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Hitsohi’s old declaration to the hero course that he wasn’t there to make friends replayed in his head as he sat down next to Kaminari for lunch.
It was cringey, really.
He’d been so sure he wouldn’t get sucked into it all. The hero class were supposed to be ruthless competitors, each man for their own, willing to step on each other to get to their goal. Their cheery family-like vibe was surely nothing more than a façade to make them marketable.
Yet, here he was. Second week of his second year of UA. Sitting opposite Kirishima who Hitoshi couldn’t ever imagine being dishonest about how much love he had for his friends.
Bakugou sat next to Kirishima, yelling at Mina for even daring to suggest that the answer to some math question was pi over 3.
Mina had taken Hitsohi by surprise when he first talked to her. She was… friendly. In a way that didn’t make him feel uncomfortable. Talking to her gave him whiplash, and so did their first hand-to-hand combat session (her idea).
Sero was a smiler. A good egg. Hitoshi learned the other evening that Sero’s first act of heroism had been when he was seven and tried to save a kitten stuck on the top branches of a tree. Unfortunately, after climbing up, he couldn’t get down either.
“Then it was your first act of attempted heroism.” Kaminari had pointed out, laughing.
Hitoshi glanced at Kaminari, now agreeing that he also got pi over 3 for that math question, so maybe Bakugou was wrong, for once.
He still hadn’t found an opportunity to thank Kaminari for what he said during his exam to join the hero course. But that was ok. He was fine with just hanging around him until he found an opportunity. He had time.
“Oh, Jirou! You haven’t sat with us in ages!” Mina squealed, and Hitoshi tore his eyes away to see Jirou in the formerly vacant seat next to him.
Hitoshi and Jirou already had tickets to see a band they both liked next month. He wasn’t sure how that happened so fast.
“Stop it, it’s been a week.” Jirou shot back with a smile.
“So are you sitting with us because Momo busy with some class prez stuff again?” Kaminari asked. “Or is she in a classical mood?”
Jirou put her hands up in mock surrender.
“The latter. She wants some personal time with the grand piano. The piece she wants to play has no bass so I wasn’t invited.”
“What’s the piece?” Kirshima asked.
Jirou paused for a bit and tilted her head.
“Nuvole Bianche, I think? Don’t even think that counts as classical.” Jirou concluded with a shrug.
Hitoshi decided that yes, he was missing something here.
“You can hear it? From here?” He asked. He knew full well that the music rooms were on the other side of the school, and even that would be competing against the loud buzz of the cafeteria. Was her quirk that powerful?
Jirou blinked at him.
“Oh, right. Momo’s my – uh – soulmate. When she gets a song stuck in her head, it gets stuck in mine, too. And vice versa.”
Oh.
A soulmate thing.
Hitsohi internally scolded himself for accidentally bringing the topic up, but then again, it was going to come up at some point. Especially with Bakugou and Kirishima right in front of him, who were so obviously soulmates that Hitsohi would cry for them if it turned out they weren’t.
“When we found out we were always humming the same things it was like, amazing, but then she scolded me for my death metal phase two years ago.” Jirou continued when Hitoshi didn’t reply, and he appreciated it.
“And you still won’t tell us what her guilty pleasure music is.” Sero added.
Hitoshi sat back and listened as the group continued chatting. Mina brought up at some point that she still had to wait seven years before she met her soulmate. A countdown, probably. Kirishima said that red was still his favourite colour, even after sampling all the other colours. Bakugou argued that orange, specifically the colour of his explosions, was cooler.
“Hey, Sero,” Kaminari said, looking up from his fidgeting hands, “Isn’t it a beautiful day to have an invisible soulmate connection?”
Hitoshi sat up abruptly, staring at him.
“Simply a gorgeous day. Love not knowing what the weather’s gonna be tomorrow, as well.” Sero agreed, with a different smile from his usual one.
… both of them?
“Hang on – invisible connections are supposed to be rare.” Hitoshi interjected. “like, as rare as some of the rarer soulmate connections.”
