarrassed and scratched the back of his head instead. “Ah, I’m sorry. It’s a habit of mine, because in America they shake their hands when they want to congratulate someone!”, he explained, still wearing the same grin. “So, congratulations, Aizawa-kun!!”

It was honest, as much as Shouta could tell. It didn’t make sense to him at all though. But before he could ask further, he got taken away to Recovery Girl, so she could patch up his hearing and the few scratches he got during the match to some extent, so he could at least hear and understand the award ceremony better. The rest of his hearing would come back within the next few days, she reassured him.

It only took one day until Shouta got called to the principal’s office after school and got told that he was being moved to another class.

He would move into the hero course 1-A, because a student with such outstanding talent and determination to become a hero, would be a waste in the general education course.

Chapter Text

The day after the tournament Shouta got told that he would move into the heroics course, because they noticed his talent and revisited their documents about him, only to find out, that he actually had applied for the heroics course but wasn’t able to enter due to a very low number of points in the practical entrance exam.

One day later he stood in front of the door of the class he always wanted to enter. He felt even more tired than usual and he figured it was because of the lack of sleep due to the excitement of finally becoming a student of the heroics class.

The homeroom teacher of 1-A, Paintdoll, was currently introducing her students to the idea of getting another classmate. When she called Shouta in, there was a loud whistle and joyous cry from the very back of the room, which made Shouta flinch instantly. And apparently he wasn’t the only one, because the students in the room all winced equally at the sudden boom of voice.

“Yamada, would you please keep quiet”, Paintdoll instructed, seemingly used to her student’s outbursts because there was a slight smile around her lips when she reprimanded him. “Now, Aizawa, you can go to your seat. Please try to follow the lectures as best as you can, they shouldn’t differ too much from what you have learned so far in your class.”

Shouta nodded upon her words and did as she told him, making his way to the back of the room to the only empty seat, which was …  – directly next to Yamada’s, whose behaviour made clear that he was absolutely ecstatic that Shouta was now in his class. He tapped excitedly on his desk when Shouta sat down.

Paintdoll meanwhile had resumed to talk about general things concerning their education, as well as an outlook on the day. Shouta tried to focus, but was distracted pretty quickly.

The reason for the distraction was new seat neighbour, because Yamada tried to stir a conversation after what felt like only a minute. “Sshhh! Hey!”, he whispered from Shouta’s left. “Wow! You’re here now, that’s incredible!!” He grinned widely and gave Shouta thumbs-up when the latter finally looked over. “I’m so glad!! You were so cool at the festival! But I think I told you that already … – ANYWAYS! Wanna hang out later and get lunch??”

Shouta turned his head over to him, giving him a long and tired stare. Yamada’s face was hopeful and his grin was wide as he was waiting for the answer. “No”, Shouta finally said after having him wait for a few moments. Then he turned away, focusing back on what Paintdoll was talking about and placing his head on his arms just as he always did.

“Aww okay, maybe tomorrow then!”, Yamada answered with a shrug, earning a ssh-noise from his classmates, since he was being too loud again. Apparently he didn’t care about that though or he simply was used to getting shushed, because he didn’t even react.

Shouta just rolled his eyes and took a breath. He couldn’t forget what Yamada told him during the match at the sports festival, that he liked his quirk and that he found he would belong into the heroics course. And now he was being so overly friendly, trying to invite him to eat lunch together when he was in class not even for a full five minutes. It was so surreal and Shouta came to the conclusion, that it had to be a façade. There was no other way after all, no one told him such things or was glad that he was around.

Shouta would be careful, experience told him that there was no one to be trusted.

It proved to be harder to be careful than he anticipated around these new people, Shouta had to admit, especially when Yamada made it his personal mission to befriend the new kid in class.

Whenever there was a free period, Yamada hung around Shouta’s desk, trying to engage him into a conversation and sometimes even dragged his friend with the engines in the arms along. Iida Tensei, as far as Shouta recalled. Actually he was good with names, but he never used them because he didn’t speak to his new classmates. Not that he had much conversation with his old ones from general education, but here it’s no different. He simply didn’t like social contact. He rather spent his free periods sleeping at his desk, which is why he was easily annoyed by Yamada’s presence.

It has been exactly three weeks that Shouta transferred to hero class and that meant, 15 days -because weekends didn’t count – of waving off Yamada’s begs for getting lunch together.

“Come oooon”, Yamada tried it once again. And so started day number 16. “You have to eat anyway! It will be fun, I promise!” He chuckled at his own word because he had to think back to the other day where his friend Iida accidentally ran into one of the teachers who dropped their tablet in the process, only because Iida was distracted by the girl from the supplementary class he had a crush on.

Shouta just gave him a lazy stare from his desk, his head bedded on his arms as always. He didn’t even bother to answer verbally anymore, he just turned his head away from Yamada and closed his eyes.

“Aw maaaaaan, Aizawaaaaa”, Yamada stretched the syllables. He wanted to try to convince him further, but before he could continue speaking, an idea stroke him though. Maybe he was more capable of a proper conversation if he was more awake. And maybe he would be more awake if he actually got some real and warm lunch for once instead of whatever he ate usually when he was alone in the classroom.

And to get Shouta awake enough to actually go to the cafeteria with him, Yamada knew only one way that helped for sure.

He didn’t hesitate a second as he lunged out to slam his hands hard on Shouta’s desk, startling the raven-haired boy awake. Shouta’s head jolted up and his whole body jumped in his chair, looking around frantically as he tried to find out what just happened.

Yamada wanted to make a funny comment how Shouta looked like a scared cat, but he noticed quickly something was off. Shouta’s eyes were wide and pupils blown, darting around unfocused. His breath was somehow ragged, and he was shaking a little until he gulped, pressed his eyes shut for a moment, pinching the bridge of his nose and finally opening his eyes again. He focused on what was in front of him, which was Yamada’s frame. It was as if he had taken a while to realize he was in the classroom, because as soon as his gaze was fixed on Yamada, his eyes narrowed and he scowled at him.

“Oh whoa, I’m sorry for that, Aizawa”, Yamada immediately apologized. “I didn’t mean to-“

“Can’t you just get the hint and leave me the fuck alone?”, Shouta growled with a deep frown.

“Look, I didn’t meant to startle you like that, I just-“, Yamada tried to explain, but was cut off by Shouta before he could get out more.

This time, it was the raven haried boy who slammed his hands on the table. He was standing now, his chair almost tipping over from the sudden movement of getting up. “You try to talk to me for 15 days straight, every time my answer is no and you honestly think I would change my mind because you fucking startle me?!”, Shouta’s voice rose and Yamada involuntarily took a step back, because he wasn’t used to an outburst like this from the usually quiet child. “You may have the top scores in class but apparently you are just so incredibly dense, so I’m spelling it out for you: LEAVE. ME. ALONE! Are we clear?!”

Shouta fixated Yamada with a glare that bore utter rage, his teeth clenched as he huffed in anger, his hands clawed into the edge of his table. Yamada’s breath got stuck in his throat for once and he wasn’t able to talk for a few moments until he caught himself again.

He collected himself and looked onto the desk where Shouta was resting not even a minute ago. “Understood”, he said quietly for once, very unusual for him but it was clear that he lost this fight. He wanted to befriend Shouta and make him part of the class community, but he understood that he crossed a border he wasn’t supposed to cross by startling the other boy. He gulped and looked up again, giving Shouta a weak smile. “Look, I’m really sorry, I shouldn’t have-“

“Go”, Shouta said coldly as he interrupted him once more, keeping up his glare.

Yamada nodded a bit shaken, his gaze on the floor again. Then he turned around and walked towards the door of the classroom. “If you change your mind, you’re welcome nonetheless.”

“I won’t”, Shouta cut him off again.

Yamada returned his gaze, but left after a moment of consideration. There was nothing more to say, Shouta made that clear.

As soon as Yamada left the classroom, Shouta took a few deep breaths before he could finally feel the tension leave his body again. He sat down on his chair, pulling it close to his desk and placing his head on his arms once again. He closed his eyes and took a last deep breath, before allowing himself to calm down again.

Maybe he was being too harsh to Yamada, because he knew that the boy meant it well actually. But with the startle he simply pushed Shouta’s buttons and Shouta couldn’t deal with that.

On the positive side, Shouta was sure now that Yamada would finally leave him alone during lunch break at least.

Only one month later, in which Shouta made no attempts of socializing with anyone of the class, keeping teamwork at the barest minimum – basically only during hero training where he was required to team up with a classmate –, exams were coming up.

It was as his new homeroom teacher Paintdoll said, most of the courses were the same as in general educations, which is why he had little to no problems preparing for the exams in those. Maths was always his strong point because it was logical, tightly followed by physics and chemistry. Languages were his weakest subjects and while he could deal with Japanese for passing grades, it was almost hopeless in English.

In the general education course English was just a minor subject. Of course it was deemed important, but the effort required to pass wasn’t that high. It was manageable for Shouta. But in the heroics course, English was suddenly a much more relevant. Heroes may have to deal with the media in their future jobs on a daily basis and it wasn’t unusual that they would have to give interviews in English for the international press.

For Shouta it was a nightmare right now. He already passed his physical exam last week and did well on the Maths exam too, Physics still has to be graded and he wasn’t worried about any other subjects either, but English really gave him a headache. He tried hard to study, but he had a lot of problems to understand the story they were given to read. The vocabulary would be important for the exam, because they would get another text to read and answer some questions about it, but if Shouta couldn’t assess the meaning of the text, what would it help to understand each word on its own?

The others in his class were getting together in groups to study for the exam, helping each other out in the subjects they had troubles in. Everyone shared their knowledge with the others and so they made it through every exam so far.

Shouta was not one to rely on others, he wasn’t fit for teamwork. There was no way he would ask the others for help, mostly because he made every effort for them to treat him like an outcast. Not that he would mind, because he didn’t like socializing anyway, but right now that he could use their help, his pride simply didn’t allow him to ask.

It was two days before the English exam and Shouta was sitting at his desk again in his free period, trying to memorize as much vocabulary as possible. If he couldn’t understand the text, he could try every single word and find out the meaning that way. Or at least memorize some of the words, if the previous attempt didn’t work out.

Just when Shouta was scribbling down some words and looking them up in a dictionary, one of his classmates strolled by. Usually Shouta wasn’t bothered by this, because they normally only needed something from the closet behind him, but this time they stopped and obviously looked at what he was doing. When Shouta looked up to see who it was, he looked into the face of the boy he fought in the first round of the sports festival, Senkazu Raikan, as Shouta learned by now.

“Are you ready to fail this class, Sleepzawa?”, he mocked him with the same grin he had on during the match at the festival. One of his hands was on his hip as he leaned forward to tap on Shouta’s worksheets. He always used new nicknames for Shouta, but Shouta always simply chose to ignore them. However, he couldn’t ignore the next thing Senkazu said. “You won’t make it through the year because you’re unable to work in a team.”

Shouta’s eyes narrowed and he frowned, gripping his pen a bit tighter. “Why would you even care?”, he said lowly, barely audible for anyone except the both of them.

Senkazu didn’t bother to keep his voice down though. “Because you’re degrading our class with your simple presence! You came in here as a special student, without having passed the entrance exam and by winning the sports festival because of an accident, and yet you’re just like a sore thumb sticking out with your weirdness”, he said with a hateful undertone in his voice. He looked down at Shouta as if he was an inferior being. “You haven’t made a single friend, not even an acquaintance, since you’ve come here about two months ago. You’re a weirdo who isn’t fit to be a hero, because a hero has to be able to work together with others, which you obviously can’t do.”

