Work Text:
He can’t escape it.
Hitoshi presses his hands over his ears, trying to drown it out, but it’s no use. The low hum is relentless. It digs into his skull, thudding like a drawn-out moan echoing from a cavernous well. Endless. Incessant. Inescapable. If the word “doom” had a voice, this is what it would sound like.
The boy dives under his pillow, pressing the stuffed case of fabric over his ears to drown out the horrendous sound and finally get to sleep.
He hasn’t had a full night’s rest in weeks.
Ever since the humming started.
XXX
The next day, Hitoshi sits in a cramped room lined with sickly green tiles. The walls gleam with an oversanitized sheen, as if they’d been scrubbed so many times they’ve begun to look the opposite of clean. A polished metal table stretches out in front of him, and a two-way mirror spans the opposite wall. He examines his reflection pensively: lips pursed slightly as he waits, rebellious indigo hair flying out in every possible direction. He puts up a hand absentmindedly, trying in vain to smooth his hair into something more professional and neat.
It’s hopeless. All the gel in the world couldn’t keep his hair in place—not that it ever stopped his mom from trying. She hates his hair, calls it a menace.
Returning his hands to his lap, the twelve-year-old continues waiting, scolding himself for fidgeting so much. His work here is important, and he needs to act the part.
The door swings open. Two men walk through, dressed in suits and smelling faintly of cologne. Hitoshi’s supervisors: an American agent named Johnson and his Japanese colleague, Tanaka.
A third man follows sluggishly behind them. His head is covered in a coarse burlap sack, and his hands are in handcuffs, strung behind his back. A police officer is the last to enter, guiding the blindfolded man in and closing the door behind him.
The officer leads the blindfolded man to a chair at the table across from Hitoshi, forcing him to take a seat with a firm shove. Ripping off the burlap sack, the officer reveals the man’s face, riddled with cuts and bruises. He blinks in the light, trying to get a grip on his surroundings.
Hitoshi swallows. The bruises are new—most of the prisoners he had worked with before didn’t have clear injuries like this.
Setting his jaw, the boy shakes those thoughts from his mind. It isn’t his place. He’s here for one thing and one thing only.
“You might have a bit of trouble with this one, Hitoshi,” Agent Johnson says. He opens a manila folder and slides a stack of paperwork in front of the bruised man, along with a pen. “He certainly gave us our fair share.”
Hitoshi nods. “What’s your name?” he asks the battered man.
The man glares at him, a grim resolve set in his eyes. He must have heard about what Hitoshi can do from the other prisoners, despite their efforts to keep the operation under wraps. This would be a difficult one.
“What’s your name?” Hitoshi repeats. “Just state it, and we’ll let you go.”
The man raises an eyebrow.
“Answer him!” the police officer shouts, slamming the man’s forehead against the table.
Hitoshi winces, but tries to keep his supervisors from noticing. “You might as well answer. Spies like you have no honor or pride to defend,” he says.
“What do you know about honor, you little brat?” the man snarls.
Hitoshi smiles, activating his quirk. As his power takes hold on the man, Hitoshi can feel him resist, raging against the boy with all his strength. Hitoshi’s supervisor was right: this one put up quite a fight. But there’s no point in struggling. Hitoshi always overpowers them in the end, no matter how strong they are.
The man slumps in his chair, his glazed eyes reflecting the fluorescent sallowness of the light overhead.
Hitoshi’s grin widens, injected with a renewed confidence. “Now, you’ve got two options here: one, you can confess to me verbally, or two, you can sign your name on the written confession form,” the boy says, nodding to the stack of papers splayed out in front of the man. “What’s it gonna be?”
The tendons in the prisoner’s neck twitch almost imperceptibly, still struggling against Hitoshi’s control.
The boy leans forward, steadily increasing his power.
“My n-name is K-Kuznetsov,” the prisoner finally grits out.
“Really?” Agent Tanaka interjects sarcastically. “Our records say you’re Hiroshi Sato, a simple mechanic from the outskirts of Osaka.”
“M-my real name is Viktor Kuznetsov,” the prisoner continues. “I’m a s-spy for the Soviet government. I’ve worked undercover in Osaka for f-five years.”
“That’s more like it,” Tanaka says, clicking a button on a tape recorder. “Well done, Hitoshi,” he adds. “You know the drill. Get as many details as you can.”
Hitoshi nods, and the unwitting interrogation continues.
XXX
“Woow, Hitoshi! That is seriously so cool!” Izuku gushes.
Hitoshi dips his head in acknowledgement, smiling at his friend’s enthusiasm. “Yeah, but I can’t tell you any more than that, okay? It’s super sensitive government stuff.”
