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“Thank you for coming at such short notice,” Principal Watanabe said over his shoulder, “we didn’t really know what to do.”
You took a deep breath as you followed him along the corridor towards his office, hoping your nerves didn’t show. He’d said so little over the phone, though, and you couldn’t settle on a reason why.
When you got a call from the school, you’d assumed it was about Oboro. He wasn’t a troublemaker by any means - Shouta would ground him for a year without batting an eyelid - but he was the oldest and most boisterous of the two. If anyone was to get a bloody nose or black eye, however innocently, it was probably going to be him.
You’d practically dropped the phone the second they mentioned Himawari’s name, afraid beyond all reason. She was only four and short for her age and still afraid of the dark.
“In here,” said the headmaster, holding open the door to his office to let you inside. At first you moved slowly, afraid of what you might find, only to throw yourself over the threshold at the slightest hint of honey blonde hair.
Himawari was sitting in the chair opposite Watanabe’s desk and she buried her face in your neck the moment you were close enough. You expected her to cry or say something, but she stayed silent, holding onto you like a baby monkey as you lifted her up and out of the chair and into your lap.
Himawari was ordinarily a little ray of sunshine and had been from the moment she was born, so much so that you chose a name for her that meant ‘sunflower’. At the time, you had already picked out a completely different name, but you knew the moment you held onto her that no other one would fit. She was always singing, chatting or laughing and her silence now had you more worried than ever.
“What happened, sweetie?” you asked, stroking her hair, only to be met with silence. If anything, she held onto you even tighter.
“What happened?” you said again, looking up at Watanabe, who was in the process of sitting at his desk.
You were so afraid now that you were sure you’d throw up. The quiet child on your lap, too shaken to cry, wasn’t the one you had dressed that morning.
“It appears Himawari has come into her quirk,” said Watanabe, taking off his glasses and setting them down on his desk.
“Oh,” you said, looking from him to Himawari, realisation sinking in. “ Oh .”
Himawari was your second born and, unlike her brother before her, completely planned. You went into having Oboro blind and unprepared, leaving Himawari to reap the benefits of every mistake and learning curve. Naturally, of your two children, the one you were actually ready for came with the most surprises.
Your first pregnancy treated you kindly for the most part, with minimal morning sickness. You knew long before you took the test that you were pregnant with Himawari, though, for you spent so much time curled up on the bathroom floor, exhausted from throwing up.
Hizashi’s mother reliably informed you that she had suffered those same symptoms, meaning your baby likely had a sound quirk just like her father. You couldn’t stop smiling even though you felt like death, for Hizashi was so excited that it was contagious. He knew he was the father from the first positive test and grew increasingly more hyper with every passing month.
You were more than prepared for a voice quirk the day she was born. Shouta was there with you, ready to erase the quirk and save your ears. You had no reason to question it when she came into the world at a normal volume.
You soon wondered, though, if you were mistaken. Himawari didn’t cry any louder than her brother before her and, beyond being clumsy as a toddler, there was nothing unusual about her at all.
Hizashi would have loved her no matter what, but you could tell he was slightly disappointed. He’d plotted and schemed to teach her a bunch of cool moves that had taken him years to fine tune and it was starting to look like you weren’t going to need them.
You tested the waters to see if she had your quirk from the moment she started talking. It was, after all, technically sound related. Nothing happened, though. It didn’t matter how much you tried to prompt her, she couldn’t force you to say anything.
Of course, as you sat in front of Watanabe, you realised you had been worried about all of the wrong things.
“That’s… that’s wonderful,” you said, stroking Himawari’s hair and hoping you didn’t sound as nervous as you felt. “W-what happened, exactly?”
Kids her age got their quirks all of the time and it was rare their parents were called to the school. Watanabe wouldn’t have called you in if it wasn't serious. What on earth had happened while you were away?
“It would be easier to show you,” said Watanabe, pointing over his shoulder at the window behind him, which looked out over some of the playground.
You got to your feet and approached the window, jaw dropping before you knew what was happening. You knew the layout of the school well; you had toured it when Oboro was a toddler and picked both of your children up from there on an almost daily basis for the past few years. You saw the damage instantly.