Shouta listened to his rage speech, ignoring the suddenly deadly quiet silence in the classroom. Everyone of their classmates had put their studying on hold, looking up to see what was going on. Everyone was watching Senkazu insulting Shouta, while Shouta just looked straight past Senkazu, right to the front of the classroom.

Shouta put his pen down when Senkazu was done and leaned back, crossing his arms and lifting his gaze up to the boy to look him straight into the eye. “Well, that’s good for you if you think so”, he said neutrally, earning an irritated snarl from Senkazu. “But you haven’t answered my question: why do you care?”, Shouta repeated his earlier words, but instead of waiting for an actual answer, he chose to continue before Senkazu could pick up again. “In fact, it is none of your business what I do and I highly doubt that I drag down the class, because I am – unlike you – in almost every subject among the top scores.” Shouta looked up to him again, a mocking grin was forming on his face. “What are you, number 19? 20? Wow, congratulations.” Shouta could see the anger boil in Senkazu and he didn’t suppress the smirk that was growing more evident as he continued. “Maybe you should pay a visit to the infirmary, because your jealousy is leaking very badly right now.”

A snort of laughter was heard from the other side of the room, followed by a shushing sound and Shouta saw out of the corner of his eyes that it had to be Yamada who laughed and Iida who shushed him to be quiet. At least they were the only ones who sat in that corner of the room where Shouta thought he heard the laughter come from.

Senkazu didn’t seem to have noticed though, because he balled his fists and clenched his teeth, obviously having been outsmarted by Shouta. Again. “You can never be successful, Aizawa”, he pressed out with a scowl, this time even calling Shouta with his real name, as he walked away from his desk, not giving him a second glance. The rest of the class suddenly busied themselves with their own exercises or studying again, not wanting to meet Senkazu’s eyes, for it would reveal that they had been listening openly.

Shouta took Senkazu’s exit as another victory, but he sighed, when he looked back down onto his worksheets that were mostly just jumbled English and Japanese words, which probably didn’t even make sense together. He really was at a loss when it came to English.

It was obvious that Senkazu was jealous of Shouta’s scores, otherwise he wouldn’t have reacted like that. Shouta didn’t pass the entrance exam, yet he could enter the heroics course, and now he was even better than most of those who actually managed to get into the class the normal way.

Yet, there was one thing, Senkazu was right about.

A hero must be able to work together with others, make out strategies and follow through.

Also, a hero must be able to ask for help if they were in need, and right now, Shouta was in desperate need for help in English. If he failed this exam he would have a hard time to get his grade back up to a passing one, since his marks on his homework exercises weren’t that good either. He simply was terrible at English and the level that was needed for a passing grade in the hero course was too high for him to reach alone.

It was only two days until the exam and Shouta was running out of time. There was only one way he knew that could lead to a solution for his problem and it took him some willpower to overcome his pride.

He sighed once again as he picked up the worksheet he was currently studying and got up from his chair to cross the classroom quickly to the other side where he heard Yamada snorting in amusement before. From what he knew, Yamada was fluent in English due to his heritage and obsession with America, so he was the best tutor he could get.

Yet, Shouta’s brain was still hung up on how he treated Yamada the other day when he got startled by him. Yamada must be mad at him and there was probably no way he would resign to help him, especially not that close before the exam. He could spend his time at home taking days off, because with an American mother there was no way he had to study anything at all for this exam. Shouta was absolutely prepared for a rejection by the time he reached him.

“Uh … I wondered if you could maybe … help me with this”, Shouta said a bit awkwardly and mentally slapped himself for not even being able to form a proper sentence. It was just a simple question after all.

Yamada looked up when Shouta spoke to him. For a moment, their eyes met and no one spoke a word. It was like the rest of the classroom drowned out and it was just the two of them looking at each other. Shouta was sure he would reject his request now, because he took so long to answer.

And suddenly, everything began to motion again when there was a smirk growing on Yamada’s face.

For a moment, it made Shouta unsure if requesting help from Yamada was a good idea. Maybe he would start mocking him too now, since he was the one who ruined their companionship – or whatever it was in the first place – and now came back begging for his help because he was desperate. It was somehow pathetic, Shouta had to admit. Even though Senkazu was right that heroes had to help each other out, not everyone was compatible and Shouta had probably blown his chances of teamwork with Yamada a month ago.

Much to his surprise though, Yamada said not a single word at first but instead scooted over with his chair and pointed at the now empty space between him and Iida. “Of course!!”, he beamed at Shouta. “Grab a chair and sit! It’s what we’re going through right now anyway!”

Shouta was a bit overwhelmed by the positivity Yamada returned to him for a moment. He treated Yamada so badly before and yet he seemed to have forgotten everything and instead was even happy about fulfilling Shouta’s request? He stood there like a pillar of salt before he finally was able to snap out of it and did as he was told, bringing a chair over and sitting down to study.

Maybe asking for help wasn’t so bad after all.

While Shouta didn’t manage to be on top of the class, since English really wasn’t his strong point even after Yamada’s tutoring, but he passed his exam.

And that wasn’t even the best point.

The best point was, that he beat Senkazu by three points and by that, adding fuel to the fire of his frustration. It was an incredibly sweet reward and Shouta couldn’t help but smirk upon the discovery of their class’s ranking.

But in fact, there might be an even better reward, because Yamada made him exchange their phone numbers after their tutoring lesson. He told him it was “for studying purposes”, so they could coordinate better, but in reality, it was just so Yamada could drown Shouta in pictures of his cockatoo.

And Shouta couldn’t say that he minded. Having a friend for once felt nice after all.

Chapter Text

When Shouta asked Yamada for help in English the other day, he hadn’t thought that it would result in a commitment like this. Ever since that day, Yamada outright refused to leave Shouta’s side at school. He became his self-declared best friend and also started calling Shouta by his first name just like that, which Shouta – after some protests – finally gave in to, starting to call him Hizashi as well. They became inseparable, even during hero training they made a perfect team despite their quirks’ completely different natures.

Even teachers started to notice that their friendship grew and especially Paintdoll was very glad about it. She was a bit worried about Shouta’s seclusion from the rest of the students ever since he entered her class, but having Hizashi around him now seemed to get him out of his shell. He even agreed to have lunch in the cafeteria every now and then instead of staying at his desk the whole period.

When they started hanging out, one of the first things Hizashi noticed was Shouta’s determination to train, even after school had ended. He used the gym frequently, at least three days of the week. Sometimes Hizashi joined him with training, but most of the times he either just sat by and did some homework or simply went home earlier, spending the afternoon with Iida or other friends of his.

It was because of this frequent training that Hizashi never paid much attention to the bruises on Shouta’s forearms every now and then. He figured they were from Shouta’s excessive workout, because it definitely showed during hero training too that he was doing additional exercise. He was in much better physical shape than any other kid in their class and he always said that it was necessary, because his quirk didn’t enhance his physical features, so he needed to improve it himself. Hizashi even made fun of Shouta’s bruises once and told him that he looked like a Dalmatian with that pale skin of his and the darker spots here and there. Shouta just gave it a weak smirk and shook his head, rolling his eyes.

Hizashi did, however, pay attention to Shouta’s arm one day shortly before the bell for their first lesson rang. He usually let Shouta sleep in the morning, because Shouta was one of the first people to arrive in the classroom only to put his head down on the desk to sleep for another few minutes. Apparently he had some sort of insomnia, making it difficult to fall asleep at night. Hizashi respected this and while he refused letting Shouta sleep during lunch, because he needed to eat too and sleep doesn’t replace a proper meal, he did let him catch up on sleep in the morning every day.

Except today. “Shouta, what happened to your hand?!”, Hizashi exclaimed in worry when he saw the bandages wrapped around Shouta’s left hand, poking out from under his head.

Shouta stirred upon being talked to, as if he didn’t realize immediately that he didn’t just imagine it. He looked over to Hizashi with bleary eyes and took a moment to process what he was asked. He blinked a few times to get rid of the burn in his eyes until he answered. “I did the dishes last night and a glass broke in my hand”, he shrugged with a sleep-induced voice, clearing his throat afterwards and almost automatically hiding his injured hand under his arm.

“Do you want to go to Recovery Girl later?”, Hizashi asked again, nodding towards Shouta’s now hidden hand.

“It’s just a cut on the back of my hand, not a deadly wound”, Shouta shook his head, frowning at him. “You’re being overdramatic.”

A snort escaped Hizashi’s throat upon that comment. “It’s called worry, my friend”, he instructed him, lifting his index finger as if giving him a lecture.

“And this is called the start of the class, so please have a seat, Yamada”, their homeroom teacher suddenly interjected. Class had started and Hizashi didn’t notice that Paintdoll had walked in already.

He sat down and ducked his head, murmuring a “Sorry”, earning an amused grin from Shouta’s side.

All in all, it took Hizashi almost the whole homeroom until he noticed that something seemed fishy upon Shouta’s explanation for the cut.

Of course, accidentally shattering a glass during doing the dishes wasn’t unusual. It happened sometimes and it wasn’t uncommon that people cut themselves with the glass in the process. Sometimes the cuts were even pretty severe, needing stitches to heal properly.

The thing that made Hizashi sceptical, was that it was Shouta they were talking about. Shouta was the most cautious person Hizashi knew, he was almost silent when walking, working and even fighting, he paid attention to his surroundings twice as well as anyone else and Hizashi was sure that he didn’t even let his guard down while he slept (he knew better though, because sometimes he really needed to put in some effort to be able to wake Shouta up in time for class).

It just seemed so unnatural that Shouta shattered a glass during doing the dishes.

Hizashi let his gaze slide over to Shouta’s desk as he was in thoughts, finding him on the verge of falling asleep again, desperately trying to listen to whatever Paintdoll was talking about.

Maybe he really had been clumsy last night, considering how tired he was lately. Studying so much took its toll on him, especially since he didn’t want to drop his usual training exercises either.

Maybe Hizashi was just overthinking things too much.

For some reason, the thought stuck with Hizashi though. The first year was over and break was approaching, in which Hizashi left for America for a month, but the bandages around Shouta’s hand  didn’t quite set his mind at peace the whole time. Every now and then, his thoughts wandered back to the cut that was supposedly under them, and he couldn’t figure out why. Shouta said, he accidentally broke a glass during doing the dishes, which is a common occurrence, actually, so why couldn’t Hizashi just let go?

It took the whole month in America and half of the flight back to Japan to figure out what it was. In the plane he suddenly jumped in his seat from the revelation, startling his mother and the person sitting in front of him in the process. He apologized profoundly to the stranger in front of him and earned a scolding from his mother, and afterwards went back to his thoughts.

The cut was on the left hand and as Hizashi saw a few days later when Shouta had removed the bandages, the cut was on the backside of the hand. He knew for a fact though that Shouta would hold a glass in the left hand and use the right hand to clean. If it sprung during cleaning, he either had to cut his palm of the left hand or the backside of his right hand.

So either Shouta did things differently than Hizashi assumed, or the injury was really fishy. And while Hizashi wanted to believe it was the first, there was a small part of his mind that just wasn’t satisfied with this answer. So he decided to keep an eye on it, because if it was nothing, it didn’t hurt either to watch out for his best friend.