“Yeah, two people from one class. It’s nice not to be the only one.” Kaminari replied, grinning sheepishly.
Hitoshi took a deep breath.
“Make that three. Weather’s shit here, though.”
Kaminari raised his eyebrows at him while Sero promptly slapped him on the back and welcomed him to their ‘club’.
None of them prodded Hitoshi about whether he’d tried harder to find a soulmate mark on his body (he had). None of them asked him if he’d made sure to check his mirror everyday, or if he was sure he’d never heard a disembodied voice calling for him (he’d tried). None of them questioned him, or tried to insinuate he didn’t care enough to look for a sign, any sign.
It was nice.
-
“It’s not so bad.” Kaminari whispered to him, once things quietened down and the rest of the group dissolved into their own conversations. “People always meet their soulmate eventually, right? It’s fate.”
Hitoshi nearly scoffed.
Fate gave Hitoshi a shitty childhood and a villain’s quirk.
Fate could make him wait until his dying breath to meet his soulmate if it wanted to.
He took one look at Kaminari’s face and… couldn’t say any of that.
“Yeah. I guess.” He replied instead, squashing down the bitterness building inside him.
Kaminari parted ways to go home before Hitoshi could figure out how to thank him, as usual.
“You know how we don’t know our soulmate connections, right?” Kaminari asked.
If Hitoshi could, he’d find an excuse to leave. Unfortunately, Kaminari had entire bunches of Hitoshi’s hair in his hands, doing whatever with it. He was practically a hostage.
“Well, I was talking to Midoriya about it and he has a theory-” Kaminari continued speaking, ignoring Hitoshi’s lack of reply, “He says it makes sense that we have rare invisible soulmate connections. He thinks that since we’re more likely to have stronger, later generation quirks in a hero course, that means that soulmate connections are more likely to have fused with our quirks. Mido explained it better. Basically, he thinks invisible soulmate connections are linked to strong quirks, and then only activated under specific circumstances.”
Hitoshi snorted.
“How would Bakugou feel if you told him you have a more evolved quirk than him?”
“You’re missing the point. Even though that is a good point – how pissy do you think he’d get?” Kaminari mused, “The point though – maybe the connection is activated by our quirks, or something.”
“My soulmate’s gonna be pissed, then. My quirk doesn’t feel nice.” Hitoshi sighed.
“Yeah, I mean, neither does mine.” Kaminari added. “Speaking of-”
Hitoshi felt a hard poke on his shoulder.
He turned around and raised an eyebrow at Kaminari.
“Oh, am I not putting enough juice in it? Wait, hang on.”
Kaminari poked him again, not any softer or harder.
He looked so concentrated, too.
“Stop laughing at me, Shinsou, I’m trying to focus.”
“I’m barely smiling.”
Another poke.
“Yeah, that’s your version of laughing.” Kaminari sulked.
Hitoshi rolled his eyes and batted Kaminari’s arm away.
“Quit it.”
“I’m trying to practise my quirk in a way that doesn’t feel shitty – using static electricity.” Kaminari explained, like it was obvious.
Hitoshi instantly batted away another attempt to poke him.
“I know you’re a human lightning rod, so you won’t know this, but static shocks don’t exactly feel like tickles to normal people.”
“Aww, come on, I’m starting off with, like, the least amount of electricity possible. I’d be your guinea pig if you wanted to practise your quirk.”
Hitoshi pinched the bridge of his nose, and tried to find a way he could possibly give an outright no to Kaminari.
He couldn’t.
“Another time, ok? I actually want to get sleep tonight. Go try it on Bakugou.”
“Fine.” Kaminari agreed, still reaching towards Hitoshi, only to be batted away again. “But if Bakugou kills me, you have to avenge me.”
-
Hitoshi heard an explosion of screaming and death threats two minutes later, and smiled to himself. Sounds like Kaminari had perfected his technique.
The moment came as he supported Kaminari’s weight on their way to Recovery Girl’s office.
“I don’t think I ever said thank you.”
“Huh?”
Hitoshi kept his eyes focused straight ahead.
