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1. Hey, I Just Met You
The concealer was starting to get cakey on his skin already despite the black eye still peeking through from underneath. Hizashi frowned, desperately using a scrap of toilet paper to blend it in better. If he rubbed his other eye hard enough and didn’t look at anyone for too long, he thought he might be able to just pass it off as tiredness. He gingerly slid his glasses on, wincing as they sat a little too heavily on his swollen nose. It would have been simpler to just wear his contacts today, but Ayako and her cronies had made sure that wasn’t an option. If he hadn’t known for a fact that no one in his class knew he was taking the UA entrance exam, he would have suspected the sabotage was intentional
Thinking of Ayako reminded Hizashi to check his time. He swore, grabbing his jacket off the back of the bathroom door and rushing down the hall. He still had almost fifteen minutes to make his own train, plenty of time to walk the block and a half to the station even if he dawdled. More important, though, and currently more urgent, was the less than five minutes he had before Ayako’s train would bring her downtown for her and her friends’ usual Saturday shopping trip. He would just make it past her if he ran there, starting now.
“Hang on there, kiddo,” his mother said, leaning out of the kitchen as he tried to speed past. Hizashi sighed but obeyed, grinning at a spot above her head to keep his eye out of direct view.
“Gotta go, no time for breakfast, sorry,” he said, inching backward down the hall. His mother followed him, eyebrow raised but smiling.
“And whose fault is that, Mr. Hair?” she teased, reaching up to bat at the carefully-styled wave of hair sticking up over his forehead. “Didja remember your inhaler?”
“Yes’m.”
“And the shipping list? Your dad and I both have to work late, so you kids are on food duty tonight,” his mother went on.
“And the backup list in case the first one gets lost, and the cash you gave me last night,” Hizashi confirmed. He checked his watch and grimaced as he saw almost all of his lead time had already evaporated. “Ma, I gotta go …” he said, a whine creeping into his voice as he tried to escape.
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” his mother said, waving a dismissive hand. “Go be a hero, kiddo.” She stood on tiptoe to give him a kiss on the forehead, pushing a breakfast bar into his hand as she did. Hizashi grinned at her and spared a second to give her a quick hug.
“Thanks, Ma.”
“Good luck, Zashi!” his older sister Haruko called to him from the kitchen table, his other three siblings chorusing in agreement. Hizashi flashed them all a double thumbs-up as he kicked on his shoes and grabbed his bag, then sprinted out the door.
Unless something had gone wrong, and Hizashi wasn’t betting his luck was that good, Ayako’s train would have already arrived to inflict her upon his day. He ducked behind an information kiosk, poking his head out just enough to scan the crowd. He spotted her telltale red hair ribbon in the distance, bobbing between him and the turnstiles to his platform. It was almost lucky she was such a showoff and used her Quirk to make herself float just slightly above everyone around her, he thought. Hizashi edged around the side of the kiosk, trying to gauge if he would have enough of an opening to just slip past. Ayako had met up with someone already and was chatting away, stubbornly refusing to move out of his way. Hizashi checked the time, let out another sharp swear, and broke into an ungainly crouch-run. He glanced up and felt a jolt as Ayako’s eyes met his and she started to smile. Thankfully, he was already close enough to the turnstile to risk making a break for it. He slapped his metro pass down on the scanner but just vaulted over the gate instead of waiting for it to wheeze open. By the time he heard Ayako’s voice chiming out behind him he was already booking it down the thoroughfare to his platform.
Phase one complete , Hizashi thought as he slid onto the train. Now on to phase two.
He shuffled through the cars, finding an empty seat near the back of the last compartment. Hizashi tried his best to sit still for the duration of the short ride, but his leg kept bouncing anyway. It felt crazy that after so many all-nighters and cram sessions and trips to the gym to undo the damage of years of skipped P.E. classes that he was finally on his way to being a hero. A real, honest-to-goodness, trained-in-UA-High’s-Hero-Course hero. Hizashi barely restrained the urge to crow out excitedly right there and then.
Save it for the exam, Yamada, don’t burn out before you even get there , he reminded himself sternly. He clasped his hands together tightly in his lap and held his bag between his knees, the handle slapping against the side as his knee continued to vibrate.