The rest of the holidays passed without further strange incidents. Hizashi did pay more attention to any injuries on Shouta’s body, but there was nothing out of the ordinary as far as he could tell. There were bruises around his forearms and also a black eye once, but those were only when Shouta sparred with him or Iida or that upperclass girl Kayama, who sneaked into their lives at some point. Shouta seemed to get along with her pretty well, much to Hizashi’s surprise, but he couldn’t be happier for Shouta to have finally found actual social contact within school besides him.

In any way, school started up again and Hizashi had shoved the thoughts about Shouta’s weird cut to the very back of his mind.

Until a new strange occurrence turned up.

When they were done with hero training class, everyone except Hizashi and Shouta had left the changing room already. The voices of their classmates still resounded from outside, but since it was their last lesson of the day, they’ll probably head off home soon, just as Hizashi intended to do.

Shouta changed out of his training suit and as he pulled the shirt over his head, Hizashi spotted a pretty large bruise stretching over his lower stomach. It seemed not too old, maybe a day or two, considering the blue-ish purple colour and looked a lot like he was kicked in the guts. If Aizawa wasn’t that pale it probably wouldn’t have been that visible, but right now it took all of Hizashi’s attention.

“Oh my god”, Hizashi sucked in his breath. “What did you do?? That looks painful as hell, Shouta!!” He came closer and wanted to inspect it automatically, like people do when they are worried, but Shouta almost flinched back upon Hizashi’s sudden closeness.

“I got hit … recently. … During hero training”, Shouta said a bit hesitantly and hastily pulled the shirt of his school uniform back on, buttoning it up with practised ease. He left the tie though, since he was about to leave anyway and it was such a drag to put it on in the first place. He looked up into Hizashi’s face again with a steady gaze.

Hizashi returned the gaze, still with the same surprised and worried expression from before, although there was a suspicious glint in his eyes now. “You weren’t hit in the stomach today. And also not yesterday. And the days before that was weekend, this bruise doesn’t look like it’s older than two days.”

Shouta held his stare and took a breath and looked away to pick up his bag and the jacket of his uniform. “It’s nothing”, he then said. “I’m fine, it was an accident and will heal quickly enough. Don’t worry about it.”

All of a sudden the old thoughts about the cut on Shouta’s hand were back. The difference now was that Hizashi was 100% sure that this bruise was definitely not from hero training, because he was there all the time and would have noticed if Shouta was kicked into the lower stomach hard enough for a bruise of this size to be showing.

“Shouta, what happened?”, Hizashi tried to reason again. “Maybe you should go to Recov-“

“I said I’m fine, didn’t I? It was just an accident, nothing to worry about”, Shouta cut him off and raised an eyebrow as he spoke. “And now we should leave, I don’t want to spend my evening at school.”

With that, the talk was over, that much was clear for Hizashi. Nonetheless, he couldn’t lay his thoughts to rest, simply because this time he was sure that there was something different behind Shouta’a words. He just had yet to find out what it was.

It didn’t take long until the next indicator popped up. When Shouta came to school one day sporting a band-aid on his cheek, Hizashi didn’t think much about it at first, since it could just be some bloody pimple or so that came over night. They’re right in the middle of puberty after all, so it wouldn’t be that surprising, and Hizashi knew that problem just too well from himself too.

But when Shouta pulled off the band-aid after three lessons because it started to get itchy, Hizashi noticed that it wasn’t a pimple but a cut. It didn’t look like the scratch of a cat or something of that sort, it was too thick for that. It didn’t seem to be that deep either though and it wasn’t as alarming to the blonde as the bruise last time, but still worth a mention. Hizashi hesitated for a moment to ask him about it though, because if he asked the wrong way, Shouta would block off again and it would get him nowhere, he figured.

So he waited another period, sneaking glances over every now. The more often he looked at Shouta, the more he noticed that something seemed off. Off in a sense, that something was different. He just couldn’t figure out yet what it was. If Shouta was a girl, he would have said that maybe he had a different haircut, but that was literally impossible, considering that Shouta didn’t care about visual appearance.

But wait …

Hizashi’s head snapped over to Shouta’s side again and his eyes widened. Shouta’s hair was weirdly cut on the side where the cut was and it definitely wasn’t like that the day before. So this cut was definitely not done by an angry cat, because following common logic, cats can’t cut hair with their claws.

“Ssshhh Shouta”, he hissed quietly since class was still going on and their Geography teacher was talking about some economical models in South America.

Shouta turned his head over with a confused expression. It wasn’t that unusual that Hizashi sparked a conversation during class, but his voice seemed stressed, as if it was urgent. “What happened to your cheek? Your hair is cut too, what did you do?”, Hizashi went on, earning a shushing sound from Iida, who sat on the other side next to him. Hizashi chose to ignore him though and waved him off without even looking at him, earning an eyeroll.

Shouta looked at him for a long moment with a raised eyebrow – too long for Hizashi’s taste – and then he let out the breath he was holding. “I worked with a box cutter last night because I had to fix some stuff around the house”, he said in a very low voice, almost inaudible for Hizashi, but he got the words. “I almost fell off the ladder because it stood on uneven ground, and cut myself with the knife in the process. And apparently also my hair.” He shrugged as if it was nothing, but Hizashi thought otherwise.

This sounded just so unbelievable, considering how careful Shouta always was. During class, during training and also during free time, it seemed like Shouta was overthinking every single move he made as if he always paid attention to not make any noise. Stealth wasn’t just Shouta’s way of doing things during training but in all parts of his life. Plus, Shouta was training to work with knives while jumping around in midair with his capturing tool, there was no way he would cut himself like that.

For a moment, Hizashi just looked at him with a bewildered expression and wanted to say something, but no words left his mouth. He had to gather his self-control again to be able to shake his head and snap out of it, taking a breath to be finally able to speak again. “Shouta, what did really happen?”, he whispered, careful to not disturb the lesson.

Shouta looked at him and the usually stoic expression became a frown. “I told you. I was clumsy last night, that’s all”, he said again, turning his head to the front again to pay attention to class for once instead of falling asleep.

Apparently he didn’t want to talk about it – again –, but Hizashi wouldn’t let it go that easily this time. He just waited for the right moment to confront him about it.

This moment proved to be right the next day in the morning before class started. Usually Shouta was the first one in class, in order to be able to sleep a few more minutes in peace. This time, Hizashi was arrived before him and it set him on edge instantly.

Shouta was never sick. Even if he had a cold, he still came to school, risking to get everyone else sick as well. It worried Hizashi that he wasn’t there that day, especially since he seemed perfectly fine the day before.

Hizashi quickly hurried to his desk, throwing his bag on the table and starting to dig through the contents quickly, confusing Iida in the process who sat at his desk already, stuff for the first lesson prepared perfectly in front of him. “Tensei, have you seen Shouta today already?”, Hizashi asked under his breath as he searched for his phone in his bag to call Shouta.

“He’s there”, Iida answered and Hizashi had to look up to see Iida pointing at the door. Indeed, Shouta was coming right through the doorframe and … he limped.

Hizashi stopped his motion and let his phone fall back into the bag when he watched Shouta making his way to his desk next to him. He was undoubtedly limping, but not the slight sort of limp you get when you stub your foot on the door frame or a dresser, but as if you seriously sprained the ankle.

Shouta managed to get to his seat and let himself fall, looking over to Hizashi and knowing full well what was coming. “You look like a fish, Hizashi”, Shouta said monotonous, suppressing a grin. Hizashi’s gaze really did remind him of a fish, because his eyes were wide and his mouth was open as if he was in the process of saying something but didn’t get a word out. The forming grin on Shouta’s face vanished instantly though when he accidentally bumped into the table with his foot and the pain jolted up his leg like lightning.

That made Hizashi snap out of it. “You’re going to Recovery Girl right now! No discussion”, Hizashi said determined and didn’t even wait for Shouta’s response before taking the one step over to his friend’s desk and pulling him up.

“It’s nothi-“, Shouta started and tried to get away, but Hizashi cut him off instantly, not loosening his grip in the slightest.

“It’s obviously not nothing, Shouta! How dumb do you think I am??”, he snapped at him, putting Shouta’s arm around his shoulder to steady him. There was no way he would let him get away this time. “Are you doing vigilante work at night and don’t tell me about it? Is that how you get hurt all the time?”

Shouta looked almost offended upon that accusation. “Do you think I’m an idiot?!”, he slammed his hands on his table, jumping up as best as his good foot allowed to do. “I won’t risk to lose my chance of getting a license by illegally playing hero!!”. Iida flinched and everyone who was in class already also turned at the sudden raise of noise, especially since it came from the usually very quiet kid.

“I’m not having this!”, Hizashi gave back, equally slamming his hands on the table to underline the urge in his statement. “We’re going to Recovery Girl right this instant, no excuses!! I’m not letting you sit here in hurt, probably trying to find super lame excuses for it again!”

With that, he slung his arm around Shouta’s frame, ignoring the latter’s tries to shove him away and dragged him over to the door and out of the classroom, careful to not strain his foot even. They left a rather confused class behind and Hizashi was glad he could rely on Iida, who would very likely tell excuse the both of them for their absence in the first lesson.

“Leave me alone, Hizashi”, Shouta hissed as he tried to push Hizashi’s arm off him, but whenever he thought he managed, he had to step on his injured foot to hold his balance and flinched, making Hizashi snake his arm around him once again to steady him. “This is none of your business, so let me fucking go!”

“Not gonna happen”, Hizashi insisted, stubborn as he was. “It’s my job to take care of you if you don’t do it yourself, that’s what friends are for!”

“To hell with your friendship then!”, Shouta spat, giving Hizashi a harsh shove and although he felt Hizashi freeze for a moment, his grip tightened right after again. Hizashi’s lips were drawn in a thin line though and there was no emotion on his usually very easily readable face.

“I won’t sit by and watch you wreck yourself like this”, Hizashi said quietly then in a stoic voice. “If it’s not my job as your friend, then it is at least my job as a future hero.”

Shouta just wanted to answer, when suddenly Paintdoll came around the corner, obviously on the way to their classroom for the first lesson. Shouta’s efforts to get away from Hizashi’s grip died down when she spotted them, and he also noticed that Hizashi had put on a façade of emotions, looking just like his usual self again.

“Oh my, what happened to your foot, Aizawa?”, Paintdoll asked in worry and also confusion.

When Shouta didn’t answer right away, Hizashi took it upon himself to respond to their homeroom teacher’s question. “He hurt his foot, probably sprained his ankle or something. I’m taking him to Recovery Girl-”

“I don’t need medical attention, it’s nothing serious”, Shouta interrupted Hizashi, hoping Paintdoll would be on his side.

“You can’t even step on it, it’s serious enough in my eyes”, Hizashi gave back with a frustrated sigh, shifting his arm around Shouta again to steady him better since the latter didn’t make any efforts to hold onto the blonde.

Paintdoll looked between them and then sighed, facing Shouta at last. “Yamada is right about this, Aizawa”, she said, even looking a bit apologetically upon Shouta’s growing frown. “Let Recovery Girl have a look at your ankle and have her write a certificate to skip hero training for today if she deems it necessary.” And even though she spoke to Shouta, it was very obvious that she was also talking to Hizashi between the lines, tasking him to make sure that Shouta didn’t overexert himself today.