“Oh, you mean if you told us, you’d have to kill us?” Katsuki drawls, rolling his eyes. “Come on, Deku. It’s not that cool. All he does is sit around listening to a bunch of old guys talk about their lame ass lives.”
The three twelve-year-olds are in their middle school’s courtyard, wandering around the concrete wasteland and listening to Hitoshi talk about his latest exploits. The rest of their group—Tenya, Ochako, Shouto and Tsuyu—are off playing foursquare.
Part of Hitoshi selfishly wishes they would come over and ask him about his job too, but he knows it’s futile. Ever since he was recruited, he could sense the growing rift between him and his friends. It hurts. The seven of them had grown up together, going to the same schools and hanging out almost every day, but lately he doesn’t have time for it. He spends almost his entire life outside of school deep within the local holding facility.
After several months of this, Izuku and Katsuki were the only ones still curious enough to ask - though the latter would deny it.
“I bet it’s a lot more interesting than that!” Izuku protests. “Makes me kinda wish I had a cool quirk like that.”
“No you don’t,” Katsuki says quietly, suddenly grave. “You’ve got a whole life ahead of you, Deku. Mind Freak and I only have a fraction at best.”
Hitoshi’s smile drops. Right. And then there was that.
Children who develop quirks rarely live past their thirtieth birthday - the sobering cost of these amazing powers. Out of their group of seven, three had quirks: Shouto could summon small icebergs with his right hand and flames with his right, Katsuki could create explosions with his palms, and Hitoshi could get anyone who responded to him to do or say whatever he wanted. It was another secret source of division between them: it’s hard to stay friends with a time bomb.
“Come on, Katsuki, do you really have to bring that up now?” Hitoshi asks, cracking a smile and trying to lighten the mood.
Katsuki growls and shoves Hitoshi on the shoulder, but there’s no real bite to it. “Of course I do! This dumbass thinks he wants a quirk!” he shouts, pointing at Izuku. Miniature fireworks dance across the spiky boy’s palms, a clear sign he’s riled.
“Okay, Kacchan. I’m sorry,” Izuku says, putting his hands up. “It was dumb of me to say. How about we go back to talking about Hitoshi’s interrogation?” he asks, turning to the violet haired boy.
Katsuki’s explosions subside. “Fine, let’s go back to talking about your lame interrogation. I’m sure the extras had really interesting things to tell you,” he says, rolling his eyes.
Hitoshi grins mysteriously, glad they eased over that particular roadblock. “Oh, you have no idea.”
XXX
A week goes by. Then two, then three. Hitoshi settles into a familiar rhythm: he goes to school, nods to his friends in the halls and talks a bit with Izuku and Katsuki at lunch, but for the most part, he avoids them. He tells himself it’s for the best: the less they know, the safer they are.
In the afternoon, a black car turns up at the curb to cart him off to the holding facility. The length and quantity of the sessions varies from day to day, but Hitoshi always spends at least a few hours in that blocky concrete building.
Throughout it all, the humming sound never stops, paying him prolonged and unwelcome visits almost every night. Hitoshi does his best not to think about it.
One afternoon, Hitoshi’s first subject is a bit unusual.
The twelve-year-old sits waiting on the other side of the reflective metal table as they bring him in. He’s a tall man, led in by two police officers instead of the usual single deputy. He’s broad-shouldered, with dark brown hair buzzed down to the scalp, and his neck and arms are riddled with tattoos: five pointed stars, religious passages stamped out in Cyrillic letters, an etched portrait of a mustachioed Soviet leader. With those tattoos, it’s hard to imagine this man was a spy, at least not anywhere in Japan.
The prisoner takes a seat across from Hitoshi, eyeing the boy menacingly.
“Where is the paperwork?” Hitoshi asks the agents.
Agent Johnson shakes his head. “There won’t be any need for that today, Hitoshi. We’re trying something a bit different.”
With a nod, Agent Tanaka ushers another man into the room, carrying a tray that he sets on the table between Hitoshi and the prisoner. It’s full of what look like surgical utensils. They glint like shark’s teeth, reflecting the stark white light emanating from the lamp above.
A chasm of dread opens up in Hitoshi’s chest.
“We’re testing out a new kind of torture,” Johnson explains. “Combined physical and psychological. We want you to make this prisoner hurt himself. You can use any of the tools set before you, but make sure that he stays conscious throughout. Your quirk allows your victims to still feel pain, correct?”
Hitoshi swallows. “Yeah, but it will break them from my—”
“—it’ll release them from your control, yes,” Johnson finishes. “Don’t worry, we’ve thought ahead about that,” he says, picking up a syringe from the tray and jabbing the prisoner in the neck. The tattooed man flinches slightly but otherwise remains still, jaw clenched.
