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The phone rings. It isn’t an uncommon occurrence, but it is rare enough to immediately get his attention. Kurogiri glances around the bar - empty, but he’s just flipped the open sign on - and answers it.
“What happened to my father?” A child’s voice asks right away, soft and hesitant. It wavers and he has to actually think about the context before it smacks him in the face. Sensei’s family.
Right. What did he tell the woman, again?
“Your father was caught in the aftermath of a fight between All Might and an unknown. His body has not yet been recovered.” Kurogiri says, his first customer of the day slinking into the bar. A regular, thankfully, because he can speak and pour their drink at the same time.
“You have my condolences.”
The line is quiet, for a moment. A jack and coke, neat, is set down in front of the patron with little sound.
“Alright.” The child says, even quieter. “Thank you.”
Kurogiri does not have the time nor inclination to speak to the Midoriya any longer than necessary and hangs up. The customer grins at him with a full display of needle-sharp teeth.
“What,” they rasp with a chuckle, sliding their payment across the bar, “someone askin’ too many questions?”
He does not answer, which they seem to take for an answer in and of itself. The patron swirls their drink with a rough laugh. “Just you wait, that’ll come back t’bite you in the ass when you least expect it.”
Kurogiri politely does not dump their drink out like they deserve and continues on.
---
The phone rings again the next night, just about the same time as well. Shigaraki Tomura glances curiously at it before apparently deciding the console upstairs is more worthy of his time. Kurogiri does not feel relief - he isn’t sure his emotions line up correctly when compared to both Sensei and Tomura - but there’s a lightness in his body when he once again answers the phone.
“You’re lying to me.” The little Midoriya says. It’s soft and almost the same tone Sensei uses, right down to the inherent disappointment and displeasure that makes the listener want to fix it as soon as possible. Kurogiri does not flinch.
Cannot flinch.
“I assure you we are doing all we can to find his body.” He says dutifully. There’s a noise from the other side of the receiver, barely audible and almost like someone turning a page in a book.
“Don’t.” The child says, the undercurrent of annoyance clearly heard. Kurogiri shoves down the automatic response of deferment that threatens to creep up his sleeves and says nothing. Midoriya sighs, the rush of air sharp and loud against the receiver.
“I know you’re lying. All Might’s last recorded fight was over two weeks ago with Toxic Chainsaw and there’s no reason he would ever need to cover up a fight as both a public figure and a hero.”
Ah.
Kurogiri isn’t sure why he’s surprised that the little Midoriya is intelligent enough to research hero patterns. Sensei must have drilled gathering information into the child’s head, which makes sense. Tomura isn’t the most interested in that, so someone must take the role.
He just didn’t expect it to be the man’s biological son.
Midoriya must take the silence as a positive answer, because there is another turn of the page and his voice gains the strength it was lacking on the first call. “There's also no destruction anywhere near my dad’s listed address.”
And that is true, as well. Kurogiri spares the briefest lament for the story he was instructed to tell the family with how many holes the child is poking in it.
Another voice cuts into the background noise of the call, distant and unintelligible. Midoriya swears rather violently for the child of a man who never does and cuts the line. He stands there for a moment, eyes narrowed at the receiver, before setting it down and continuing with his day.
---
By the third call, Kurogiri is slightly annoyed.
The child does not bother him during normal business hours, thankfully, and the actual amount of time spent talking to him is small enough, but he is not looking forward to Midoriya digging further into something he should not be concerned with. Sensei did not plan for this course of action when he left instructions and he does not like making things up out of hand.
“How did you get this number.” He says, more of a demand than a question. The child laughs at him.
“Mom dropped it.” Midoriya replies. He can almost hear the tone blend into a younger version of Sensei’s self-satisfied amusement. What travels down his spine is not a shudder - at best, it is a mere ripple in his mist that cannot be correctly interpreted either way. “Where did you get her number?”