“It was ages ago, and I don’t know why I’m bringing it up now.” Hitoshi continued. “But – the stuff you said to me during my exam to get into the hero course. When you said I was just like the rest of you, and stuff. It… was nice. Made me feel like I belonged there.”
Kaminari remained silent for a bit.
“I vaguely remember insinuating you were attractive as well.”
Hitoshi snorted.
“You can take that back if you want.”
“Pfft. As if. Still stands, man.” Kaminari responded without missing a beat.
Shinsou’s stomach did summersaults.
He didn’t think anyone other than his soulmate should’ve made him feel like that.
“Why now?” Kaminari asked.
It took Hitoshi a few seconds to get his mind back on track.
“I don’t know. I had this idea that once I thanked you, I could go back to being by myself and not having to be friendly with the class anymore. I think I tried to delay it.”
Kaminari broke out in laughter, and Hitoshi had to grab onto him even tighter to support his weight.
“Ahh, man, that’s so classic Shinsou it hurts.” Kaminari said through tears. “You realise that’s stupid, right? You love us now and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“Mm. Pretty much.” Hitoshi agreed begrudgingly.
“You love us so much you won’t even use your quirk properly on me?”
Hitoshi frowned and shook his head.
“Make no mistake, I tried.” He muttered. “And I would’ve won if you hadn’t broken your fucking ankle and escaped my quirk.”
“Oh swear? I must’ve fallen pretty fast, bro, I barely even felt the brainwash.”
“And look where that got you.” Hitoshi said, glancing down. Kaminari’s ankle really didn’t look good. “How much pain are you in?”
Kaminari swallowed.
“Not gonna lie. A lot. Alas, you may have to carry me the rest of the way.”
Hitoshi knew he meant that as a joke. He wondered how Kaminari would react if he actually went and did it, though. Flustered, probably.
Before he knew what he was doing, Hitoshi was carefully hooking an arm under Kaminari’s knees.
“Wait – what – Shinsou, what are you-”
“You literally told me I should carry you five seconds ago.” Hitoshi interrupted him, smirking. He’d stood up fully at this point to continue walking.
“I was kidding!”
“Really, now?”
“Yes!”
“Should I let you down?”
“Hell no!” Kaminari laughed, grabbing Hitoshi’s shoulders. “Free ride! Woo!”
Hitoshi chuckled and continued walking.
He made a note in his head to thank the support department later. Whatever insulation they built into his costume was really doing its job, judging by how he felt none of the excited electricity he heard sparking around the body held close to him.
“Shin, have you seen the group chat?” Kaminari asked, barging into Hitoshi’s room.
Hitoshi was too tired to be snarky about how Kaminari apparently didn’t know what knocking was.
“Nope. Was trying to sleep.”
“Well wake the fuck up because Sero almost died.”
Hitoshi shot up in his bed.
“What?”
“He’s fine, though! More than fine – he met his soulmate!”
Kaminari explained as much as he understood from a rushed phone call earlier with Sero. How Sero had been interning that day and got caught up in a massive rescue effort from a destroyed building. How he’d been scouring an area that seemed to have no survivors, until he came across an injured girl. And when he lifted her up-
“Sero said it was an accident – they reversed it, and he thinks it could be controlled in the future. But, like, her elbows started growing – she suddenly had Sero’s quirk. And he had hers – apparently it was some kind of mild forcefield pulse thing which he managed to use to protect them from falling rubble while he carried her out. He reckons it’s also what saved her life in the first place. Wild, right?”
“Wow.” Was all Hitoshi could think to say. “He must be thrilled.”
“Oh, he is. I gave you an abridged version of the story. He spent a good 50% of the phone call talking about how striking her eyes are and how perfect her sense of humour is, or something. She’s in the hospital now and he doesn’t want to leave her side.”
“Yeah, that sounds about right.” Hitoshi said, sounding more downcast than he wanted to despite how happy he was for Sero.
Kaminari looked down and sighed. He was smiling, but something about it was painfully wistful.