“… yes, sensei”, Shouta murmured in frustration with clenched fists. Yamada nodded with a grin, saluting with his free hand. He adjusted his arm around Shouta’s body once again to steady his frame better for the rest of the walk, now that the struggling had stopped.

“Let’s go then”, Hizashi suggested and started to walk again, making Shouta follow in the process. As soon as Paintdoll was out of earshot, Hizashi spoke up again, even though rather quiet still so only Shouta could hear. The grin from before was completely gone again, his face just as stoic as before Paintdoll stopped them, and his gaze was fixed forward into the direction they were walking. “I’m not stupid, Shouta. I know something is up and you’re gonna tell me what it is, or I’ll find it out myself, no matter if you think of me as your friend or not.”

For a moment, Shouta’s gaze was on Hizashi, but then it dropped to the floor as they walked. He didn’t say anything for a long while, and when he finally broke the silence, it was barely above a whisper. “There’s nothing you can do anyway.”

Shouta’s sprained ankle was fixed with just one kiss of Recovery Girl and he didn’t participate in hero training that day either due to slight exhaustion from the healing. Combined with his usual insomnia Recovery Girl also deemed it more important to rest for a day instead of enforcing training. He rested on the bench during class or helped their teacher out as a referee for the sparring matches of his classmates.

When school was over that day, Shouta just went out to go home, not saying goodbye to Hizashi or Iida, like he usually did. While Iida tried to get Hizashi to tell him what happened between them this morning, since they hadn’t exchanged a single word since then, Hizashi just waved off. For him the day wasn’t over yet. He had made the decision on the way to Recovery Girl’s infirmary in the morning, that he would follow Shouta home today to see if the reason for his injuries lied there. He had even told his parents that he would come home late and that they didn’t need to wait for him.

While Hizashi knew roughly where Shouta lived, he didn’t know the exact address, and he certainly wasn’t prepared for what he found.

From what he knew, Shouta’s part of the city wasn’t the best, but he certainly didn’t think it was this bad. The sun was still up, it was close to setting but still bright enough, and yet the whole region looked dark and grim, like straight from some post-apocalyptic movie. The houses seaming the street, the fences enclosing the gardens and the trees growing, they all looked equally depressing and simply dead. All houses were obviously inhabited, but if Hizashi had to describe the region, he would say that there was little to no happiness around.

Thankfully Shouta was exhausted enough that he didn’t notice Hizashi following him. While Hizashi did spend quite a lot of training on improving his stealth in battle, he was actually pretty bad at it. Usually he didn’t care, because he wanted to become a flashy and popular hero anyway, someone everyone knew from the media, which suited his quirk, so he didn’t need to be stealthy at all. But right now, a little more talent at this definitely wouldn’t hurt.

Shouta almost managed to catch him several times, but in the end Hizashi was always lucky that in the same moment a cat jumped out from the corner Hizashi was hiding, so Shouta thought the noise Hizashi accidentally made came from the feline. Another time someone else was making a noise, distracting Shouta from what he was actually investigating. And so on. Hizashi’s nerves were a wreck by the time Shouta finally stopped at a house and pulled out his keys. Hizashi was sitting behind the corner of a pretty damaged brick wall, his heart hammering in his chest from the adrenaline. So this was it, this was Shouta’s house.

As soon as Shouta had vanished inside the house. Hizashi allowed himself to take a deep breath again, trying to calm himself so he could sneak closer to Shouta’s house. He peeked around the corner and quietly approached it, trying to look as little suspicious as he could manage. Although he figured that no one would care anyway, considering the way this region looked. He stopped near the property, standing on the sidewalk, shadowed by the thickest tree of the neighbour’s garden, and took in the visual appearance of the house.

Overall it didn’t look much different from the rest. It was painted white, but the paint crumbled in some places already and and seemingly it was never bothered to be repainted, as it had weather stains and probably mould over the whole wall. The windows were dirty and although there was light inside, the house seemed gloomy and generally eerie. There was a tree in the front yard which didn’t wear any leaves and, upon closer inspection, even seemed rotten inside. There was no fence around the yard, instead Hizashi noticed that some wire fence was leaning against the house wall, which was discoloured by the rust from the fence, as if it leaned there for a while already.

Hizashi bit his bottom lip. Now that he was here, he had no idea what he should do, actually. While this neighbourhood looked pretty beaten up, it didn’t prove anything about Shouta’s injuries. He sighed, crouching down on the floor and leaning against the wonky fence of the neighbour’s garden, thinking about how he should continue. For now, the best option probably was to just wait a little while to see if anything happens.

Deciding on his new plan, he pulled out his phone and started up some game he recently downloaded to pass the time.

He didn’t play for long though until he almost dropped his phone because a loud yell resounded from the direction of Shouta’s house, startling him in the process. He jumped up, quickly sliding his phone back into his pocket, peeking around the tree from the neighbour’s garden with wide eyes. His fingers were shaking from the shock as he dug them into the wooden bars of the fence.

Hizashi didn’t recognize the voice of the yelling person, but he very well knew who the responding voice belonged to. He couldn’t understand what was said, but it was definitely Shouta’s voice he heard responding to the yells.

Before he could do anything else or even decide what he should do, he heard a loud thump-noise and something shattering, followed by another yell and thump. Then there was dead silence.

Hizashi fixated the house with his gaze, not even daring to blink in case he would miss anything. But it was silent and there was no movement inside either, and to Hizashi it seemed just eerie right now. Why was there no sound coming from the house anymore, not even rattling or stomping or anything.

Then, only a short moment later he saw the light at the front porch turn on and Shouta appeared behind the dirty window. It felt like in a horror movie and Hizashi had to shake off his rigidity first to be able to let go of the fence and actually slide behind the tree again to be out of sight of the window. His heart was hammering against his ribs and he tried to catch his breath as he processed what just happened.

It had indeed been Shouta in the window, and what freaked Hizashi out that much, was the red stream that was running down Shouta’s face. Hizashi couldn’t see it that well from the distance, but compared to Shouta’s deep black hair and fair skin, it was easy to spot a trail of blood running down his forehead and his cheek. Shouta had been hit, probably by some object that shattered afterwards, and hurt his head.

Hizashi had been right to be suspicious about the injuries Shouta carried every now and then. The bruises on his arms didn’t only come from training. The cut on the back of his hand wasn’t from a shattered glass while doing the dishes. The large bruise on his abdomen certainly wasn’t inflicted by training class. The cut on his cheek didn’t come from falling off a ladder with a box cutter. And the sprained ankle definitely wasn’t from stumbling down the stairs because of clumsiness.

They were inflicted by a different force. Most likely by the person Shouta lived with. By his father.

Shouta lived in an abusive household.

Shouta was being abused at home and tried to keep quiet about it.

Hizashi slapped his face a few times to regain control over his trembling body again. He stayed crouched but peeked over the fence to the window again. Shouta was still there and he was apparently trying to wipe off the blood with a kitchen rag, dumping it into the water from the sink that was right under the window as it seemed. Hizashi’s thoughts were racing. What should he do? The most logical solution would be to get Shouta out of there. But what would Shouta think or do if he knew Hizashi had followed him and actually witnessed what just happened?

Hizashi shook his head forcefully. He could worry about that later. Shouta basically quit their friendship at school today already, so there was not really anything worse left that he could do.

When Hizashi wrapped up his mind, Shouta had turned away from the window and the discussion inside the house had picked up again, though not as loud as before. There was still a heated argument going on as far as Hizashi could tell when he went up to the front door to ring the doorbell.

The house went silent.

Hizashi rang the bell again.

There was no sound from inside, not even steps were to be heard. Apparently, everyone inside had frozen upon the sound of someone overhearing their argument. From where Hizashi stood, he also couldn’t see anyone in the window anymore either. He gulped but picked up ringing the bell again.

Again, there was no reaction to it, so he switched to his bare hands. He banged the door with his fist instead and started yelling too. “Shouta?! You in there?”, he asked loud and clear, also considering using his quirk a little to make sure he heard him. “Shouta, open up!!”

When the only thing that greeted him was a pulled apart curtain from one of the neighbours’ houses, he grew more desperate. “Come on, Shouta! Please!!” He was sure Shouta could hear the desperation seep into his voice.

Nothing moved inside though.

“Open up!! Hey, Shouta!!!”, he tried again, his voice almost begging now. “I saw the wound on your head!! You have to open this goddamn door right now!!!”

Still silence.

No matter for how long Hizashi went on with his banging, ringing the bell and yelling against the door, there was no reaction from inside. Hizashi banged his fist against the wood of the door one last time and leaned his forehead right next to it to catch his breath. He squeezed his eyes shut and felt little tears sting in the corner of his eyes as he clenched his teeth. His best friend was behind this door, being physically abused by supposedly his father and didn’t react to his tries to call out for him. Hizashi sniffed. Why did he have to become so emotional all the time?

“Shouta please, let me help you”, he almost whispered against the wood of the door, both of his fists on each side of his head.

A breeze rolled through the street, whirling some of the few leaves on the asphalt around in an almost lovely way. It seemed pure mockery in the current situation.

“SHOUTA!!!”, Hizashi yelled out again, this time with his quirk, making the door rumble and the house shake. He slammed his fists into the door and took a step back, taking another look at the window he saw Shouta in earlier. No one was there now, and the lights were off too.

His face was distorted in rage, his fist clenched and he had to snuffle as he pulled out his phone from his pocket. He dialled the number of the police and held the phone to his ear, never leaving the house and any possible movement out of his sight.

It felt like an eternity until someone finally picked up and Hizashi had to resist the urge to yell at the person on the phone to hurry the fuck up. Instead he cleared his throat to collect himself a little before he started explaining. “I suspect a case of severe child abuse, possible going for a few years already”, he explained to the woman on the phone. “I overhead yelling and the shattering of glass, and then I saw the boy living in this house trying to mop blood of his face with a kitchen rag.”

“Oh dear, we will initiate an investigation about this immediately. Can you tell me the address again?”, the woman asked politely and Hizashi could hear some papers rustling in the background as if she was getting ready to write down the address. He felt relief upon that and gladly told her the address of Shouta’s house.

And then everything stopped. “Oh … I’m terribly sorry”, the woman suddenly said upon hearing the address. “This is the address of Aizawa-san. We have him in our records already, because we got a large amount of false reports in the past. We checked on him several times and never found anything suspicious. He cares deeply for his son, he would not do such a thing.”

Hizashi thought he didn’t hear correctly. “…excuse me?”, he asked almost weakly. “I just heard him shattering something out of glass and saw Shouta with a bleeding wound on his head. Are you saying I’m imagining things?”

“I’m terribly sorry, as I said. But I have instructions from my superiors to not forward reports about this household any longer, as they have proven to be false accusations every time”, the woman replied. “Have a good day, dear.” With that, she hung up, leaving Hizashi in the cool breeze of the evening sun.

He held the phone to his ear for a while longer than necessary, still standing on Shouta’s doorstep, not quite processing what just happened. He reported a case of child abuse to the police and all the police did was to basically call him a liar?

He let his phone sink slowly, his eyes unfocused on the house in front of him. “Why …”, he breathed in disbelief, almost letting his phone slip out of his hands as the feeling of powerlessness overtook him. He gripped the phone tighter and lifted it again to check if he really called the right number, maybe he had called some imposter police precinct? Unfortunately, though, he really did dial the correct number, meaning the police didn’t want to do anything about this.

Hizashi didn’t even know if there was a possibility to report the police to someone, if there was a higher instance responsible for cases like this. Hizashi sniffed again and pressed his eyes shut.