One half of the playground was unchanged, painted in the same spots as before with the same jungle gym and slides. The other half, for lack of any other description, appeared to have been struck by a bomb or tornado. You could see the point of impact; a semi circular spot on the tarmac that spanned the rest of the grounds, shattering tiles and shaking the leaves from trees. Your blood ran cold and you stroked Himawari’s back, considering how incredibly small she was compared to the damage.
“We aren’t sure exactly what started it,” sighed Watanabe, “only that there was a terrible, deafening sound and the children began to scream. The damage happened in seconds and by the time my staff got there there was only Himawari in the epicenter.”
“So you aren’t sure that it was her?”
You rounded on him without meaning to, suddenly defensive.
“It was Himawari,” he said. “Some of the children said that… well…”
You raised an eyebrow, daring him to continue.
“They told us that the noise and the damage happened when she screamed. Himawari herself has not tried to deny it.”
Realisation sank in and you held her tighter. You’d seen Hizashi’s quirk in action and knew how powerful it could be, even with years of practice and control.
“Was anyone hurt?”
“Nothing beyond cuts and bruises,” said Watanabe. “It seems that the other children were standing behind her. Incredibly lucky, considering.”
You didn’t know what to say or do. You had spent years preparing for this moment, yet it still took you off guard.
“I’ll take her home,” you said at last. “She can come back in the morning, but for now she needs time.”
Hizashi , you thought, she needs Hizashi .
Watanabe nodded grimly, waving to both you and Himawari as you left his office.
“And that right there is the past participle! I hope ya feel enlightened!”
Hizashi reached to wipe the chalk from the blackboard, his students scrambling to pack away their books and head off to their next class.
He had a free period after this and planned to stop by your office. You had a break from open office hours and zero appointments to take care of, leaving an extra hour’s leeway before lunch, when Shouta could join you.
He whistled as he strolled through the corridors, hands in his pockets and waving to any student who greeted him. He couldn’t wait to spend time alone with you. Maybe you’d sneak back home and squeeze in a quick round between the sheets, followed by another with Shouta.
Your office was already locked, though, and he frowned as he pulled out his phone. It wasn’t like you to up and disappear without any kind of notice.
“Baby,” he said when you answered, “where’d you go?”
“I got a call from Himawari’s principal,” you said. “It’s… well…”
He froze on the spot, knowing from your voice that something was wrong.
“What happened?” He was storming out of the building before he realised he’d moved his feet. “Where are you?”
Had villains attacked the school? Had she gotten hurt? Had she been kidnapped?
He’d posted a picture of Himawari on his instagram only the night before, cooing over her as she napped on the couch in her pink pyjamas, an oversized set of headphones over her ears. She was too little to stay up for his show, so he’d put together a mix of her very own to listen to.
If anything had happened to her, there’d be hell to pay.
“I’m on my way home,” you said, “she’s okay, just a little shaken, I think.”
“You think ?!”
“Yeah. She won’t say anything.”
“What happened?!”
“She...um. She got her quirk.”
Ordinarily he would have been overjoyed by the news, but he knew from your voice that there was more to it than that.
“I’m coming,” he said, “I’ll be right there!”
ABOUT THIRTY FIVE YEARS AGO
“Hizashi?”
He frowned through the car window, focusing on nothing. His mother sighed and gripped the steering wheel, looking at his reflection in the wing mirror.
“We’re going to have to leave again, aren’t we?”
“What do you mean?”
Hizashi turned to her, eyes brimming with tears.
“I’ll have to switch schools again,” he said, bottom lip wobbling, “you’ll have to switch jobs…”
It was certainly true that they’d moved house a lot in the past six years, though it had never occurred to her to blame him. Few landlords or employers had the patience for single mothers, much less ones with babies whose cries shattered glass.
“Sweetheart, I don’t care about any of that,” she said, reaching out to stroke his hair. He’d tried to slick it back with gel that morning in a halfhearted attempt to fit in and it looked more than a little bit wrong. “You just need to stop picking fights, that’s all.”
“They deserved it,” he muttered, turning back to the window.
“What do you mean?”
“They said you were… you were…”
His lip wobbled again and his Mom sighed, knowing what he was about to say long before he said it.
Hizashi’s father was famous and he’d never been around. He knew he had a son, though largely denied any involvement, for admitting responsibility would almost certainly open a can of worms. Hizashi’s mother, Haruhi, was younger than him by about twenty years and fresh out of college when they met. She had planned to travel the world with her guitar, only to wind up pregnant and alone, watching as the father of her son dedicated his latest album to the wife he had neglected for the better part of a decade.
