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“Put it back, Sami-chan. We still have to finish the box at home.” From behind her, Tsuyu heard a surprised squeak, followed by a thunderous crash as what sounded like the entire cereal aisle collapsed in a heap by their shopping cart. Sighing, she turned around. “Kero. Sami-chan . . .”
“I was putting it back like you said!” cried her brother from beneath a dozen boxes of Mighty Morsels. With a grunt, two boxes slid off the top, and out popped a head of dark green hair and sullen eyes. “It’s not my fault it was structurally unsound.”
Poorly suppressed giggling emanated from the shopping cart as their sister leaned over the edge to delight in Samidare’s misfortune. “You’re just clumsy,” Satsuki laughed. “Next time don’t try to sneak so many boxes at once.” Still giggling, she climbed out of the cart and began to unbury him one box at a time.
Samidare grumbled something under his breath as Tsuyu joined the rescue effort. “What was that?” she asked, reaching up to return a box to the top shelf.
“I said it was on sale . . .”
“Just because it’s on sale doesn’t mean we have to buy it. We still have over half the box left to finish at home.”
“Yeah, Sami, just because it’s on sale—”
“Okay, okay, I get it! Just help me up, then.”
Several boxes of cereal later, the trio wound their way through the stationary aisle in search of the ever-elusive college-ruled notebooks. For whatever reason, Satsuki’s new teacher was very particular about how far apart the lines on their paper could be, and Tsuyu had given her last spare notebook to Midoriya when he ran out of space in his latest hero journal. It was about time they re-stocked on school supplies.
Something tugged at her sleeve. Tsuyu looked up from a pack of pastel-colored sticky notes to meet her brother’s bored gaze. “Can I go look at the video games, Tsu? I already have all my things.”
Tsuyu put the sticky notes down to take in her surroundings. Several feet away, Satsuki was gushing over a pack of glow-in-the-dark highlighters, and at the end of the aisle was a couple and their kid judging various pens. Beyond them was the video game aisle, easily discernible with its bright colors and promotional displays. A cartoonish All Might grinned back at her, holding a PS Vita in his cardboard hands.
Nearby and safe. Satisfied, she asked, “Do you have your phone?”
Samidare nodded.
“Okay. If you’re done before we get there, let us know where you’re going.”
Samidare’s eyes lit up in delight. “Thanks, Sis!” Without another word, he took off, and Tsuyu continued browsing the sticky notes.
“Sis, look!” Satsuki held up a little green notebook and beamed. “There’s frogs on it!”
Armed with four new notebooks, two packs of pencils and pens, and a set of high-quality erasers, they headed to the video game aisle, but when they got there, Samidare was nowhere to be seen.
Ages ago, that might’ve been enough to send her into a panic, but years of experience with her siblings’ misadventures taught her it was probably only worth a vague irritation. “Satsuki-chan,” Tsuyu commented, surveying the aisle, “why carry a phone if you don’t call or text anyone with it?”
Her sister shrugged, looking as unsurprised as Tsuyu felt. “Maybe he went back to the cereal aisle?”
It was certainly a possibility, considering their brother’s weakness for all things sweet, but just then, a soft voice piped up from the aisle to their right. “Shh, it’s okay. Don’t cry, okay? I’m sure your dad’s looking all over for you. Do you want help looking for him?”
Tsuyu shared a puzzled look with her sister, who seemed to share her incredulity. Even as a child, Samidare tended to avoid all kinds of emotionally charged situations, be it a sad movie or his baby sister’s wailing. Usually Tsuyu ended up being the one comforting their sister or putting on another movie.
Maybe he was finally growing up? She felt . . . odd. Proud, certainly, but also something murkier.
She shook her head to clear her thoughts before taking her sister’s hand and making their way to the adjacent aisle. There they found Samidare crouched beside a teary little girl in a red frock and black cat-themed shoes. The sight of her younger brother voluntarily comforting a small child—and a stranger at that—would have been enough to shock her into silence on a normal day, but what stopped her cold now was the child’s curiously white hair and the tiniest bit of horn poking out from beneath it.
But that didn’t make any sense, because they were miles away from U.A., and Eri-chan never went anywhere without a chaperone.
No sooner had the thought crossed her mind than the child glanced up and met Tsuyu’s astonished gaze. All doubt fled her mind as red eyes widened in recognition, and the girl abandoned Samidare’s valiant attempts at comfort to hurtle towards Tsuyu and throw her arms around her legs.
“Asu—Tsu—Tsuyu-san!” Eri wailed, burying her face into Tsuyu’s jeans.