“Fuck, Shouta!! Open up this goddamn door or I’ll have to come inside!!”, he shouted again, but this time it was really just a strangled sob, the tears running down his cheeks now. He felt so powerless in this very moment. He was supposed to become a hero in only a bit more than one and a half years, and yet he felt like a little child who couldn’t even help his best friend.

Hizashi went home when it was already dark. It felt almost automatically, he couldn’t even remember how he got home or when, just that he went to bed with his school uniform on and barely even managed to take off his aviators at least.

No one had bothered to open up the door he was banging against, and neither had any neighbour offered their help.

Hizashi had gone on auto-pilot at some point, exhausted from crying and yelling.

In the morning when the alarm clock went off, Hizashi felt like crap. At first he wasn’t sure if his memories about last night were just a dream or actual reality, but it all came back to him when he found himself still in his school uniform and his dirty shoes next to the bed. His phone wasn’t plugged in either, which he usually never forgot to do before bed.

He sat up immediately, jumped up to brush his teeth and put on a fresh shirt underneath his jacket, before running downstairs with his school bag in one hand, barely even greeting his parents when he grabbed a piece of bread and leaving the house in a hurry.

He would tell the teachers today and confront Shouta about it. Shouta would never miss a day at school, he even came to school when he was down with the flu and they had to forcefully send him home or else he would probably have infected the whole class. By now, it all made sense to Hizashi, because Shouta obviously didn’t want to stay home. He didn’t want to stay home because of his father. Hizashi clenched his teeth and balled his fists, trying to focus on what he had to do now.

Since it was way too early for anyone of the students to be at school already, even for Shouta, he went straight to the teacher’s lounge to ask if Paintdoll was already there. Luckily she was, although she didn’t look too happy to be pulled out of her morning routine, because she looked absolutely tired still and there was an almost full mug of black coffee in her hands when she came to the door where Hizashi waited for her. He couldn’t stand still and seemed pretty worked up from what she could see, apparently it was really important to him.

“What can I do for you, this early in the morning?”, she asked and it was obvious that she was trying to be friendly, but the tone she was using suggested otherwise.

Hizashi simply ignored her mood and went on with what he came to do. “SenseiShoutalivesinanabusivehousehold, we have to help!!”, he slurred all the words together in his urge and Paintdoll blinked a few times at him before she came to the conclusion that she didn’t understand a single thing of what he was saying.

“Excuse me, what?”, she asked. “Can you please repeat that slower?”

Hizashi sighed and pulled himself together again. “Shouta has these weird injuries every now and then, and I tried to confront him about them but he always refuses to talk about them properly”, Hizashi started to explain. “He always found lame excuses that didn’t suit him at all – like the sprained ankle yesterday, remember? He said he fell down the stairs out of clumsiness, and I didn’t believe him, so I followed him home.”

Paintdoll raised an eyebrow and opened her mouth to scold Hizashi for basically stalking Shouta home, but Hizashi just continued talking.

“I heard someone yelling and some glass shattering, and then Shouta appeared in the window with a bloody wound on the left side of his head! Blood ran down his face and he tried to mop it up with a kitchen rag”, Hizashi sounded frustrated and desperate as he explained. “When I tried to ring the doorbell and call out for him, everything went silent inside the house and no one responded to me. I even called the police, but they told me to let it slide because they know that Shouta’s dad is a good person.”

Paintdoll studied at him for a long moment, while Hizashi looked at her with a pained expression. He was panting slightly, he probably ran here to talk to her about this. Paintdoll sighed and closed her eyes, turning the mug in her hands as she spoke. “Listen, Yamada”, she began. She didn’t know how to tell him this, but since he was going to be a pro hero not so far in the future, he would have to face reality sooner or later. “When the police say that there is nothing, there most likely really is nothing.”

Hizashi froze upon her statement. He couldn’t believe this. He put all his remaining hope into his teacher, and her first words upon his explanation felt like a kick in the stomach. He had to open his mouth several times until he finally brought out a word. “Are you … calling me a liar too?”

“No, I’m not”, she disagreed and shook her head. “I’m considering the options. Before I form my opinion, I want to get an own overview of the situation. But right now – and I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Yamada – it could also be the try on revenge of a 16-year-old boy who can’t deal with the tantrum his best friend threw the day before.” Paintdoll looked at him almost apologetically as she saw his facial features change.

Hizashi had to take a deep and shaky breath upon her statement. His own homeroom teacher just said he made up the whole thing and did it because he was mad at Shouta. She didn’t believe him, even though she put it in different words. He trusted her, trusted that she would help him in this situation and all she did was telling him that he was lying? She put it in different words, but to him it seemed all the same.

His lower lip trembled as he looked up to her again, his eyes glassy and his face distorted in anger. “Thanks for your time”, he said as steady as possible in his emotional state. He turned around right after and walked away, picking up in pace steadily.

He just felt so powerless in this whole situation. What should he do? His best friend was being abused at home but refused to talk about it, the police didn’t do anything either and his teacher said she had to take a better look at the situation first.

“GOD FUCKING DAMMIT”, Hizashi yelled when he was running down the hall towards his classroom. He tore the door open and almost pulled it out of its hinges in the process, stomping back to his seat and throwing his stuff in the corner, letting himself fall on his chair and burying his head in his hands. A sob escaped his throat and he couldn’t even care less that he was openly crying in the classroom, as more and more of his classmates came in. Whenever someone tried to talk to him, he snapped at them or didn’t respond at all.

Paintdoll meanwhile sat in the teacher’s lounge, her thoughts still circling around what Hizashi told her just now. She actually wanted to enjoy a good cup of coffee before having to deal with her rascals, but right now with these thoughts about a possible abuse of one of her students in her head, the coffee didn’t seem appealing at all anymore.

Hizashi didn’t pull himself up when Paintdoll started the lesson. His eyes were rimmed red from crying and he sniffed occasionally, his head still lying down on the table. Just as Paintdoll wanted the class rep, which was Iida, to start going through the attendance list, the door slid open again to reveal Shouta.

“I’m sorry, I overslept”, he said in his typical monotonous voice, although much quieter than usual – Hizashi didn’t even notice him, because one of the usually tardy kids wasn’t here either and he just thought it was them who came in late again. Shouta was about to close the door again and walk to his desk, when Paintdoll stopped him.

There was a bandage around his head with a thick patch underneath, on the left side of his head.

“Aizawa”, she said suddenly, confusing the whole class with her action. Hizashi perked up at the name and his eyes widened upon seeing Shouta standing in front. “We’re stepping out for a moment. You too, Yamada.”

Shouta’s eyes widened upon Hizashi’s name and looked a lot like a trapped cat right now, his eyes darting between Hizashi and their teacher. He figured Hizashi had talked to her about yesterday, he had to, or otherwise Paintdoll wouldn’t react like this.

Shouta took a cautious step backwards, but Paintdoll didn’t seem hostile and he knew that he had nothing to fear of her. Actually, that is.

Hizashi wiped off his face with the tissue Iida had sneaked over, before walking to the front. He gave Shouta a determined look and probably didn’t look convincing with his puffy eyes, but he couldn’t care less right now.

The three of them stepped outside, Paintdoll closing the door behind them. “Aizawa, Yamada talked to me about what happened yesterday and the patch on your head leads me to believe his words”, she started, giving Hizashi a short sideglance before focusing back on Shouta.

All Yamada felt in that moment was relief. Real relief, relief that hopefully stayed, very much unlike the one that was crushed only a sentence later when he had called the police the day before.

“I have reason to believe that you’re living through physical abuse at home and it is my duty as your homeroom teacher and a pro hero, to investigate this case”, she explained and watched Shouta intently as she spoke. “Do you want to confirm or deny this theory?”

Shouta didn’t answer, his lips pressed together in a thin line, his eyes fixed on his teacher and occasionally straying over to Hizashi. He did look close to the verge of crying though, unlike Hizashi, whose eyes were still glassy.

“Well, it doesn’t matter if you say anything, I’m going to have a look at your living situation nonetheless”, she continued. Then she turned to Hizashi. “As for you, Yamada. I have to apologize for being sceptical. I’m taking your words seriously and will have a look at the case.”

Hizashi nodded, a smile forming on his face again among the sniffles. Usually he would have probably given back a smartass remark, but right now he was just glad to have found someone who believed him and also actually did something about it.

“You can take a few minutes out here to collect yourself, and then I want you to come back inside, Yamada. As for you, Aizawa, I want you to go to Recovery Girl to have her take a look on your head wound. Afterwards, I want you to wait in the teacher’s lounge until I’m done with this lesson, so we can talk.”

With that she went back inside the classroom, leaving the two boys outside alone.

They were silent for a few moments; the only audible sound was the muffled talking from inside the classroom and the occasional sniffle from Hizashi, still trying to get his emotions back under control. It was Shouta who broke the silence.

“You shouldn’t have done that”, he said calmly, but there was a waver in his voice as if he had to put in some effort to keep it steady. His gaze was directed at the floor and he was trembling, as Hizashi noticed at further inspection. Shouta’s eyes were shadowed by his bangs and his lower lip was shaking as he spoke. He clenched his fists when he lifted his glance, nothing but utter rage in it.

Hizashi was taken aback. Why would Shouta be this angry? He was getting help by a pro hero, who can get him out of there. This was good, right? “W-why?”, Hizashi asked, almost only a whisper.

“Because it is fucking none of your business!!!”, Shouta suddenly raised his voice and Hizashi flinched a step back upon this outburst. The voices inside the classroom died down too. “I didn’t ask for this and I told you yesterday to leave me the fuck alone! I can handle myself perfectly, so why can’t you dense idiot just keep your nose out of other people’s things?!”

Hizashi’s lips trembled as he tried to reply. “I just wanted to …”, he started. Help you? That’s what he wanted, but Shouta obviously didn’t want his help.

“Yeah, what did you want?”, Shouta snapped back before Hizashi could finish his sentence. “Get me out of there?” He sounded desperate and breathed heavily as he spoke, raising a hand to his head and letting his bangs hide his eyes once again. A single trail of tears rand own Shouta’s cheek and he wiped it away before Hizashi could even process that Shouta was actually crying in front of him. Stoic Shouta who never showed any emotion besides superiority and mock. His voice was barely above a whisper when he continued. “I know very well where I live, Hizashi, and what he is doing to me. But he is my father. I can’t leave him, he needs me, I am the only one he has left.”

Hizashi stared at him in shock, not knowing what to do or say. Shouta was standing in front of him, an emotional wreck and pissed off by him because he tried to help him. Partly, he understood what Shouta was trying to say. He somehow understood that he loved his father, despite the violence he brought up against him sometimes. That he wanted to stay with him and make sure he was okay, even if it meant to take a beating with glass shards involved every now and then. That he wanted to continue loving his father, although he was very well aware that it was self-destructive to stay in this household willingly.

“Leave me alone, Hizashi. I’m sick of you”, Shouta looked up from under his bangs, his eyes glistening with hurt and desperation, but also tiredness. He was tired of it all. Of the situation, of his family, of Hizashi. He didn’t know what would happen now after all, and it was all Hizashi’s fault for initiating this. Chances are that he would get taken away from home and put into a foster home, possibly even far away from here, so he couldn’t attend UA anymore. In fact, this was his greatest fear because connected to UA was his life-long dream of becoming a hero. If he had to leave now, there was no way he could become the hero he aspired to be. “I can’t stand seeing your goddamn every-so-happy attitude anymore, so please just shut your mouth and leave me alone.”