Hizashi bore no resemblance to his father, for better or worse. He had Haruhi’s sunny blonde hair, her bright eyes, her wide smile, her gangly frame. He pulled the same faces she did when she was upset; he even had a voice quirk as she did.
Today they looked different in ways they never had before. Hizashi’s glasses were broken and his face swelled with bruises. He’d gotten into a fight again, only to blow the other kids away with his quirk. The bigger and more excitable he got, the more he struggled to control it. Doctors warned that it would only get worse when his voice broke, but he was six and that was years away.
Haruhi wasn’t blind to the harsh judgements of other parents; the mothers who took note of her worn shoes and youthful face; the ones who side eyed her in supermarkets when Hizashi was a toddler. She knew the assumptions they made about her and had long stopped caring. Her son was the best thing that had ever happened to her, regardless of the circumstances of his birth.
He was too young to understand any of that, though, and it had always only ever been a matter of time before the harsh judgments of those other parents rubbed off on their children.
Haruhi squeezed her eyes shut, pushing back the tears that welled there. She didn’t give a shit what people thought about her, but cared a great deal about her son. He didn’t deserve to face the harsh words she had; he was an innocent in everything.
What Hizashi said next, however, broke the floodgates.
“Momma… do you think I’m too loud?”
Haruhi took a deep breath, tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Hizashi,” she said, body shaking with sobs, “listen to me…this is really important.”
She looked into his face, the face so heartbreakingly similar to her own; the face that she had so thoroughly fallen in love with that she gave him a name that meant ‘sunlight’.
“Momma-”
“People are going to say things that hurt,” she said, “they’re going to do things that you don’t understand. The world would be boring if we all agreed on everything…”
“But-”
“Listen to me,” she said, far more forcefully this time. “You mustn’t listen to what people say. Don’t let them trick you into changing who you are or thinking you don’t deserve to walk with your head held high. You’re you , not them, and the things that make you weird are the things that make you wonderful.”
Hizashi wiped his tears from his eyes, smiling weakly as she ruffled his hair, spiking it back up until it defied gravity.
“If you’re going to be loud, be the loudest,” she said, wiping the gel from her hand and onto her skirt, “if you’re going to be weird, be the weirdest, because I promise you… one day someone will come along and love you for it, and every insult, every struggle, every tear… they won’t matter anymore.”
She sniffled, she couldn’t help it, remembering every night she had ever spent alone in one run down apartment or another; every job she had ever left; every possession she had ever parted with so that Hizashi could live comfortably. It had all been worth it to see his gummy smiles and full body laughter.
“Now then,” she said, wiping her eyes dry, “let’s go for ice cream.”
“Really?!”
“Sure. But first,” she pulled up her sleeve and scrubbed the tears from his face, dragging off the pale pink sunglasses she had propped up in her hair and switching them with Hizashi’s plain broken glasses. They were too big and almost comically so, leaving her unable to stop giggling as she slipped his glasses into her purse. Hizashi squinted at his reflection in the rearview mirror. Haruhi didn’t need glasses and her sunglasses definitely weren’t his prescription.
She switched on the ignition and fiddled with the car radio, finally landing on a rock station in the middle of playing a song she wrote on a beach seven years earlier - song she had recorded on a sample tape that Hizashi’s father had promised wholeheartedly to hand over to his record company, only to release himself.
She smiled softly and let it play.
PRESENT
Himawari’s school wasn’t far from UA. It took you all of half an hour to get her home and tuck her up in a blanket on the couch. Even now, after returning home and hugging Pinky Bunny to her body, she wouldn’t speak. She was normally chatty -almost excessively so- and it broke your heart to see her quiet.
Thankfully, the heavy silence didn’t last for long, for Hizashi threw open the door a few minutes later.
“Himawari!” he called out as he rushed inside, gasping when he saw her miserable expression and grazed knees.
As a social worker, you knew every child had a Person; one adult they decided was theirs and latched onto far more than any other. Eri and Shinsou had chosen Shouta, Oboro chose you and Himawari, somewhat unsurprisingly, picked Hizashi.
The second she saw him, she was on her feet, leaping into his arms and bawling.
“Oh Princess,” he said, hoisting her up into his arms and looking just as upset as she was, “oh sweetheart, what happened to you?”