“We developed this serum to work as an auxiliary stimulant for your quirk. It’ll repress the victim’s nervous system in such a way that it will prevent them from breaking through your control until you allow them to, while still allowing them to feel pain.”
The chasm in Hitoshi’s chest opens wider.
Agent Tanaka walks over and lays a hand on Hitoshi’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Hitoshi. This man has done horrible things. We’re not testing this out on someone who doesn’t deserve it.”
Hitoshi glances over at the tattooed prisoner. His eyes have started to dull slightly from the drug, but he otherwise looks as defiant and threatening as he did when he first entered the room.
Feeling the weight of Tanaka’s hand lift from his shoulder, Hitoshi sets his jaw and glares at the prisoner. “What’s your name?”
The man remains silent.
Hitoshi slams his fist to the table, making the tray of equipment rattle. “State your name!”
It’s not enough to get the prisoner to respond verbally, but the slight twitch in his jaw is sufficient. But as Hitoshi seizes control, he immediately senses something different. The thread of control feels… charged. As if it were coursing with electricity.
Hitoshi eyes the lineup of tools. He doesn’t want to hurt the man too much - just enough to follow his supervisors’ orders, and hopefully prove their serum didn’t work. He directs the man to pick up a small scalpel and draw it across his palm.
The man complies, picking up the knife and running a thin line of red through the center of his palm.
He remains completely and utterly under Hitoshi’s control.
The chasm in Hitoshi’s chest opens still wider. He can’t believe it worked. The man should have snapped out of it as soon as the knife broke skin. But his eyes remain dull, his movements sluggish and compliant to every word that comes out of Hitoshi’s mouth.
“Good work, Hitoshi,” Tanaka says. “Now try something bigger.”
Hitoshi feels like he’s going to be sick. He doesn’t want to inflict any serious harm, but glancing from the tray to the predatory look in the agents’ eyes, Hitoshi is afraid he might have to.
“Okay…” the boy says reluctantly. “Now try the bigger scalpel. Run it through your arm.”
“How about that cauterizer?” Tanaka suggests, pointing out a bizarre looking tool with a dull metal tip. “Make him brand himself.”
Hitoshi’s vision starts to swim. His eyes flit nervously from the agents to the two police officers on either side of the prisoner, gazing into space impassively. Whatever this is, it feels wrong, and Hitoshi doesn’t want any part of it anymore, but he has no choice.
“Switch on that cauterizer there, and burn the back of your hand,” Hitoshi mutters to the prisoner, defeated.
The prisoner complies without a second’s hesitation, picking up the surgical tool and switching the power on, making the metal tip glow cherry red. Hitoshi wants to cry, but he keeps the tears buried deep. He has no choice.
The second the molten tip touches the skin on his arm, the man’s face twists in silent agony. A jolt forces Hitoshi to look up and into the prisoner’s eyes: filled with horror and pain not only at the shock of the heat but over his powerlessness. That’s new. Normally the eyes of Hitoshi’s victims remain completely blank while under his control. But this time, he can feel it. He can feel the man’s agony as if it were his, searing across his mind like a flash of lightning that lasts for an eternity. It’s too much.
Hitoshi snaps, releasing the man from his control and turning on his supervisors, hoping with all his might that he can ensnare them under his control with nothing but the power of his glare. He wants to put a stop to it: that hungry, power-seeking sadism he sees gleaming in their eyes. Hitoshi scowls at them until his forehead throbs.
Within seconds, the police officers standing guard beside the prisoner snap to action, one racing around the table to slam Hitoshi’s head to the cool metal surface and pin his arms behind his back while the other restrains the gasping prisoner.
Hitoshi grits his teeth, thrashing against the officer’s grip.
“That’s a real shame, Hitoshi,” Agent Johnson says. “We’ve been impressed by your maturity up until now, but that was very childish.”
The agent mutters something to the officer restraining the boy, and suddenly Hitoshi feels himself being lifted and led out of the interrogation room and down the narrow hall, his vision still a little blurry from the force of the blow to the table.
The boy feels a slight prick in the side of his neck. As he sinks into unconsciousness, he wonders vaguely about what happens to lab rats once an experiment has run its course.
XXX
Six children sit huddled in Tsuyu’s basement, blankets draped over their shoulders as they wait for one of them to make the first move. Tsu had called them all over for a sleepover, but they all knew the real reason for the meeting. None of them wants to risk saying the wrong thing.
Or almost none.