Hizashi didn’t move though. Instead, he collected himself and balled his fists, standing a bit straighter before he answered. He knew, what he did was right, despite what Shouta was throwing at his head now. It hurt, it hurt to be insulted like this by his best friend – was he still his best friend? For Hizashi, Shouta definitely was but the other way round, Hizashi doubted it highly. Right now, he didn’t even know if Shouta even thought of him as some low acquaintance, or more like a personal villain.

He knew it was right to report Shouta’s living circumstances to a higher level, to their teacher, who could actually do something about it, especially if even the police refuse to take action for whatever reason. He cleared his throat to make sure his voice was steady before speaking up again. “I’m not gonna apologize for what I did, because I did the right thing. I know I did. You need to get out of there, Shouta, and I’m not gonna sit by and watch when I know what is happening”, he said and continued without waiting for Shouta’s response. “I’m going to leave you alone, just as you wished, but not before I got you out of this misery you’re in.”

He gave Shouta a hard look, his mouth in a frown and his eyes glassy. He was on the verge of crying again, but he pulled himself together to stay strong now. Today he had cried enough already.

With that, he went back inside the classroom, ignoring the worried glances he got from his classmates and the almost inaudible sigh Paintdoll made when he walked past.

His decision of doing a heroic deed costed him his friendship with Shouta, and actually he couldn’t even come to hate himself for it, because he did the right thing. Sometimes, being a hero resulted in hurt, Hizashi figured, and his time to learn this fact had come a lot sooner as he anticipated.

Paintdoll used her status as a respected pro hero to start an investigation against Aizawa Kenma. She got herself a search warrant from the police precinct she usually worked together with the same day still, and visited the Aizawa household – unannounced, of course –, to have a look at the living situation first hand.

It turned out that Aizawa Kenma was a heavy alcoholic since about 10 years, a little after his financials got worse. There were various alcohol bottles distributed over the house, empty and also half-empty ones, there were small shards of glass littered over the floor as if some bottles were broken but no one bothered to clean the shards up. The only remotely clean and organized room she found was Shouta’s, containing only a bed and a desk with a lamp, and a trash can beneath. There wasn’t even a book shelf, instead all his materials for school were stacked upon each other in one corner of the room.

Paintdoll also found out that Shouta’s father had lost his job as an author and was charged with an horrendous sum of compensation for pain and suffering due to an accident Shouta caused right after he manifested his quirk. She figured that this was the start of his abusive behaviour towards Shouta and it proved to be true when she questioned the neighbours.

The most of them told her that Kenma was an uncomfortable person up until 10 years ago, because he seemed to support this villainous quirk his son developed. He changed for the better as soon as he saw the dangerous potential of Shouta’s quirk and they all got along much better. Shouta was seen less and less outside, much to their satisfaction, and whenever he was, they made sure to tell him to be obedient to his father, since he was the one who made it even possible for him to live in the first place. He should be grateful of what his father gave him instead of trying to leave this house by striving to become a hero.

Paintdoll had to seriously suppress the urge to punch them all into the face. To her, it seemed unbelievable how awful they could talk about the kid Shouta was back then. He was just a boy, a boy trying to learn how to control his quirk. There was no way he hid villainous intentions behind his actions, especially not considering the personality he had now. Yes, he was introverted and disliked talking to most people, but he aspired to be a hero and Paintdoll could see very well that Shouta was being honest about this dream.

The only person who seemed to give proper and unbiased information was a very old lady named Haneko, who lived only a few houses down the street. She told Paintdoll that Shouta used his quirk on her once on accident when he was about four years old, shortly after he got it, and made her drop her groceries by that, but helped her carry all her stuff to her house immediately. She told her that Shouta was a very bright boy even when he was little, he was smart and always laughing, always talking about his dream to become a hero.

“He was so endearing, the little Shouta-boy”, Haneko said and had to pick her handkerchief to dry the tears in her eyes as she talked. “It changed when that hero, some gummy man, came to our neighbourhood. Shouta accidentally activated his quirk, causing the hero to fall and injure his spine so he could never walk again. They pressed charges against Aizawa, which made Aizawa fall back into alcoholism.” She took a deep breath before she was able to pick up again. Paintdoll handed her the glass of water on the table and Haneko thanked her gratefully. Then she continued. “Since then I heard him yell at Shouta more frequently and also saw him slap the boy every now and then. Shouta shut himself off from the world from then on. He refused to talk to anyone and also rarely greeted on the street. He had bruises on arms and face from what I could see, but no one seemed to care.”

Paintdoll listened to the story and nodded every now and then, taking notes on her notepad for the report she was going to file. She clawed into the notepad and the knuckles of her hand she held the pen with turned white. It simply made her angry to hear these horrible things. “Did you try to contact the police about this?”, Paintdoll asked then as calmly as she could.

“Yes, I did several times”, Haneko answered with a nod. “At first they came around and had a look, but left soon after again, probably because Aizawa showed himself from his best side. At some point they stopped coming at all and simply told me they wouldn’t investigate in this case anymore because of all the false reports in the past.”

Paintdoll took a deep breath. This was exactly what Hizashi reported to her too, the police refused to take action because of misleading reports in the past. Before she could ask further, Haneko picked up again though.

“I investigated on this, actually”, she said, the sly smile of a mischievous old woman on her lips and Paintdoll couldn’t help but chuckle upon this a little. But the features of the old woman were soon turned into hopeless ones. “I found out, that Aizawa goes out gambling and drinking every week together with the chief of our precinct. He talked him into leaving him alone.”

Paintdoll’s eyes widened. “The chief of the police is working together with Aizawa?”, she repeated to make sure she heard correctly. Haneko nodded grimly.

That changed everything, that would make it much easier to get Shouta out of there. She would send a different police force to the house to have a look, and together with her own findings as well as the opinion of an independent police detective they would manage to free Shouta from his abusive household.

“You have my deepest gratitude, Haneko-san”, Paintdoll said when she got up, suddenly in a hurry to leave.

“Oh please, dear”, the old woman waved off and shook her head, giving Paintdoll a sympathetic smile. “Please help Shouta leave this place. The boy is destined for something bigger than being stuck in this hole here.”

This was the spark that started up the fire. Just as Paintdoll had anticipated, it was easy to convict Aizawa Kenma of child abuse and domestic violence, and the child protective services immediately withdrew custody of his son Shouta from him. They sent him into therapy instead of jail though, because the psychologist understood Kenma acted like this because he never really got over the death of his beloved wife, Shouta’s mother. It was the thing that started this downward spiral.

The chief of the local precinct in Shouta’s neighbourhood was let go on the spot, as well as three other officers who knew about the circumstances.

Just as Shouta feared, they wanted to put him into foster care, since none of his living relatives responded to the authorities’ calls, but Paintdoll worked against that. She had talked to the principal about this matter beforehand already, and they had decided to use UA’s and its teachers’ reputations to request temporary custody over Shouta until he turned 18. He would be provided with a small apartment near the school and Paintdoll would take over temporary custody as his guardian.

Shouta himself didn’t quite process what had happened until he stood alone inside his new one-room-apartment near the school grounds. He had a new home now, a tidy one, one without litter and clutter everywhere, with a clean bed, a clean kitchen and an actual bookshelf. Without someone who beat him with a whiskey bottle, rattled the ladder when he stood on it with a box cutter in his hand, or shoved him down the stairs in a rage fit.

It was true what Shouta said, he did love his father a lot and didn’t want to leave. It wasn’t because he didn’t see what his father did to him. He knew exactly that he was being emotionally and physically abused, victim to his father’s temper, but he was scared. Scared to see his father wither without him around taking care of him. Without Shouta, his father wouldn’t be able to live in his alcohol consummation and Shouta was incredibly afraid to lose him.

It put his mind to rest when he learned that his father was assigned to a capable therapist who should help him out of his misery over time. This was also the reason, the knowledge that his father was in capable hands now, why he could finally come to rest. Paintdoll was his new guardian for the next two and a half years until he turned 18, and he deep down, he was grateful for that. Thanks to her he was able to finish his studies at UA, become a hero and follow his dream. He knew she would only step in during legal emergencies, like when he needed the confirmation of his parents or guardian, but otherwise leave him alone. For him, nothing had changed for the worse but only for the better.

Except …

At night, when Shouta laid in his new bed for the first time, he stared at the ceiling and made a decision. It was not only Paintdoll’s doing that he was given the opportunity to be here in a safe environment now.

This night, Shouta fell asleep with the determination of apologizing profoundly to Yamada Hizashi. The first person who told him that his quirk was awesome. The first person who declared himself as his friend, not caring that Shouta’s introvert self was the complete opposite of his own extrovert one. And the first person who saw behind Shouta’s façade and refused to let go, even after Shouta snapped at him to leave him alone and insulted him with the worst thinkable names.

Yamada Hizashi was too good for Shouta and Shouta was well aware of it.

It was confirmed once more when Shouta walked up to Hizashi the next day with a pack of Hizashi’s favourite chocolates, handing them to him with trembling hands. He didn’t even come around to say the speech he had spent the night on preparing to profoundly apologize, when Hizashi already jumped up and pulled him in a tight hug.

Yamada Hizashi was too good for Shouta, and for once, Shouta was glad about this incredible stubbornness of Hizashi. Otherwise he would have been stuck in this household together with his abusive father, and would most likely also have lost his best friend for good.

Chapter Text

Ever since Hizashi saved Shouta from his abusive father and brought him into a safe environment, they spent as good as every free minute together.

It was mostly Hizashi’s doing that they were inseparable, but deep down, Shouta wouldn’t have wanted it otherwise. Hizashi has become a constant in his life, an anchor, someone he could rely on and therefore someone he never had before.

When he first met him at the sports festival, he disliked him because of his shining, loud and flashy personality. He preferred dark and quiet after all, the absolute opposite, and actually this hadn’t changed at all. Yet, Hizashi managed to slip into Shouta’s personal space without making him uncomfortable – it was quite the opposite, actually, because Shouta felt safe with him around.

If someone had told Shouta a year ago that he would prefer someone’s company over sitting alone in silence, he would have never believed them and called them ridiculous. But today, he spent almost any spare minute together with Hizashi, and sometimes by extension also with Iida or others of Hizashi’s friends. They sat together to study, sometimes at school and sometimes at Shouta’s new apartment. Sometimes they also went to Hizashi’s place and also his parents were very fond of Shouta, inviting him for dinner every time he was there. They always emphasized that Shouta is exactly what Hizashi needed, someone who pulls his head out of the clouds and keeps him down to earth. By telling so over dinner, they embarrassed Hizashi in the process and earned a rare and amused smirk from Shouta.

Aside from studying and the occasional sparring match, they also did the usual things together, things Shouta mostly never had done. He had always been alone after all, since his neighbours avoided him at all costs, he could never gather experiences like this.

They had sleepovers where they watched the worst horror movies in existence while sharing a blanket and lots of pillows, and eating popcorn out of a shared bowl. Shouta found out that Hizashi was a real scaredy-cat when it came to horror movies, but of course he would never admit that. Shouta was absolutely certain he saw Hizashi hide his face in the blanket during the scary part of the movie though.