He caught your eye and you gave him a nod, disappearing into the kitchen to make tea.
“Come on,” he said, walking towards the couch and picking up Pinky Bunny, who she had abandoned on her desperate sprint. “Let’s talk about it with Bunny, huh?”
Twenty minutes, two packs of tissues and one lukewarm cup of tea later, Himawari was calm enough to talk. She fiddled with Pinky Bunny’s ears as Hizashi stroked her hair, resting her whole weight against his chest.
“...we were playing hide and seek,” she mumbled.
“Yeah?”
“I was the one looking. I closed my eyes and counted.”
“Of course you did, I didn’t raise a cheater!”
You giggled despite yourself, holding your cup of tea to your heart. You hadn’t joined them on the couch, choosing instead to wait in the kitchen and watch without intruding on their space. Himawari loved you, you knew that, but you weren’t her Person and didn’t want to invade their moment.
“Takashi and the boys were playing tag,” she said, “they asked me to play, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to play hide and seek.”
“Understandable! Hide and seek is so much more fun than tag.”
“I was counting and Takashi thought I was playing tag, so he pulled my hair,” she said. “I didn’t mean to-I-”
She frowned, recalling the exact moment it happened. For a second you wondered if she was about to cry again.
“I didn’t mean to,” she said again. “I just. I opened my eyes and I was flying.”
“Flying?”
Hizashi looked at you. You looked at Hizashi, eyebrows raised, an unspoken observation between you that neither of you could fly.
“I was in the air,” she said, bursting into tears all over again, “and then I was falling and-and the trees were bending! I didn’t mean to do it! I didn’t!”
“Of course you didn’t, peaches,” said Hizashi, patting her back as she sobbed into his chest, “course not.”
“I was really, r-really high,” she said, voice muffled and trembling, “and I screamed a-and… it was so loud and then I fell…and everyone was looking at me.”
That part seemed to have upset her the most, for she crumbled and sobbed into Hizashi’s chest so forcefully that it shook her entire body.
You sipped your tea, considering what she had said and its implications. Himawari’s description of events matched the principal’s with one sole discrepancy. The principal’s explanation implied Himawari’s voice had caused the incident, but in Himawari’s version she screamed after.
You began to wonder if Himawari really did have a voice quirk; going over every single instance of what you had believed to be her clumsiness, every time she had begged you to believe she hadn’t meant to break things.
You thought back to the day you discovered Oboro’s quirk. Himawari had been teething at the time and a slobbering mess. Oboro, sensitive and gentle, seemed more upset at her pain than her crying. One night, though, both of them screamed from the nursery. You, Hizashi and Shouta all ran to investigate, only to find both of your children sobbing and a jack in the box broken on the floor.
“It must have fallen off and surprised them,” Shouta had said as he leaned over to examine the damage, all while you and Hizashi comforted the children.
“Shouta,” you had said, trembling at the sight of Oboro.
“What is it?”
“Look.”
You would never forget that night; the way Hizashi had shushed the screaming Himawari, all while Oboro watched in confusion, eyes shining both with tears and a familiar crimson hue. You understood then that he had an erasure quirk, though had never questioned anything else about it.
Now, though, everything about it seemed strange.
Could it be that your clumsy daughter had never been clumsy after all? Could it be that she had been born with a quirk, just not the one you expected? Could it be that the reason she had never before caused so much damage was because her brother possessed an erasure quirk that he was still learning to control? Had he been stealing away her quirk without meaning to all of this time?
You sipped your tea, lots of things to consider.
That night, Hizashi tucked both Himawari and Pinky Bunny into bed, planting kisses on both of their foreheads.
“I love you, little listener.”
“I love you, Papa.”
“Actually,” he said, sitting back, “I have something for you.”
Himawari had never really perked up, the surprise of the afternoon still weighing heavily on her mind. She seemed far more embarrassed than traumatised or injured, though, which you counted as a small blessing.
“You do ?”
“Yup,” said Hizashi, reaching into his pocket, “something really super duper rare and valuable.”
Himawari watched as he pulled out a plastic case made for glasses and carefully pried open the lid.
“Someone really important gave them to me a long time ago,” he said, reaching inside, “and I saved them just for you.”
“For me?!”
“Sure did.”
He slipped them onto her face, smirking at how loose they were. They had been too big for him the first time he wore them as well.