The boy across the aisle from him looked up from his book at the noise. He looked around for the source, narrowed eyes falling on Hizashi as he found it. The boy looked about Hizashi’s age with an unbrushed mop of wavy dark hair falling mostly in his face and very dark eyes. He was wearing the uniform for one of the other local schools; Hizashi wondered if he was headed to UA for the entrance exam too. Hizashi lifted a hand to wave, but the boy just rolled his eyes and got up, slouching off through the door to the next compartment. Hizashi frowned, then shrugged to himself. His loss anyway. Nothing was going to ruin Hizashi’s mood at this point, not even some rude sourpuss on the train.
Hizashi was a mess of anticipation and nerves as he walked up the sidewalk from the station to the glossy, towering UA building. The outburst he’d tamped down on the train was growing out of control in his chest, making his breath go short. One little show of excitement wouldn’t hurt anything, he reasoned, especially out here in the open where it could dissipate with no one around. He glanced around to see if there were any adults around to catch him. Grinning to himself, Hizashi pulled in a breath as deep as he could and let it out in a triumphant “ YEAH! ” at the top of his lungs.
About halfway through the shout came a strange new feeling in his throat. It almost felt like someone had put their hand on his voicebox and was very gently squeezing it to make him be quiet. Hizashi choked, coughed, and put a hand to his throat. The last thing he needed was to have somehow bellowed himself into an asthma attack right before the exam. The strange thing was, this had come with none of the panic-inducing chest compression or interrupted breaths his attacks usually started as; it was just his voice that had been choked off. Someone came around from behind him and Hizashi turned to see the boy from the train walking past. His eyes glowed an unsettling red as they locked on Hizashi and his mussed hair seemed to have doubled in volume, floating around his head as if caught in a private breeze. Hizashi thought it made the boy look like a tired, irritable Studio Ghibli character. As their eyes met the boy’s hair flattened and his eyes stopped glowing; at the same time the squeezing feeling in Hizashi’s throat let up.
“I--wh--” Hizashi stammered, rubbing his neck.
“It’s very early, and you’re very loud,” the boy told him flatly. Before Hizashi could say anything else, the boy turned away and continued up the path to the school, shoulders hunched and hands crammed in his pockets.
Hizashi watched him go, terrified and a little starstruck at the same time. He’d known there were going to be students here with incredibly powerful Quirks, but he’d never even heard of someone having the power to turn Quirks off like that. He grinned wide, excitement roaring back into him in a flash. This was going to be amazing.
2. And This Is Crazy
Hizashi rocked back and forth on his heels, eyes scanning the students trickling out of the school. Near the back of the group he finally caught sight of his quarry. “Oi! Aizawa!” he called, hurrying over to meet the other boy at the bottom of the stairs.
The boy from the train had seemed to be missing from the simulation groups for the entrance exam, but Hizashi had been delighted to find him on the train wearing a UA uniform on the first day of classes. Hizashi hadn’t caught more than a passing glimpse of him since, supposing that with the kind of competition the Hero Course exam netted he must have been placed in class 1-B. It had taken some tracking down to find anyone who could give him any information on the boy; unsurprisingly Nemuri Kayama had known his name (she knew something about practically everyone, it was why she’d been a shoe-in for class rep) but even she hadn’t been able to come up with much else about him.
Aizawa looked up as if surprised to hear his own name, then sank back into deadpan disinterest as he saw who it was. He didn’t slow to let Hizashi catch up, making Hizashi jog awkwardly to fall into step with him.
“I haven’t seen you around much, I wanted to say hi,” Hizashi said, doing his best to bulldoze through the tension between them. “I’m Hizashi Yamada, by the way, I didn’t get to say it before.” He extended a hand and Aizawa ignored it.
“Shouta Aizawa. Apparently you already know that,” he muttered in return.
“Yeah, kinda,” Hizashi said with a laugh. “You’re kind of a mysterious guy, I had to ask like five people before anyone even knew who I was talking about, and nobody knew what class you were in. You’re in 1-B, though, right? You have to be, I’m pretty dense but I don’t think I’d miss you being in my class this whole ti--”
“I’m not in the Hero Course,” Aizawa said, his emotionless answer bringing Hizashi’s chattering to a screeching halt.
Hizashi stared at him. “Huh?”
“I’m in 1-C, if you have to know,” Aizawa said.
“Why are you in General Studies?” Hizashi said, bewildered. Aizawa looked at him for the first time, a cold, searching look like he was trying to decide if Hizashi was joking or not.
“Because I took the entrance exam to get into General Studies,” he said, sounding like he didn’t understand why he had to spell it out for Hizashi.
“Why didn’t you take the Hero exam?”