Hitoshi knew the feeling.
“You wanna play video games until he gets back?”
“Thought you’d never ask.” Kaminari replied, taking his usual seat on the floor against the bed.
They played games until their fingers ached and their competitiveness fizzled out into sluggishness. They heard someone entering the dorms around midnight, most likely Sero getting back for the day, but when the console was switched off, neither of them moved.
They were leaning against each other at this point.
“Hey, Shinsou?” Kaminari asked while their eyes adjusted to the darkness.
“Yeah?”
Kaminari didn’t speak for a while. Hitoshi didn’t dare interrupt the silence.
“Do you think… if we were soulmates, we would have figured it out by now?”
Kaminari’s voice was quiet and sombre as he spoke.
Hitoshi, in return, didn’t attempt to mask the pain in his response.
“Yeah. I think so.”
Hitoshi felt guilty, listening to Kaminari breathing so close to him, being so tempted to lean closer, when he belonged to someone else.
He felt guilty that his own soulmate was out there, waiting for him, and here he was, perfectly content with Kaminari beside him.
It hurt.
He didn’t want it to stop, though.
Kaminari finally moved to wipe his eyes and stand up. He left with a short goodnight.
Hitoshi didn’t move for another hour or so. He allowed himself to cry.
Fate would never be so kind to him.
The UA sports festival took place on a sunny, cloudless day, despite what the forecast had predicted. It was a welcome distraction.
And this time, Hitoshi wasn’t introduced as a wild card, a nobody, someone who didn’t really belong there. Nobody batted an eye as he made it to the top 40, and then top 16. He was no longer a one-trick pony, easy to beat as long as you knew the secret of his quirk.
The noise from the crowd was almost enough to drown out the turmoil in his head.
He then saw right there, on the leaderboard with randomly assigned matches, that he was going up against Kaminari first.
He didn’t know how to feel about it. They’d stayed friends after that night. Of course they had. But everyone in their class had noticed something was off. They knew what was off.
Nobody really knew how to deal with it, either.
“Hey.” Hitoshi felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned around to see Todoroki. He wondered how long Todoroki had been watching him, and whether the hand on his shoulder was supposed to be comforting.
It was oddly welcome, despite everything.
“I worked a lot of things out after fighting Midoriya here last year.” Todoroki told him. “I hope that fighting each other on this ground can do the same for you and Kaminari.”
Hitoshi closed his eyes so he wouldn’t roll them, and instead responded with a noncommittal shrug.
Before he knew it, he was standing opposite Kaminari, several meters away, preparing to fight. He wasn’t often paired with Kaminari for things like this – mainly because Hitoshi would be reduced to dodging and Kaminari could only really use him as target practise.
There were plenty of other ways to practise those skills without putting anyone in danger.
As soon as the match started, Hitoshi dodged to one side, and it was a good thing he did, as lightning flashed in his peripheral. He reiterated to himself that Kaminari was aiming for the top spot and he certainly wasn’t going to fuck around just because of some shitty soulmate stuff.
Hitoshi watched as Kaminari then threw his arms up, and immediately jumped as high as he could as Kaminari slammed his hands to the ground, sending electricity through it.
His strategy was limited to keeping his distance and waiting until Kaminari reached the brain-dead phase from quirk overuse.
Kaminari, however, had other ideas. He rushed forwards, and Hitoshi changed his strategy immediately.
“Ready to fight for real?” He yelled, running forwards at the last second to quickly swing a punch at Kaminari. Kaminari wasn’t fast enough to coat his entire body with electricity, so Hitoshi’s punch hit without any electrocution.
Kaminari didn’t respond to the taunt, of course.
Instead, he righted himself, and flung some more electricity in Hitoshi’s direction.
And despite the tension between them, and the unwanted feelings, and their battered friendship… Just being near Kaminari still did something to Hitoshi’s soul that he could only describe as comforting.
He found it in himself to grin ruefully whilst catching Kaminari‘s eye… just as he noticed he was cornered and fresh out of tricks to avoid another lightning bolt.