“Everything’s pink now!” she said, clapping her hands over the arms of the glasses and peering around the room in wonder. “ You’re pink!”
“I am,” said Hizashi, before slipping a hand on her shoulder. “Now, Himawari, you have to promise you’ll look after them. Save them for your own special person.”
She thought about it for a couple of seconds before taking them off again and handing them to him.
“No, no, not me,” he said, blinking back tears of joy, “someone even more special than me.”
“Oh, like Takashi?”
“You mentioned him earlier, he a friend of yours?”
“No,” Himawari laughed, “he’s my boyfriend!”
Hizashi froze in place, blood running cold.
“Your what ?”
“I think she’ll be okay,” you said to Shouta, who had returned home in the middle of all of the drama. “Now we know what her quirk is, we can make the appropriate arrangements.”
“Mhmm. I can take her out with Oboro at the weekend, get a gauge of her-”
Himawari’s door flew open and she rushed outside, crying as she looped her arms around your waist.
“Mamaaaaaaa,” she wailed, “Mamaaaaa!”
You glanced from her to her bedroom door, watching as Hizashi followed, looking equal parts angry and upset.
“What is it, honey?”
“Papa says I can’t have a boyfriend! Tell him he’s wrong! Tell him it’s not fair !”
“Himawari, you’re four.”
“But everyone else has one! Papa has a boyfriend, Shouta has a boyfriend… Mama, you have two !”
You looked up at Hizashi, knowing that because he was her Person the betrayal would hit harder on both sides.
“When you say he’s your boyfriend,” you said, stroking your hands through her hair, “what do you mean?”
“He gives me cookies.”
“I…”
Shouta had been washing the dishes and leaned over the sink to hide his amusement. You fought to hide a smirk yourself.
“Himawari, you're a smart, independent woman,” Hizashi protested, “you don’t need a boyfriend to give you cookies.”
“But I want him to, he’s my boyfriend!”
You knew this argument could go on for hours, so made an executive decision.
“I tell you what,” you said, “I’ll talk to Takashi’s mom and invite him over for dinner. Would you like that?”
Himawari gasped in delight, cuddling you now out of gratitude.
“Really, Momma?”
“Really,” you said, “but you need to go to bed first, okay?”
“Will you tuck me in?”
Hizashi whimpered at the slight. It was his job to tuck her in when he was home and everyone knew it. He watched, heartbroken, as you took Himawari by the hand and followed her to her room.
“I can’t be-“ he said, turning to Shouta and stopping mid sentence. Shouta was holding out a cookie, a wry smile on his face.
Hizashi scowled and snatched it up, biting into it forlornly. He was too tired for anything else.
Himawari fell asleep within moments of you tucking her in, leaving you to carefully pry the sunglasses from her face. Luckily, they were still so big that it wasn’t too much of an issue and you turned them over in your hands before setting them down on her night stand.
They were old and worn, repaired in places and scratched in several more.
You didn’t know their significance; that they were the first sunglasses Hizashi ever owned, gifted to him by someone with little else to give. You didn’t know that he’d carried them with him from home to home, classroom to classroom, waiting for that promised someone to come along, someone he assumed for years would be a husband or wife, only to realise within seconds of holding his child how wrong he had been.
He’d held onto them for that someone with a face like his who grew up with everything they could ever have wanted, laughed at everything and never once doubted their shine. Someone with a father who very rarely told them no and leaped out of bed to chase the monsters away. Someone whose father made their mother laugh instead of cry.
Someone who had the Person in their life he’d always wanted.
You had no idea about any of it. You never would.
You did, however, wave Hizashi inside when he peeped through the door, a heartbroken expression on his face.
“Gentle,” you whispered as he sat down beside you, “you’ll wake her.”
“Don’t care,” he said, laying down next to her and grinning as she fidgeted in her sleep, body automatically gravitating towards his.
“Don’t stay up too long,” you whispered, getting to your feet. “It’s been a long day for everyone.”
As you stood in the doorway, it occured to you that you didn’t know why you bothered saying it. They looked so comfortable sleeping there and would surely be best friends again before dawn.
You took one last look at them - their identical golden hair and content expressions - and switched off the light.
“Good night.”
A/N - in 'In This Moment' I referenced an art of Himawari and Oboro and here it is! I'm not too impatient this time haha. This art was done by Pushist00 on twitter!