Also, Shouta had no idea about video games and Hizashi was deeply shocked about this discovery. He was honestly alarmed that Shouta had no idea what Mario Kart was and immediately decided they need to introduce a tradition of gaming nights, where he could teach Shouta a few of the most common video games. They spent evenings together playing, never paying attention to the time, and at some point Shouta – as the quick learner he was – had become so good at playing, that he bested Hizashi at most of the games. The only exception where rhythmic music games and Shouta figured no one could ever beat Hizashi at those.

They also spent afternoons at the mall every now and then, getting ice cream, strolling past the viewing windows and talking about anything and everything. Despite Shouta’s dislike for the general public, he didn’t mind all these people at the mall too much because of Hizashi’s presence.

By now, it was safe to say that Shouta was seriously grateful for what Hizashi had done for him, for helping him out of his old life and even joining him into his new one. Especially after how Shouta had treated him, he always thought he wouldn’t deserve someone like Hizashi in his life, but Hizashi seemed to just outright refuse to leave.

And by now, Shouta wouldn’t want to miss their friendship anymore and will protect it at any costs.

That was also the reason why he kept closing up his growing feelings for the loud boy.

Shouta noticed around the end of their second year that he definitely felt more for Hizashi than he would like to admit.

He liked spending time together, talking for hours – although it mostly resulted in HIzashi talking and Shouta just listening – and he enjoyed it especially when they were spending a lazy afternoon in one of their bedrooms while both of them minded their own business.

And sometimes during these afternoons, when Hizashi had his headphones on to listen to his music, he would put his head in Shouta’s lap, slip one headphone off his ear and ramble about the music he was currently listening to. To Shouta, hearing Hizashi’s enthusiastic voice and happy rambling was even better than any music.

At first Shouta didn’t want to acknowledge that there might be more.

It became even more evident though when he felt that treacherous inner anger rising whenever a girl was talking to Hizashi. It made Shouta’s blood boil in a way he couldn’t handle, let alone describe. He could handle it when a girl initiates a talk with Hizashi that was only about school. About notes from certain subjects, some help in English or things of that sort. But what he couldn’t handle at all was when a girl tried to hit on Hizashi, tried to ask him out.

Shouta always averted his gaze then, tried to occupy himself with something different and hoped no one would notice the sudden tenseness in his body. Thankfully that seemed the case, mostly because even though Shouta was more included into their community in class by now, he was still only very rarely the center of attention.

Yet, Shouta’s stomach twisted every time Hizashi talked to a girl about anything else than school, and he hated the feeling. He wanted it to stop, he was perfectly happy with their friendship as it was, so why was he feeling this way? Feeling jealous of anyone who could potentially snatch Hizashi away from under his nose?

Much to Shouta’s relief Hizashi had turned down every girl who tried to ask him out, but it still didn’t solve the problem of this indescribable jealousy burning inside him.

Shouta was a throughout rational person. He analyzed every situation level-headed and in a logical way, his solutions were practical and simple, and in the end also successful. But this, this was something different on a whole new level.

Of course, Shouta knew what it meant. Of course, Shouta was aware that there might be more, something that goes beyond normal friendship, but he didn’t want to believe it. There was no way he could have developed a crush on Hizashi, he never had a crush on anyone before and he had never even spent a single thought on falling in love in the first place. It just didn’t make sense to him why it should have happened now. As a rational person, it was nothing but confusing to Shouta. Emotions weren’t logical. They couldn’t be explained easily and this is what set Shouta on edge.

But there was one more thing that set Shouta in pure frustration.

If it was just a crush, he could think it over. In fact, interpersonal attraction is just a certain reaction of hormones, right? If two persons click, their chemistry is right, or at least that’s what people say. So there might be a scientific explanation for falling in love, which suit Shouta’s sense of logic.

The problem about this situation was that Hizashi was male.

Shouta had a crush on his best friend and therefore bore, by definition, homosexual feelings towards another boy.

In Shouta’s childhood he learned early on that people liked to talk behind other people’s back. Due to his quirk, he was victim to his neighbour’s badmouthing since he was a child and hence knew the procedure very well. People talk about everything, like to speak ill of someone as soon as they make a simple mistake, tend to gang up on someone when they feel superior.

Shouta was only a little child and he learned about the real circumstances only years later, but it still left him scarred up to today.

There was a man in this neighbourhood, a young guy who was maybe around 25 years old, from what Shouta could recall. He was a rather average person, not really outstanding, but he was one of the few persons who didn’t participate in ganging up on Shouta because of his quirk. He didn’t step in for him either, but at least he didn’t add up to the insults. That he was keeping out of it was probably also the reason why Shouta remembered him in the first place.

From one day to the other he was gone.

Shouta didn’t understand at his young age and his father didn’t want to explain either, avoiding the questions by giving dissatisfactory answers, or giving him a beating for asking so many unnecessary things. It wasn’t until a few years later, that Shouta found out what had really happened.

The man was gay. He wasn’t open about it, but it somehow leaked nonetheless that another man who visited him every now and then, was not just any friend, but actually his boyfriend. That was when it started.

People began to badmouth him, talk behind his back. They called him faggot, started to smear homophobic paroles along his fence and on the walls of his house, killed his cat and put it on his doorstep, its pearly-white fur dirtied with its blood, sporting the letters “GAY”. He was a disgrace of the human race and didn’t deserve to live.

One day they found him dead in his house.

The police investigated and asked the neighbours if anyone had seen anything, but due to the lack of clues, they concluded it was suicide. But Shouta didn’t believe so. He knew people were laughing about it, and he thought he could also remember someone talking about having “finally gotten rid of that bastard”, which is why he was the full opinion that someone killed the man because of his sexual orientation.

This experience sat deep within Shouta’s consciousness and he always thought he had forgotten about it already, but when he discovered his feelings for Hizashi, it surfaced all at once again.

If these memories taught him one thing, then it was to keep his emotions to himself. Do not talk about the growing feelings for Hizashi, to not let anyone notice and most of all, to not let Hizashi notice. Because from what he learned from this incident in his childhood, then it was that being homosexual was a sin. People will start hating you if you harboured feelings for a person of the same gender, they will start avoiding and badmouth you. Shouta didn’t think that he would get killed for it, because he knew very well that his former neighbourhood had an extraordinary high crime rate, but he would most certainly lose the few and little things he had socially built up since he entered UA.

That’s why he kept his feelings to himself, not letting anyone in on this secret.

It was hard, because Hizashi knew Shouta well enough by now to notice almost immediately when something was wrong. He could read Shouta almost like a book, and he also knew – much to Shouta’s dismay – how to get him to tell him what bothered him.

There was a second reason why Shouta didn’t want his secrets to spill though, and this was more of a logical nature. It just didn’t make sense to tell anyone when there is no chance of hope anyway.

It was impossible that Hizashi would return his feelings. Shouta was a guy after all, and even more, he was an antisocial person who liked to stay hidden in the shadows with as little social interaction as possible, while Hizashi thrived in the spotlight, loved to perform in front of an audience and provide entertainment to a large amount of people. They were the complete opposites to each other, and to Shouta it was still a mystery how they could even hold up the friendship they do.

But it apparently worked, and Shouta decided against questioning it further. It was more than he had even hoped for, more than he deserved in his opinion. He learned from an early age onwards that he had to work for things he wanted to have and achieve. Everything he had achieved up to now was the result of long and hard work, that is what he got taught from experience.

He didn’t deserve the love of another person yet, let alone from a person who already did so much for him. It just didn’t feel right, to first get a special friendship thrown at his head without working for it – working against it even, considering he pushed Hizashi away –, and then falling in love. Even if it wasn’t for another guy, Shouta just didn’t feel like anyone could like him enough to call it love, or something close to that.

But love in general was a topic he would tackle when school was over. First, he had to prove that he could become a real hero by graduating from UA, and then he could take on the next step.

It was the end of their time together at UA, their graduation and their start into the next section of their lives.

On this last day, UA always celebrates the graduation of their students by organizing a party for them. There was lots of food, cakes, other sweets and in the end, there will also be fireworks.

All students from the third years were there, hero courses, general education, business, support class, everyone celebrated together for making it this far and spent one last day at school as a student. When they left, it would be the start into adulthood for them.

Shouta hated crowds and that didn’t change for the graduation party. He stood aside form the mobs of people in a corner, where he had a good overview over the place. He was basically hiding behind a potted plant, so no one would come up talking to him, but he could still have a good view of the people.

Shouta always liked to know what was going on, being in possession of all available information of a situation and hence being able to form a proper strategy for any sort of scenario. It was just his mind that couldn’t rest without knowledge, it was how he was raised. By now, now that he had friends he cared for, he liked to use this information to protect them with everything within his power.

Yet, right now, he was certain he wouldn’t need this overview, but he still couldn’t turn it off completely. So, he stood partially hidden behind this potted plant with a glass of orange juice, watching over his classmates talking to each other.

He would like to trick himself into thinking he was watching over all of his classmates, because although most of them never got into his inner circle of friends – which consisted out of 3 persons at most, namely Hizashi, Iida and the girl from one class above them who graduated a year ago, Kayama Nemuri –, he still would say that his classmates were closer to him any other people.

While his mind tried to convince himself that he was watching all of his classmates, in fact, his eyes were glued to Hizashi. He hid it by looking down to his orange juice every now and then and watching the reactions of those Hizashi was animatedly talking with, but he just couldn’t stop. Hizashi had become the center of his life and he didn’t know what to do after this day, when they would most likely part ways and won’t see each other every day at school anymore. He was sure, Hizashi would insist on meeting up several times per week, as if nothing had changed, but Shouta knew that Hizashi was too energetic, too visionary and too focused on his public career to stay in this city. He would probably leave at some point for pursuing his dreams of something bigger. He wanted to build up his persona as Present Mic after all, being a hero in the spotlight, would love to have his own radio show and be well-known by everyone around the world. It’s the exact opposite of what Shouta wants to do with his life, and it was scaring him. He always knew they would drift apart at some point, but now that this point has approached closer, it made Shouta feel uneasy.

But Shouta would pull through. He would continue watching Hizashi from afar – it’s what he did right now, what he did in the past and what he will do in the future.

It didn’t take too long until Hizashi joined Shouta and urged him to leave his spot behind the plant at least for a while. While Hizashi with him, Shouta could deal with masses of people, at least as long as he focused on Hizashi alone. And right now, he took his social anxiety as an excuse to stand a little closer to him than usual.

“These past three years were so awesome”, Hizashi rambled, gesturing with his hands and almost spilling the juice – strawberry, Shouta guessed – in the cup in his hands. He sported his trademark grin as he looked over to the rest of his classmates where he just came from. “We learned so much, grew stronger and are now ready to be heroes! Can you believe that, Shouta?? We’ll be heroes!!”

Hizashi laughed happily and Shouta couldn’t help but crack a fond smile upon Hizashi’s outburst of happiness. It always made his stomach flutter, whenever Hizashi was happy.

Hizashi took a sip of his juice as he rambled on. How he loved the time at UA, how he enjoyed spending time with everyone. How much he looked forward to getting into an agency as someone’s sidekick, and somewhen in the future being able to open up his own agency. How he couldn’t wait to start his very own radio show, for which he had already miles of lists of songs to play.

It made Shouta happy to see Hizashi beaming like this, looking forward to the future that was about to come. But it also laid a dark feeling over Shouta’s happiness, kind of nipping it in the bud. The changes that might come with the future could also mean their separation and while Shouta always thought he had actually come to peace with his thought already, he apparently hadn’t.