“I wasn’t allowed to,” Aizawa said, one shoulder raising and slumping in a half-shrug. “I’m a liability to the other students taking the exam. Besides, robots don’t have Quirks. It would be pointless.” He said it like he was reciting the list from memory. Hizashi frowned, wondering how many times Aizawa had been forced to swallow down that nonsense.
“But...but your Quirk’s so cool! ” he protested, throwing his hands wide in exasperation.
Aizawa’s body went rigid as he walked, hands clenching into visible fists in his pockets. Hizashi opened his mouth to backtrack and apologize for whatever he’d said wrong, but Aizawa got there first.
“Don’t you have friends you can go annoy or something?” Aizawa asked, voice razor-edged.
Before Hizashi could protest that making friends was what he’d been trying to do, Aizawa doubled his speed away from him. Hizashi fell behind before he could even try to catch up and stopped short on the sidewalk. He sighed, shoulders sinking as he watched the back of Aizawa’s head stalk away from him.
3. But Here’s My Number
Aizawa didn’t just have an incredible Quirk, he was also a brilliant fighter. Hizashi had known from the moment the official had mentioned the option of moving to the Hero Course as part of winning the Sports Festival that Aizawa would have eyes for the gold medal and nothing less. He might have acted nonchalant about not getting a chance at the entrance exam when they’d talked but there was no mistaking the resolve in those eyes.
Over the course of their fight Hizashi had been able to pick up a few ideas about how Aizawa’s Quirk did and didn’t work. Aizawa seemed to have to keep his eyes on his target, but actual eye contact wasn’t required from the other person. Blinking or looking away broke the connection, and in those moments Aizawa favored close combat to keep Hizashi on the back foot. He seemed to be trying as hard as he could to herd Hizashi closer and closer to the boundary line, boxing him in to keep him from regaining ground. The few times Hizashi managed to do more than flail and run, Aizawa had turned it back on him almost as quickly. He dodged around the crater Hizashi had shouted into the arena floor at his feet, grabbing a few small chunks of concrete as he went. The concrete went into the tied-off sleeves of his gym uniform jacket to form a kind of makeshift bolas Aizawa promptly chucked at Hizashi’s legs. Even if Hizashi had been trying to win he wasn’t sure he could have counteracted all the things Aizawa was throwing at him.
He was definitely trying to make it look like he was trying to win, and Aizawa’s relentless fighting made that a lot simpler. Hizashi had considered just conceding before the match started and letting Aizawa go on to the second bracket match fresh. He’d had fun in the first two rounds of the Sports Festival, but there wasn’t really a reason for him to win the whole thing outside of bragging rights. When he’d seen Aizawa’s face light up with animated determination Hizashi had never seen out of him before, though, he’d known Aizawa would never accept the forfeit. He wanted to fight for the win and Hizashi wanted him to have it.
Aizawa came up beside Hizashi when he wasn’t paying attention, his weighted jacket swinging in his fist. Hizashi barely dodged the first swipe at his shins, feet scrabbling over the loose concrete and kicking up dust in his wake. He wished he’d thought ahead about where he’d blasted out chunks of the arena. Trying to outrun Aizawa was hard enough without having to dodge his own rubble in the process. He heard Aizawa let out a bitten-off curse behind him and the stranglehold he had on Hizashi’s voice snapped away. Hizashi looked back to see Aizawa had been closer than he thought and had gotten a face full of dust as he ran. Aizawa rubbed at the grit in his eyes with one hand as the other made another attempt at Hizashi’s legs. A sudden idea hit Hizashi and he seized on it. The throw should have swung wide with plenty of time for Hizashi to get out of the way, barely skimming his leg and sliding uselessly across the ground. Instead of dodging, however, he took that little bit too long to get out of the way. The jacket bolas hit him square in the shins, bulldozing him to the ground and across the boundary line in a tangled heap. The claxon sounded, signalling the end of the match.
“Ring out! Victory: Aizawa!”
The stands when wild, cheering and shouting as Aizawa’s scowling picture filled the jumbotron screens. Aizawa’s face was just as cloudy in person as he came over to retrieve his jacket. Without even looking at Hizashi he jerked it free and stomped off toward the tunnel that lead back to the waiting rooms. Hizashi struggled to his feet and jogged after him, wincing at the bruises he could already feel blooming on his legs.
“Hey, Aizawa, wait up!” he called. “Good fight, man, I thought I almost had you for a second there, but--”
Almost too fast to see, Aizawa whipped around and grabbed Hizashi by the collar of his windbreaker. Hizashi let out a squeak of protest as he was slammed up against the wall of the tunnel.