It hit him fast.
He closed his eyes and wondered if he was unconscious. He could still hear the crowd but…
Where was the pain?
Kaminari definitely hit him with electricity. There was no way he could have stopped it mid-bolt, right?
After a few seconds, he opened his eyes.
The scene was very much what it was like before he closed them. Except Kaminari looked way more confused.
“What the fuck?” Kaminari muttered to himself, pointing at Hitoshi again.
Hitoshi blinked as another flash came towards him. He also flinched pretty badly, but again, there was no pain. The electricity instead ran close to his skin, coating his body in a weird glow that made his eyes sting a little, but it was anything but aggressive.
Hitoshi felt like his brain had crashed.
“Kaminari, what’s going on?” He asked, just as the glow faded.
“I was kinda hoping you could explain, actually.” Kaminari responded weakly, and then slammed a hand over his mouth.
Which apparently wasn’t necessary.
Hitoshi had activated his quirk. Kaminari shouldn’t have been able to speak past the word ‘hoping’.
The realisation started out as nothing but a whisper at the back of Hitoshi’s head. When he couldn’t find any evidence to disprove it after going through several past scenarios in his head, he said it aloud.
“Kaminari, our quirks don’t work on each other.”
A few more seconds of thought.
“I – I don’t think they ever have.” Hitoshi concluded, wide-eyed.
Hitoshi could only stand there and go through memory after memory, even with the crowd growing confused. He’d known Kaminari for months. They used their quirks on a daily basis. How could they have not realised this?
“Oh my god.” Kaminari’s voice snapped Hitoshi out of it. “Oh my- timeout! We need a timeout, Midnight-”
Hitoshi watched as Kaminari ran towards Midnight with his hands in a T symbol, and followed him in a daze.
When Hitoshi caught up, he heard Kaminari speaking more frantically than he ever had before.
“- don’t ask me how we never realised it until now but – Midnight – you saw what just happened, right? Shinsou and I, we-”
In that moment, Kaminari locked eyes with Hitoshi.
A slow, disbelieving smile replaced the shock on Kaminari’s face. He breathed out hard, and it sounded like laughter.
Hitoshi was sure he was breathing faster than usual, but at the same time he felt like he was breathing properly for the first time in his life.
He chose to carry on from where Kaminari left off.
“Our quirks don’t work on each other. That’s… a soulmate connection, isn’t it?”
Hitoshi felt relieved tears pricking at his eyes, after hearing those words come out of his own mouth, confirming everything, but in that instant remembered the cameras surrounding him.
“Midnight, come on, we’re two idiots who just realised we’re soulmates. Cut us some slack. Can we at least have some time to talk before we have to fight each other?”
He couldn’t fathom how Kaminari, his soulmate, had already processed this, and was already thinking ahead. Hitoshi was still stuck feeling surreal.
“- and I know for a fact that some of the teachers had a running bet on us, don’t ask how I know-”
“Kaminari.” Midnight interrupted him, looking a bit shell-shocked. “Shinsou. However unexpected this is, you should know that heroes find their soulmates every day while on the battlefield. They still do their job. Besides, I believe Aizawa has trained you in hand-to-hand combat?”
Hitoshi shared a glance with Kaminari, his soulmate, and shrugged.
“We can talk later?” He suggested.
“We’re gonna do more than talk.” Kaminari replied seriously, and there went Hitoshi’s sanity. “But yeah, fine, the fight must go on, right?”
Present Mic promptly announced to the crowd that after a discussion, it was decided that quirk limitations would be set on both competitors for unspecified safety reasons. It no doubt confused the crowd, but they started to settle once Hitoshi and Kaminari took their places opposite each other, this time with their fists raised.
In the time it took for the crowd to settle, Hitoshi took one more opportunity to watch Kaminari. His soulmate.
In hindsight, the only one who could’ve ever been his soulmate.
Fate was… funny.
Kaminari stared back with a soft smile.
“I’m glad it was you.” He said.
Hitoshi discretely rubbed at his eyes.
“I’m glad it was you, too.”