Tsuyu folded her legs beneath her and pulled Eri in for a proper hug. “Hello, Eri-chan,” she said gently, patting her back. “I haven’t seen you in a while. What’s the matter?” She tried to ignore the frantic pounding of blood in her ears in case Eri was saying something, but this was . . . concerning. Very concerning. She’d never seen Eri this upset before. Why was she here alone? Where was Aizawa-sensei?
Were they in danger?
In her arms, Eri was quivering like a leaf, but her sobs had dulled to quiet sniffles, and soon enough, the story began to fall from her lips in halting, uneven bursts.
“We were—we were look—looking for sh-shoes an-and they didn’t h-have the—the ones—we saw at h-h-home—s-so Aiz-Aizawa-san told me to w-wait there. I-I—waited—for—for a long time, but he didn’t—he d-did—didn’t—c-come back! So I went—to look for-or him, and I thought—I thought I f-found him, but it was someone—else, and now—now I don’t know—I d-don’t—!”
As Eri dissolved into tears again, Tsuyu held her tighter, rubbing her back. Internally, she practically melted in relief.
At last, a normal problem.
“Shh, it’s okay,” she murmured, pressing chin into Eri’s hair. “When they were younger, Sami-chan and Satsuki-chan used to get lost so often I considered tying them to my backpack. But I always found them in the end.” Standing up, she lifted Eri onto her hip and let Samidare take over cart duty. “Why don’t we head back to the shoe section? Aizawa-sensei might have come back by now.”
The first few minutes of their journey across the store passed in relative silence, save for occasional sniffles from their new passenger, but it ended once Satsuki tired of rearranging the cart’s contents.
“Hey Eri-chan,” she piped up, setting two jars of strawberry jam aside. “How d’you know my sister?”
“From school,” Tsuyu responded. Normally she’d elaborate, but between balancing Eri and texting her classmates to see if anyone had kept Aizawa’s number, she didn’t dare distract herself further.
Satsuki gasped, cupping her cheeks. “No way! Eri-chan, you’re in high school?!”
Eri let out a surprised squeak, lifting her head to stare at Satsuki. Tsuyu laughed, adjusting her grip so Eri could face her properly. “No, but she does live there,” Tsuyu said.
“Oh.” Satsuki began to fiddle with the can of tomatoes again. “What grade are you in then?”
Eri dropped her gaze to the floor. “Um . . .”
“Not everyone goes to school like we do, Satsuki-chan,” Tsuyu intervened. “Eri-chan just started homeschooling a few months ago.”
“What’s homeschooling?”
“It means you have school at home,” Samidare replied.
As they turned into the shoe aisle, Tsuyu began looking for any evidence of a disgruntled, scruffy underground hero outside his element. She never considered her teacher as someone who frequented the supermarket, especially considering how little stock he put into personal upkeep, but maybe taking care of Eri forced him to take better care of himself, too.
“All your classes are at home,” Samidare continued, “and teachers come to you or your parents teach you.”
Satsuki’s eyes widened with each word. “You can do that? Learn at home instead of school?”
“I thought you liked school, Satsuki-chan. Would you rather stay at home?”
Satsuki’s cheeks puffed up. “I was just asking.”
Tsuyu paused her intent search to flash an apologetic smile at her sister. “I know, I was just teasing.”
Satsuki pouted, but let the subject drop. She shifted her eyes over to Eri’s. “So what’s homeschooling like, Eri-chan?”
“Uh . . .” She looked at Tsuyu again, then towards the cart, tugging lightly at her sleeve.
Tsuyu tilted her head. “Do you want to sit in the cart, Eri-chan? It might be more comfortable for you two to talk that way.”
After a brief hesitation, Eri nodded shyly. Settled in beside Satsuki, she began speaking about the U.A. teachers and life at school. Satsuki looked absolutely enraptured, following every statement with two questions. Eri, though a bit overwhelmed at first, slowly began to relax, even asking Satsuki about her own school. Satsuki responded enthusiastically, and soon the two were chattering like old friends.
“I don’t think your teacher is here,” whispered Samidare.
“I know,” Tsuyu responded quietly. “I don’t know where else he might be, though. I didn’t even know he went grocery shopping until today.”
“Hey, why did we stop?” Two pairs of curious eyes peered back at them from the shopping cart.
“Er, no reason.” She hazarded a quick glance at Eri and felt her heart plummet when her lip wobbled. “We just thought—if we left, Aizawa-sensei probably left to look elsewhere, too, so . . .”
“We decided it’d be better to just go to the service counter and ask,” Samidare interjected. “Save everyone a lot of trouble.”