“What is your problem? ” Aizawa snarled.
“I-I don’t--” Hizashi stammered, panic shorting out his brain.
“You knew I was distracted. You took a dive. Why? ” Aizawa asked through gritted teeth. His eyes were red-raw and damp; Hizashi wasn’t sure if it was from the fight or something else. Hizashi hesitated, feeling his face flush. He’d thought Aizawa would be too distracted to notice but he supposed he shouldn’t have expected to be so lucky.
“Y-You want to be a hero too,” Hizashi said weakly, “so you have to win.”
For the first time since Hizashi had known him, Aizawa looked genuinely shaken. His eyes went wide and he blinked a few times as if he wasn’t sure how to process what he’d been told. Almost as quickly, though, his eyes narrowed again and his jaw went tight.
“I can do this on my own,” he spat. “I don’t need your pity.” He punctuated the final word by slamming Hizashi into the wall again. Aizawa ripped his hands away and stormed off, head down and shoulders tightly hunched.
Hizashi called after him to wait, hoping he could explain it better somehow, some way that wouldn’t make Aizawa angry with him. The other boy was gone before the words came to him. Eyes burning and a new ache growing in the pit of his stomach, Hizashi lashed out, his fist connecting hard with the tunnel wall.
4. So Call Me (out) Maybe
“He’s eating by himself again.”
Hizashi didn’t bother following Nemuri’s eye line as she said it; he already knew who she was talking about.
“Shame,” he muttered flatly. Nemuri arched an eyebrow at him, frowning.
“Weren’t you trying to be besties with him like a week ago?” she asked. “This seems like a good opportunity to sweep him off his feet.”
Hizashi snorted. If only seeing Aizawa once in a while had been disappointing, having him around constantly was intolerable. After he’d joined 1-A it turned out the only open space to add a desk was in the back row of the room, right next to Hizashi. Hizashi thought at first that it might be an opportunity to patch up the hard feelings from the Sports Festival, but Aizawa made it clear he wanted none of it. He completely ignored Hizashi’s existence unless there was something biting he could add to the conversation, after which he would promptly withdraw again.
“Some people don’t need friends,” Hizashi said, raising his voice enough that he knew Aizawa would hear as they passed. “After all, it’s hard to live up to the standards of someone so socially inept they take kindness as a personal insult.” The conversations around them fell silent, and Hizashi knew Aizawa must be looking at him.
“Big words coming from someone who expects everyone to love them automatically just because they can’t stand not being the center of attention,” Aizawa replied coolly.
“At least I’m not some gloomy tryhard who only keeps quiet so no one finds out I don’t have anything worthwhile to say!” Hizashi shot back, rounding on him. He had barely noticed his Quirk triggering out of control, but his last few words were choked down to a strangled croak as Aizawa’s eyes flashed red.
“At least I don’t have to use my Quirk as a crutch every time I decide to open my mouth,” Aizawa said, sneering at him. “If your opinions are such an embarrassment to you that you can’t say them without help, maybe you should try not having them.”
Embarrassment . The word rattled around the sudden stark quiet inside Hizashi’s head.
“Good going, Mount Embarrassment, you’ve reached a new peak!” Ayako’s voice, sugar sweet and mocking as she held his test paper out of reach.
“You’d think his parents would just keep him at home another year. A child with such an out-of-control Quirk is...well. I can’t imagine dealing with that kind of embarrassment in public all the time.” His kindergarten teacher, talking to her aide when she thought they were all napping.
“You can’t even stand up for yourself, you’re such a crybaby!”
“Good old Mount Embarrassment, crumbles the second anyone gets tough with him!” His classmates jeering laughter as he tried not to cry after Ayako spread her rotten nickname for him around the entire school.
Embarrassment.
“Both of you cut it out!” Nemuri said, but Hizashi barely heard her over the furious ringing in his ears. He felt his lunch tray drop out of his hands a moment before he vaulted over the table, throwing himself at Aizawa.
For the second time in knowing him, Hizashi managed to catch Aizawa off his guard. Both of them slammed hard into the floor. Hizashi grabbed Aizawa’s collar in one hand and punched him in the face with the other. He managed two solid if badly-aimed shots to Aizawa’s nose and cheekbone before Aizawa had time to retaliate. Aizawa brought his knee up, hitting Hizashi hard in the ribs and knocking him back. Both took a beat to catch their breath before springing at one another again. Hizashi caught a sharp elbow to the face, feeling his teeth cut into his lip. He drove his fist into the side of Aizawa’s neck and had reared back to aim again at his solar plexus when a sudden narcotic drowsiness came over him. He looked up to Nemuri standing over them with her sleeves rolled up and an ominous look on her face. Falling back, Hizashi had the sudden panicked thought that they were probably going to call his parents about this before he passed out.
