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Through the power of observation, Shouto always noticed the little things. Case in point, no matter how hard his classmates tried to hide their secret stash of food, he always managed to find it through their little indicators of a look here, a look there and jackpot.
(Not that he'd ever taken any before.)
So, of course he noticed when Eri moved her long, long hair out of her face for the fifth time that evening in order to stir her hot chocolate.
Having never had hair past his shoulders, he was a bit clueless of how to help, but he had seen the other girls with their hair up in... ponytails? Pigtails? Braids?? … something among those lines anyway.
"Do you need a hair tie?" Shouto asked her as she tucked her hair behind her ear, sixth time and counting.
"Hair tie?" She repeated, looking up, and her hair tumbled in her face again; a curtain of white.
Oh no. Her face was scrunched slightly in what he had deemed her 'what is this' expression, so he hurried to explain further.
"For your hair," he added.
Eri blinked. "No..." Ah. Well he didn't have one either. He was about to drop the issue but she continued. "What's a hair tie?"
With all things he wasn't sure how to explain, he got to the bare bones. "It's a tie for your hair."
"Oh," was all she said. Then: "Do you know how to tie hair, Shouto-san?"
"Ah, no..."
"Oh," she repeated. "Me neither... But it looks really pretty!"
Shouto observed her, noting the sparkle in her eyes at something she had never had before. Hmm.
"It does," he offered, and gave a generous handful of marshmallows to his hot chocolate.
They let the subject drop, moving on to talk about the many cats of Aizawa, but Shouto kept it in his mind.
To do list:
#1: learn how to braid.
.
Wikihow left Shouto reeling as their assortment of tutorials seemed to jump at him from every corner, and.
Well. It appeared that there was more than one type of braid. He scrolled through the plethora of pictures, seeing numbers on hair strands ranging from three to four to five to eight.
Deciding to start from the basics, he clicked on the first tutorial he saw; a straightforward and clear: How to Braid Hair.
It started off simple enough. There was a video on repeat showing a lady brushing her hair, and Shouto was sure that was easy enough to do. His own hair was easily combed, so nothing could go wrong with the first step.
The second step was optional so he skipped it in lieu of watching the video of the third step, and.
Ah. This looked tricky. Floating A, B and C's moved around with their corresponding strands and his eyes tried to follow them all but got lost in the sea of hair. After a few more minutes of observing, scrolling to the next steps to try and dissect the entire process to discover the secret, he ended up closing the tab with slight frustration.
Wikihow had failed him. It seemed he had to take other measures involving asking around for one-on-one help.
.
The opportunity came sooner than expected.
"Shouto!" Fuyumi greeted, embracing him in a loose hug that he hesitantly tightened.
"Nee-san," he replied, and they parted.
She beamed at him from the doorway, and he noticed her hair was in a braid, strands woven neatly.
"Can you teach me how to braid?" He blurted out.
"Oh!" She looked shocked, which was understandable. "Of course! Let's eat first, and I'll teach you after, ok?"
He nodded and finally entered his house, taking off his shoes. He saw there were only three pairs, which meant...
"Shouto!" Natuso said, an easygoing grin on his face like always (except when Endeavour's around...) "You're just in time for dinner, lil bro!"
Shouto smiled, but: "Is he home?"
Breezily, his brother said, "Nope, the old man's away for business this weekend."
Ah. No wonder Natsuo had readily agreed when Fuyumi had prompted them both to come home. Shouto relaxed his tense shoulders, and followed them to the living room to eat by the kotatsu.
He really was just in time for dinner. Fuyumi carried out a pot of freshly cooked rice and set it on the coaster, completing the array of dishes spread out. Bowls and chopsticks were distributed, food heaped on his bowl by an insistent older sister, before:
"Itadakimasu!"
They dug in.
"So, Shouto," Fuyumi started. "Why the sudden interest in braiding?"
Natsuo caught on quickly, and rice in mouth said, "are you growing out your hair? Or is it for someone special?"
Fuyumi jabbed him, pointedly finishing her rice before speaking. "Manners!"
"It's for a friend," Shouto said when his siblings finished their stare-off. They looked at him with identical smiles, so easily given.
"Awe, that's so sweet of you," Fuyumi said. "Do they not know how to braid?"
He shook his head and she hummed. "Well it's easy enough! I'm sure you'll pick it up in no time."
He smiled into his rice. It was nice to get a vote of confidence, and he hoped it really would be easy to pick up. But for now he focused on enjoying dinner with his siblings. It was always pleasant to be around them, and he fell into their dynamic with open arms.
Without Endeavour at their table, they were all so lively, he realized when he munched on the miso mackerel. He watched as Natsuo griped and complained about his professors with a smile and Fuyumi talked about her students with a bigger one, both bringing a piece of their lives to the table that Shouto would never had heard of had someone else been there, an imposing silence left in their wake.
"How's UA?" Natsuo asked Shouto as Fuyumi piled another portion of rice, fish and greens onto his bowl.
"It's fun," he shared, thinking back to life at the dorms, of the movie nights they had weekly to the impromptu study sessions to the more recent hot chocolate rendezvous with Eri.
"You look happier," Natsuo noted.
Shouto thought he looked exactly the same, but maybe there was something older siblings noticed about himself that he never would.
"I am," he agreed.
"We're so glad," Fuyumi said genuinely, placing the chopsticks on her finished bowl. "Alright, let me cleanup and I can teach you!"
"Ah, let me help," Shouto said, already standing up and taking the bowl from her hands. "You cooked, so Natsu-nii and I will clean."