“Oh, okay.” Satisfied with his explanation, Satsuki picked up where she’d left off and began telling Eri about her favorite shows. Eri still looked uneasy, but let herself be dragged into conversation regardless.
Tsuyu took over cart-pushing duty, allowing her brother to saunter beside them. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she murmured out of the corner of her mouth. “Quick thinking, Sami-chan.”
He just shrugged, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Not really. That’s where you always told us to go if we got separated from you. Figured it’d be simpler than a wild goose chase.”
Tsuyu blinked, her gait slowing imperceptibly. “Oh. Right.” It had been so long since those days, when her greatest worries were losing her siblings at the store or if their parents would be home in time for dinner. The memory made her throat feel funny.
As they approached the service counter, Tsuyu saw a disheveled man in a dark shirt and pants speaking agitatedly to the person at the counter. Drawing closer, she made out a faint but familiar scar beneath his right eye. Where the sight once brought her nothing but a curdling sense of guilt, it now filled her with unspeakable relief. She pushed the cart faster, calling out to him. “Sensei!”
Aizawa glanced up at the interruption. His eyes widened as they landed on Eri, and he walked hurriedly towards them.
“Sensei, we found—”
Wordlessly, he scooped Eri out of the cart and crushed her against his chest, burying his nose in her hair. Eri broke into quiet sniffles again, pressing her face into Aizawa’s shoulder as he whispered quietly to her. Given their proximity, Tsuyu couldn’t help but overhear.
“Do you have any idea how worried I was when I came back and you weren’t there?” her teacher murmured. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“I’m s-s-sorry,” Eri mumbled miserably. “I d-didn’t—mean to. But I thought— I th-thought you—left—left me b-be-behind . . .”
Aizawa’s mouth twitched, and Tsuyu felt her own eyes begin to sting. “Shh, I’m not mad. I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to be gone that long. I won’t do that again.” He patted her back, pressing his lips to her head. “But it’s okay now, I’ve got you.”
Tsuyu swallowed against whatever emotion was welling in her throat and averted her eyes. Vulnerability wasn’t something Aizawa liked to broadcast; he had a reputation to uphold and took a savage pleasure in maintaining it. It just went to show how rattled he was now.
She tried to think of something to distract her siblings from the heartfelt reunion, but when she turned to face them, Samidare was already regaling their sister with an exaggerated recollection of the time he ran into his math teacher at the fish market. As Satsuki cackled in the shopping cart, Samidare glanced up Tsuyu, blinking at her in understanding before returning to his tale.
Between the hectic workload and living at school, she’d hardly seen her siblings in months. Despite that, it seemed they had adapted with ease, learning how to take care of each other in her absence.
It was a strange realization.
A few minutes later, Aizawa let Eri down and turned to face them. Taking her hand in his, he bowed, Eri quickly following suit.
“Thank you for looking after her,” he said gruffly. “Sorry for the trouble.”
Samidare blinked in surprise, bowing in return. “Uh, no problem, sir!”
“Of course, Sensei,” she responded. “Anytime.”
Aizawa turned and walked Eri through the automated doors, smiling at something she was saying. Tsuyu watched them go, raising a hand in farewell as Eri swivelled around to wave at them.
Those two had come a long way, too.
“Your teacher’s her dad?” her sister commented. “They look nothing alike.”
“You don’t have to be related to someone for them to be your dad,” replied Samidare.
Oh, if only Aizawa could hear them now.
As they stood there, Tsuyu rested one hand on Samidare’s head, bobbing it side to side. Samidare scowled beneath her hand, but relented. “What’s this for? I’m not a little kid,” he grumbled.
Tsuyu smiled down at him, ruffling his hair. In a couple years, she’d probably have to smile up at him. “Nothing,” she said. “I’m just glad to know you’ll be okay without me.”
Samidare scoffed, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Wh—of course we’ll be okay,” he muttered. “Did you think we picked up nothing this whole time you’ve been taking care of us?” He hesitated, then ducked his head lower. His cheeks looked faintly pink. “But . . . don’t . . . we still need you for stuff. I don’t know how to cook Satsuki’s favorite pasta, and no one’s taught me how to drive yet, so don’t get caught up in anything dumb.”
Some unnamed emotion swelled in her throat, making it hard to breathe. It made her chest feel tight and her eyes sting, but it filled her with warmth from head to toe. Tsuyu couldn’t help but chuckle, nuzzling her cheek into her brother’s hair. He swatted her away with an indignant yelp, cheeks flaming. “Don’t worry, Sami-chan,” she croaked. “I’ve got a lot of people looking out for me.”