They had, in fact, called his parents about it. Hizashi woke up in the school infirmary and was informed almost immediately by Recovery Girl that his mother was already there, talking to the principal down the hall. Hizashi dragged himself upright, burying his face in his hands and wishing he could be anywhere else in the universe right now. Aizawa was already awake and sitting on the cot across from him, eyes cast down at his bruised left hand as he slowly flexed it. Recovery Girl looked between the two of them and clicked her tongue, muttering something about teenage hormones as she bustled away.
The door to the infirmary snapped open, framing Hizashi’s mother as she stood on the threshold. She strode in and up to him, her face a thundercloud of restrained fury. Hizashi grimaced, wincing as his face repaid him with a sharp twinge.
“Don’t give me that look, young man,” his mother fumed. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to explain that you have to leave in the middle of a meeting to go pick up your teenage son from school because he’s been suspended for fighting?”
Embarrassment , echoed the back of his mind. Hizashi tried to console himself that at least his stupid impulsiveness hadn’t gotten him expelled. He stood up, finding new aches as he did. “‘M sorry, Ma,” he mumbled, not looking at her.
“Oh, I bet you are!” his mother said. “And you can tell your father that too when we all talk about this tonight, along with just what in the hell you were thinking! Who raised you like this, Hizashi? You aren’t the only one who made sacrifices to get you in here. Your father and I were willing to overlook the fights in middle school because we knew you’d get a new start here--”
“Ma,” Hizashi broke in, trying to interrupt before she decided to spill his entire life story to the room.
“--and back then we thought it was just you defending yourself against bullies, which is understandable, but now you’re not just getting in fights, you’re starting them--”
“ Ma! ” Hizashi barked desperately. His mother paused in her tirade, shocked by his tone. “Can we talk about this somewhere else, please?” Hizashi said, giving her a meaningful look. His mother seemed to take notice of the other people in the room for the first time and sighed, softening.
“C’mon. Let’s get you home,” she said, putting an arm around his shoulders and walking him out. Hizashi followed at a tired shuffle, feeling Aizawa’s eyes on him every step of the way.
+1. Before I Met You, I Missed You So Bad
Hizashi trudged home, music cranked full blast to chase back thoughts of what his parents would say when they saw the flunked quiz in his hand. So much for English being his strongest subject, Hizashi thought bitterly as the paper flashed its accusatory 30% up at him. Having an American mother was great if you were just trying to speak English; it lost it novelty, though, when all of her answers to complicated grammar questions were some variation on “I dunno, hon, I think English just does that.”
All of his grades had been on a downslide recently if he was being honest. Concentration had never been his strong suit and having to sit by Aizawa just made things worse. After their scuffle in the lunch room Aizawa had gone back to pretending Hizashi didn’t exist, only this time he’d also decided to forgo the snarky commentary. The complete radio silence set Hizashi’s teeth on edge and occupied so much of his brain it felt like there wasn’t room for anything else.
Proving the point, Hizashi felt his foot catch on something and he went sprawling forward before he could catch himself. His glasses and headphones skittered off ahead of him. As he tried to get up to reach them someone daintily stepped on him, one foot in the middle of his back and the other on the back of his neck, kicking him back down onto the ground.
“Oh, I’m sorry , Hizashi! I didn’t see you there!”
A shot of cold fear raced up Hizashi’s spine at the sound of Ayako’s singsong voice above him. He pulled himself up, trying to scramble to his feet before she got a chance for a second attack. As he reached his hands and knees, however, a strange paralysis took over his limbs, cementing him to the ground. He could see Ayako hovering a few feet away, sneering down at the test paper he’d dropped in the fall.
“Wow, here I thought you were smarter than me,” she said. The cluster of kids behind her laughed as she held the paper out for them to see. “I was feeling so sorry for my poor little self, even if I am at a great school, making great new friends like Hebiko here,” Ayako added, hanging affectionately off the shoulder of a short girl with a wide, leering smile who was staring at Hizashi with unblinking eyes. Hizashi wondered with she was the one who had him frozen. “But then there’s you, moping around with your big dumb headphones and bad grades all by yourself. I didn’t think Mount Embarrassment could get any higher, but here you are, huh?”