“We were provided with a number to call in the case of emergencies by Midoriya Hisashi.” Kurogiri says. He has the sinking feeling that he is once again going to eviscerate the cover story, and the little Midoriya does not disappoint.
“This isn’t listed for any of the company’s departments. None of the people I talked to’d ever heard the name Midoriya Hisashi before I mentioned it.” He says. There is a headache building in the back of his skull and the blame can be squarely laid upon Sensei’s progeny.
“It is an internal line for an external branch of the company based in America.”
The child laughs again, bright and far too darkly amused, and pulls away from the receiver. Distantly, Kurogiri thinks he can hear the whistle of a kettle. It’s not from his own end, because there are none in the bar and Shigaraki Tomura does not drink tea.
“It’s a Japanese number that traces back to a bar in Kamino. I looked it up.” Midoriya says.
Kurogiri is not paid enough to deal with this. Granted, he is not paid at all outside of what tips his patrons deign to give him but the sentiment is there. The child is, what, nine? Ten? Far too young to have the knowledge necessary to discover that fact, let alone trace a phone number. He does not think Sensei estimated Midoriya’s intelligence correctly and he is never going to tell the man that to his face.
He is not going to think it anywhere near him once Sensei recovers enough to return to Japan. What was the child’s name...?
“Have a pleasant evening, Midoriya Izuku.” Kurogiri says, cutting his sputtering off with the satisfying click of the receiver going back into its cradle. The phone does not ring again.
---
It does not ring later that week, or even that month.
Instead, Kurogiri hears it as he shoos out the last of his customers, ready to start closing down the bar to clean four months later. He almost lets it ring out and go to voicemail, but that is not something he wants left where someone else can listen to it. Which leaves him little choice.
“Midoriya Izuku.” Kurogiri says.
“Did Midoriya Hisashi even exist?” He asks.
The child sounds tired and drawn out, which is to be expected from someone still awake at three in the morning, and if it wasn’t for the subject matter, he would have mistaken the bitterness in his tone for Sensei. He does not answer, does not know how to even approach it, but Midoriya continues on without input.
“He graduated from Shiketsu and his name is on the records, but there’s not a single person who remembers teaching or being in class with him. The company he works for is a shell that only dubiously exists out of a single office in Yokohama. It’s possible he doesn’t even have a firebreathing quirk.”
There’s a loud sigh from the other end of the receiver and the sound of fabric shifting, a murmur of what has to be a television or video player.
Kurogiri flips another stool onto the bar with one hand. He almost pities the child - almost, because Midoriya is the son of one of the most dangerous men in the country and doesn’t seem to know it, but seems to have inherited the sharp intelligence that makes his father so deadly.
“There’s no way my dad’s dead. So, tell me,” the child says after a few moments, and the tone is absolutely the one Sensei uses when Tomura is being particularly difficult, “who is Midoriya Hisashi when he isn’t playing around?”
“I cannot answer that question, Midoriya Izuku.” Kurogiri says, soft. Even if he could go against his own orders, he does not think the child would enjoy that information until he had picked it all apart.
Another sigh brushes against the receiver. “’Course you can’t. Don’t know why I even bother.”
“Have a pleasant evening, Midoriya Izuku.” He says dutifully and far too ready for this conversation to be over. Midoriya mumbles something that could be considered woefully impolite before clearing his throat and bringing his voice closer.
“Thanks for answering my questions, Kurogiri, even when you didn’t think you were. Hopefully we don’t have to talk to each other again.” The child says.
If he had hair, Kurogiri is sure it would be standing on end by the time the line cuts out. He does not know where the child learnt his name, or what else he knows about the location, and the shudder of mist is far more visible than he wishes it to be. Slowly, he hangs up, going through the motions until the bar is closed and clean and he no longer has anything to keep his mind from reading too much into Midoriya’s parting words.
Sensei was well and truly underestimating his son, wasn’t he? What a horrifying thought.