Fuyumi looked like it was an odd thing to be deprived from cleaning up after all of them. He silently vowed to help around when he could more often. It wasn't fair to her after all.
Natsuo shared Shouto's sentiment, and they made quick work of clearing the table and washing and drying the dishes before Fuyumi could think of lifting a finger to help. When they finished, they shared a smile before they all sat by the kotatsu again.
"I'll go through the motions once slowly," Fuyumi said, seated in front of Shouto so her back was facing him. "Then I'll do it again and explain."
Shouto gazed intently as she parted her hair into three strands and slowly combined them, one after another after another before it distinguished itself as a braid.
"You do this everyday?!" Natsuo asked in astonishment.
A soft giggle. "Not everyday. And it's not that complicated, dummy."
She ignored his affronted 'hey!' and unraveled the braid, so she could do it all over again, just for Shouto. "Alright, so you start with three strands..."
Shouto listened as she explained what she was going to do, did them, and continued to the next step. Eventually she got to the end, and she let it unravel again.
"You try, ok?" She turned around to give him a reassuring smile. "It's ok if you don't get it on the first try, or the second or third. Take your time, Shouto."
It was such a change of pace from the usual harsh spew of: "do better, Shouto! You should know it by now." Shouto found he much preferred Fuyumi's tutelage, and often wondered how her gentle nature could still reside at her core under Endeavour's rule.
Shouto parted her hair into three strands, trying to grip them gently between his fingers but they all seemed to be so loose, so unlike the ones under Fuyumi's steady hand.
"Just keep going, dude," Natsuo said, looking invested in the scene.
Ok. Shouto crossed the strand on the far right over the middle one, then the far left one over the middle one, then...
"Cross them," Natsuo said, unhelpfully.
"Which ones," Shouto shot back, looking at the strands of hair between his fingertips. Which ones indeed.
"Just repeat what you've been doing," Fuyumi instructed. "Right, middle, left, middle, and so on."
Shouto followed the instructions until he reached the end, and he fumbled to use the hair tie to complete the braid-looking thing; a loose mess coming apart in mocking slivers of speckled red among a white canvas, jeering, 'you failed!'
But he got the opposite reaction from Fuyumi, who gave an encouraging smile as she stared at it from the blurry photo he had just taken.
"It's hard to get things perfect on the first try," was all she said. "Unless you have a natural talent for hairdressing, it takes work to get things the way you want them too."
Natsuo chuckled at the image. "I found your new calling, lil bro! Pfft, imagine how pissed off the old man would be if you went to become a hairdresser? You'd be one of the only ones able to trim his fire hair."
Fuyumi frowned. "Well it's not hero work, but hairdressing is nothing to laugh about! It takes a lot of time and energy, just like anything else you would care deeply about."
"Hey, hey, I've got nothing against hairdressers," Natsuo said. "Just, if Shouto wanted to be anything other than a hero, I'd really like to see the old man's reaction."
It was Shouto's turn to frown, and as he sectioned off the hair again, he pondered on those words. His siblings had all went their separate paths than hero work, from a school teacher to a soon-to-be doctor to a corpse. But when he thought about it, he did want to be a hero. But other than what his old man wanted for him, what did his siblings want?
"Do you..." Shouto said hesitantly. "Not want me to be a hero?"
"I want you to be whoever the hell you want to be," Natsuo said seriously.
"Do you want to be a hero, Shouto?" Fuyumi asked offhandedly.
"I do."
Natsuo shrugged. "Then be one."
It was as simple as that, and Shouto nodded, finishing off the braid with slightly steadier hands. He took another photo and showed it to his sister.
"Seems you do have that natural talent," Fuyumi said, feeling the braid for herself. "Do you want to try again?"
"Yes," he affirmed, because he wanted to confidently say that he had conquered the braid.
He gently slid off the hair tie and repeated the motions, finding them calming as he deftly crossed the strands over and over and over until the strands of three became one once more.
"Aw, you did great," Fuyumi complimented, teacher mode on. "Great job, Shouto."
In the warm atmosphere of his brother's snickers and his sister's encouragement, he lost count of how many times he smiled that evening.
.
On a Wednesday evening, Shouto wandered downstairs to see Eri waiting on the couch, book in her tiny hands as she flipped the pages with vigour.
She looked up when he indicated his presence. "Shouto-san- ...are we making hot chocolate again?"
He nodded, but stepped closer instead of towards the kitchen where they usually went. "Yes, but first... I learned how to braid hair. Do you want me to braid yours?"
Her face lighting up made his evening brighter too, a small beacon of light chasing off the last of his nightmares of fire engulfing his everything.
"Yes please!" She said excitedly, before fidgeting. "What do I do?"
"Ah, just stay seated," he said, and joined her on the couch.
He hesitantly touched her hair, waiting for any signs of discomfort, but upon receiving none, continued. As he parted her hair into three, he felt a wave of familiarity wash over him, as if he was back with his sister once again, but maybe this time, a different one.
Now a self-proclaimed expert, he crossed the strands with nimble fingers, and although it took a bit longer due to the long hair, eventually he got to tying off the braid with a hair tie he had received from Fuyumi, knowing smile on her face. He took a picture of the braid, a single, unified entity of white, and showed it to Eri.
She smiled happily, reaching for it with her hands as she felt the carefully done intricate procedure that was braiding. "Thank you, Shouto-san."
"Anytime," he responded, and meant it. "Hot chocolate?"
Eri nodded eagerly, and together, they went to the kitchen.
(A night of peace awaited them.)
fin.