Subconsciously Shouta started fidgeting with the cup in his hands and lowered his gaze to the floor, the glad smile on his face turned into a sad one. He tried to keep up the façade for Hizashi, but it was hard.

And because he didn’t want to destroy Hizashi’s cheerfulness, he decided to simply try harder. He looked up again and before he could fix his smile, he got suddenly pulled closer by Hizashi when the latter put an arm around Shouta.

For a moment, Shouta’s brain stopped functioning. It wasn’t unusual that Hizashi pulled him close or hugged him all of a sudden, Shouta was used to that already – although it took quite a while to get accustomed to it –, but right now he wasn’t prepared because he was in thoughts. He had to fight off a blush when Hizashi bumped his head against Shouta’s, still wearing the same toothy grin as always, the same as he showed Shouta on the very first day they met at the sports festival.

“Don’t worry, Shouta!”, Hizashi grinned at him. “You won’t get rid of me that easily!! I’ll always be there for you, even if it’s just for ordering pizza together at 2am because it’s free delivery then!!”

And with that, Shouta couldn’t help but chuckle. “Right”, he said, with the same smile from before back on his lips. Hizashi always managed to cheer him up with simple gestures or words, and most likely even unintentionally.

Hizashi indeed was the sun that Shouta had always needed in his life.

At the closure of the graduation party, there would be fireworks every year. Their principal held the usual motivational speech upon the achievements and bright futures of the graduates, and then stated the begin of said annual fireworks. Right after, the first rocket already shot into the sky, illuminating it with beautiful colours.

Somewhere at the side of the mob of people, who were mostly watching the beautifully illuminated night-sky, stood Shouta next to Hizashi and had his eyes lifted upwards as well. Seeing fireworks up close, right above their heads, was a really different experience than watching it on the TV or from afar. For a moment, he even forgot who he was standing here with.

That was, until Hizashi reached over to tap Shouta on the shoulder.

The fireworks were so loud that Shouta almost didn’t understand what Hizashi was saying, but since Hizashi leaned in close enough to his ear, he could make it out. And it made his stomach twist.

“What would you say if I told you that I had a crush on someone?”

Shouta’s body went tense and he gulped, trying to keep the suddenly sick feeling of his stomach in control. He clenched his fists and pressed his eyes shut – thankfully Hizashi wasn’t looking since he was still next to his ear waiting for a response. Shouta opened his eyes again and took a deep breath, which Hizashi most likely didn’t notice thanks to the fireworks.

It took all his willpower to keep up the usual façade, to keep his voice steady and put in his usual demeanour as he answered. “I would support you of course, who do you take me for”, Shouta pressed out, hoping that Hizashi didn’t notice the effort he had to put into these few words. He even brought a slight smile to his face, although he was sure it looked horribly strained. “I’m right behind you on this, no matter who it is.”

Whoever the lucky girl was, Shouta would try to accept her as Hizashi’s love interest and potential girlfriend. He owed Hizashi, he owed him so much for getting him out of his father’s house and for not pushing him away after Shouta was such an ass to him. It was his duty as a best friend, to support Hizashi’s decisions. It would mean emotional pain and suffering for himself, he knew that, he had already seen how much it hurt to only see a girl hitting on Hizashi, even though he turned her down in the end anyway. Knowing Hizashi himself harboured feelings for someone made it almost unbearable and Shouta knew, it would only get worse once he learned about who Hizashi had feelings for.

But Shouta would pull through, for Hizashi’s sake.

Hizashi pulled away from him and suddenly looked a bit unsure, his eyes not quite meeting Shouta’s as he looked for some words to say. His grin had shrunk to a smile, an insecure one at that, which made Shouta worry for a second.

“What if …. What if it was you?”, Hizashi said after a while, fidgeting with the hem of his sleeve and nervously biting his lower lip when he finally met Shouta’s eyes again.

Shouta almost missed it under the loud fireworks. He blinked for a moment, keeping his gaze on Hizashi’s eyes, trying to recall whether Hizashi had spoken just now or not. He could just as well just imagined these words and he wouldn’t even be surprised.

When he saw the hopeful glister in Hizashi’s eyes, waiting for an answer, ´he concluded that he hadn’t just imagined it. Hizashi just told him he liked him. He liked his best friend, Aizawa Shouta, another boy and someone with an absolute contrasting personality to his own.

Shouta’s eyes were wide and his hands started to tremble as he tried to come up with a response, but his brain just stopped working. It repeated the same things over and over again. Did he really hear right just now? This … this simply wasn’t possible. There was no way Hizashi just said that he had a crush on him, it just couldn’t be.

Hizashi scratched his neck and laughed awkwardly into the silence between them, completely tuning out the fireworks and cheers of the people around them who didn’t notice their little scene. Shouta’s reaction seemed pretty obvious to him, gaping at him with wide eyes and no words to be spoken. “You know what, nevermind, I just-“, he started, but Shouta interrupted him as if he didn’t even listen what he said.

“But I’m a guy”, he said almost inaudibly and if Hizashi didn’t know how to read lips, he probably would have missed it.

“So what?”, Hizashi shook his head, giving him a smirk, but it wavered at what came next.

“It’s wrong”, Shouta continued as if he didn’t notice Hizashi’s nonchalant tone. He lowered his glance, focusing on the floor. His fists were trembling at his side, his eyes were closed and he had to take a few deep breaths. “It’s … it’s filthy, it’s wrong, it’s a sin and people die because of it. It’s …” He repeated what was ingrained in his brain from childhood and bit his lower lip, swallowing hard before he wanted to continue, but–.

“I understand.”

Shouta’s eyes flew open again and he looked up at Hizashi, who gave him a sad smile. The happiness from before was completely gone from his features and he was obviously fighting with the tears that threatened to fall, but managed to keep his composure. He gulped before he spoke, probably because his voice would have forsaken him otherwise. “If that’s how you see it, then I understand”, he said, his voice almost breaking at some point, obviously having put effort into keeping it as steady as he could.

Shouta’s eyes widened in terror upon what Hizashi said. That’s … no, that’s not what he meant, not at all! “I don’t …”, Shouta started but Hizashi just shook his head.

“You don’t have to say more, I guess I should have seen it coming that there was no hope in this anyway”, he laughed humourlessly and looked to the floor. He closed his eyes, the sad smile still on his face, but Shouta could swear he heard a small sob.

The fireworks above their heads suddenly didn’t seem so bright anymore.

“No”, Shouta suddenly said a bit louder, drowning out the sound of the fireworks and making Hizashi tense up. “No, I didn’t– … I was–  … It’s what I was taught.” Shouta tried to put it in words, but it was hard. His lower lip trembled, seeing Hizashi on the verge of crying because of him – again – was too much for him. He gulped and grabbed Hizashi’s wrist, making the latter jump in surprise of the sudden contact. Shouta never touched him unless it was necessary, he wasn’t prepared for it now.

Shouta pulled him away from the mob of people, away from the direct sounds of the fireworks, somewhere quieter where they could talk. He pulled him behind the gym, where the light was darker and the sounds of the fireworks a bit quieter.

Hizashi had his look glued to the floor still, sniffling every now and then. “So?”, he asked with a weak voice, obviously expecting an answer.

Shouta took a deep and shaky breath to calm himself, before he picked up again where he left off. “I don’t think that way … you see, when I was little, a man in my neighbourhood was murdered for being gay”, he explained, not able to meet Hizashi’s eyes as he explained, looking over to where they came from, where their former classmates had fun spending this last evening on school grounds together. Shouta bit his lower lips as he took a moment to think about how to continue. His fists were clenched when he tried to come up with words. “I was taught that being homosexual was a crime that had to be punished. That gay people are a disgrace. But I don’t think like this!” Shouta brought his gaze back to Hizashi’s, hoping his explanation had cleared up this misunderstanding.

Hizashi blinked at him and sniffed as he listened. He didn’t say anything though, which made Shouta insecure.

“So … I don’t … I don’t believe that way”, Shouta then finally concluded, emphasizing his disagreement to his former neighbourhood’s consent once again, and averted his gaze to the side. He couldn’t keep looking into Hizashi’s mesmerizing green eyes that were way too glossy from tears. He gulped once again. “I mean … I don’t– …” He just couldn’t find the right words. “I–…”

“It’s okay. I’m okay with that”, Hizashi interrupted him and for some reason it took an incredible load off Shouta’s shoulders. “You know, I wasn’t sure if I should even come out of the closet about this crush.” Hizashi’s smile was back, even though it seemed insecure and he overall still didn’t look happy. “I don’t want to lose this friendship we have, or make things weird between us … but I guess, I fucked that up big time, heh.” He chuckled and scratched the back of his head, sniffling once more, looking down to the floor again.

What was he talking about? What was Hizashi talking about, losing their friendship? That he fucked up? None of this happened, and it terrified Shouta that Hizashi thought like this.

“No!”, he almost yelled at the blonde, startling him in the process. Shouta cleared his throat and continued in a quieter voice. “…you didn’t. You … it’s … uh.” He looked for the right words, the words he always wanted to tell Hizashi but never dared to. He had locked them deep inside his consciousness, somewhere he wouldn’t have access to them because he always thought he would never need them anyway. And now that he had the chance to tell him, he just couldn’t get them off his tongue. “I…”

“As long as we’ll stay friends as always, I’m perfectly fine”, Hizashi said quietly, a timid smile on his face. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve and sniffled once more when he nodded at Shouta reassuringly. But when Shouta didn’t respond, he tilted his head and pursed his lips in confusion. “Shouta?”

“WhatifIlikedyoutoo”, Shouta murmured just when a rocket exploded in the sky, drowning out all sound he made.

Hizashi looked at him in confusion, trying to recall how Shouta’s lips moved so he could rely on reading lips again, but due to the murmur it was impossible. “Sorry, what did you say? I didn’t catch it.”

It was like a switch snapped inside of Shouta. “WHAT IF I LIKED YOU TOO?!”, he suddenly yelled at the blonde, way too loud for a normal conversation and most importantly, very much unlike him. Immediately after that, Shouta tensed up and took a step back in shock of his own loud voice though, when he realized what he just yelled at him. He stared at Hizashi with wide eyes, clearing his throat once more to regain his normal voice, immediately averting his gaze down to the floor. “Err, I meant … well, I meant what I said, but I didn’t mean to say it that loud…”

Shouta bit his lower lip and started to fidget with his sleeve for a moment, before he dared to look up to Hizashi again. What he found was his friend, beaming at him and looking like he would jump at him any second, judging from the way he started to close the distance between them.

“Hey no, I still don’t like touchin–“, Shouta started, but was pulled into a bone-crushing hug all of a sudden.

“Too bad, you have to live with it now! And tomorrow and the day after too!! And in a year and two and three and ten!!!”, Hizashi exclaimed, his voice wavering and forming into sobs again, very much audible to Shouta since he was directly next to his ear. “I just … I can’t believe this is happening!! I’m so happy, Shouta!!!”

Hizashi sniffled and cried into Shouta’s shoulder, trembling as he held onto him, and for once, Shouta didn’t feel bad about it. Instead, as he regained feeling in his rigid body, he awkwardly put his arms around Hizashi’s body to pull him even closer. He buried his head in Hizashi’s neck, hiding the wide and happy smile on his face, and maybe also a few tears on his own.

“… me too”, Shouta murmured as he closed his eyes. “Me too.”