The others laughed again. Hizashi ground his teeth, feeling his face burn. He tried to tell Ayako to take her flunkies and buzz off, but whatever Quirk had him stuck seemed to have cemented his jaws together as well.
“I mean, I thought at least I’d get to meet some of your fancy new UA friends when I ran into you next,” Ayako said, crossing her arms across her chest. “Unless… oh gosh, no. Hizashi, I’m sorry, are you all alone because you don’t have any?” she added, hands covering her mouth in mock horror.
“It’s probably these stupid headphones,” one of the other girls said, picking them up off the ground. “They make you look antisocial, no wonder no one wants to talk to you.” She held the headphones by the speakers, one in each hand, and made to twist them in opposite directions.
Hizashi screamed inside his head for her to stop, anything but those. The headphones might have been clunky and kind of old, but they had been a gift from his older sisters to celebrate his acceptance to UA. It wasn’t surprising they would go after his prized possessions first but he would have rathered they break his hands than those headphones.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
The quiet deadpan voice came from behind him, startling everyone. The paralysis shot out of Hizashi’s limbs in a hot surge of returned feeling. He looked up just as Aizawa drew level with him. The other boy’s eyes glowed like embers in a brazier and his hair lazily whipped against his face as he stared down Ayako and the others. Aizawa calmly held out a hand to the girl holding Hizashi’s headphones. The girl looked from him to Ayako, all bravado lost. Ayako scowled poisonously at Aizawa.
“Give them to him, Mimi,” Ayako said, rolling her eyes. She turned a shiny plastic smile on Hizashi. “We should get going anyway. See you around, Hizashi.”
“I wouldn’t do that either,” Aizawa said, his tone coldly conversational. Ayako sneered back at him.
“What ever ,” she spat. She turned on her heel and stalked away. The other girl slammed Hizashi’s headphones into Aizawa’s hand before following in her wake with the others.
Hizashi staggered to his feet. Shame, gratitude, and most of all confusion churned in his stomach as Aizawa turned to give back his blessedly unbroken headphones. Hizashi mumbled his thanks, looping them around his neck and collecting his glasses and the badly-trampled quiz. He half-expected Aizawa to lope off without another word, the bizarre good deed completed. Instead, he waited for Hizashi to collect himself and walked at Hizashi’s pace down the sidewalk to the train station. Hizashi wanted to ask how Aizawa had known he was in trouble and, more importantly, why he’d cared enough to step in. There didn’t seem to be a way to phrase it without sounding stupid or ungrateful, so they just sat in silence.
Finally as the two of them exited the downtown station he got up the guts to mumble, “Pretty pathetic, huh?”
“You’re telling me,” Aizawa scoffed almost immediately. Hizashi winced. Even if he’d invited the roasting, he hadn’t expected Aizawa to agree quite that readily. “I mean, they went to the trouble of stalking you from the school gate to the station all week, and then all they did was call you a stupid name and make fun of your grades,” Aizawa went on, rolling his eyes. “With that much planning you’d think they’d at least mug you or steal your shoes or something. People like that are the worst. Too cowardly to be heroes and too stupid to even be good villains. No potential whatsoever.”
Hizashi stared at him, taken aback all over again. He was surprised that Aizawa had apparently been watching them watch him long enough to know they’d followed him all the way from UA. More surprising, though, was the expansive, sarcastic way Aizawa dismissed them as the useless ones rather than him. “Y-yeah,” Hizashi said, trying to sound like that was what he’d actually meant. “Totally.”
“This is you, right?” Aizawa asked, gesturing down Hizashi’s street. Hizashi nodded, wondering how he’d known that. “I’m a couple blocks up that way,” Aizawa said, pointing up the main street. “Anyone else tries to hassle you, just belt a couple bars of...Bon Jovi or whatever and I’ll come back.”
Hizashi let out a noise that was half scoff, half shocked laugh. “I listen to Bowie , thank you very much,” he said. Aizawa shrugged one shoulder.
“Same diff.”
“Uh, big diff.”
“Fine, whatever. Stop attracting attention from people who want to kick your ass and we won’t have to fight about it next time, deal?” Aizawa’s voice had its usual razor-sharp sardonic edge, but Hizashi saw the corner of his mouth curling up into what might have been an actual smile. He grinned back.
“Deal,” he said.
Aizawa waved as he turned to walk away. “See you around.”
“Bye!” Hizashi couldn’t help getting a little too loud as he returned the goodbye, a bright flash of excitement settling in his chest. He saw Aizawa shaking his head at him, but could have sworn he was laughing as he did.