“Okay, losers,” Katsuki growls. “Are any of you gonna talk, or are you all just here to kill time?”
“Hitoshi. I’m worried about him,” Ochako blurts. “I haven’t seen him in class in forever.”
“Four days, to be precise,” Tenya says, adjusting his glasses.
“It’s a bit unusual, even for him,” Tsuyu adds.
“Like hell I care about his absences,” Katsuki says. “All I wanna know is where he goes when he’s not at school. It’s pissing me off that he’s kept so silent about it, right until he up and disappeared.”
“He hasn’t disappeared,” Shouto says.
“Oh yeah? Have any of you seen him lately?” Katsuki accuses, glaring at each of them in turn as they shuffle their shoulders and burrow deeper into their blankets. “Phone calls? Anything?”
Their silence is answer enough.
“That’s what I thought,” the explosive boy huffs.
“You can’t blame us,” Ochako mutters. “He hasn’t exactly hung out with us much lately… it’s like his internship or whatever became more important.”
“That’s hardly fair,” Izuku says quietly, making the rest of the group turn in his direction. The loquacious boy had been uncharacteristically quiet throughout the meeting, despite Hitoshi’s recent distance weighing on him more heavily than anyone else. “He had a job to do. I’m sure if any of us got to use our quirks for a greater cause, we’d probably work just as hard. But something hasn’t felt right about this for a while now… I think we should pay him a visit.”
“Like, at his house?” Shouto asks.
“No,” Izuku says. “I don’t think that’s where he is…”
“Out of the question,” Tenya says. “That facility is government property. A bunch of kids like us can’t just pop in for a tour. We’d be trespassing.”
“I think that’s kind of the point, Tenya,” Ochako says wryly. “I agree with Izuku. Something definitely doesn’t feel right about this. Hitoshi’s been gone for too long.”
“I’m not sure…” Tsuyu says. “He could just be working on a long assignment. And he probably couldn’t tell us ahead of time because of the confidentiality risk.”
“Let’s take a vote then,” Ochako proposes. “On whether we should break into that facility or not.”
“I vote no,” Tenya says. “What you’re suggesting is highly illegal, not to mention dangerous.”
“I also vote no,” Tsuyu adds. “There’s probably a perfectly reasonable explanation behind why Hitoshi has been gone so long. We’re just jumping to conclusions.”
“I abstain,” Shouto says mysteriously.
“The hell?! You can’t just abstain,” Katsuki growls.
“I can and I will.”
“Whatever. You already know my answer,” Katsuki says, holding out his palm and letting a cluster of tiny fireworks dance across it. “I vote we bust in there. I can get us in and out no problem.”
“I also vote yes,” Izuku adds quietly. “Something doesn’t feel right, and I need to be sure Hitoshi’s okay.”
“Well then, it looks like you’re the tiebreaker, Ochako,” Tenya says.
Ochako glances at each of her friends’ faces in turn. Like Izuku, she can’t escape the deep-seated suspicion in her gut that something isn’t right here. She can’t place why. She just knows it. And she’s willing to risk some jail time to find out for sure.
“I vote yes,” Ochako says resolutely. “Let’s bust in there.”
Katsuki grins maniacally and lets off a few small explosions in triumph. Izuku smiles uneasily, but otherwise looks relieved. Even Shouto looks pleased.
Tenya sighs. “I know there’s no talking you out of it now, so count me in as well.”
Tsuyu nods along with him.
“When should we go?” Ochako asks.
“How about right now?” Izuku says.
XXX
Hitoshi wakes to an intense pain swelling behind his eyes.
He sits up groggily, one hand shielding his face from the dim fluorescent light. From what he can tell, he’s in some kind of prison cell, stretched out on a bed mat like an inmate.
Hours pass. Then days. At least as far as Hitoshi can tell. Deep within the concrete confines of the holding facility, there’s no way to tell how much time is really passing. Every so often, a guard brings him a tray of food and some water, and even more infrequently one of his supervisors drops by to ask if he’ll reconsider (which Hitoshi refuses), but apart from that, the boy is all alone.
After the first few days, Hitoshi thinks about his family. He wonders how long it would take for them to report him missing, or if they would even bother. Maybe his disappearance would serve as the answer to their prayers: not the most upstanding solution, but at least they’d never have to deal with him and his bothersome quirk ever again.
More often, he thinks about his friends. A pulse of guilt courses through his heart over how distant he’d been towards them these last few months, ever since he started his internship. He wonders if they’ll ever forgive him, if he ever finds a way out of this.
And throughout it all, that ominous humming sound continues to haunt him, and it’s getting stronger. Hitoshi wonders what it could mean.
The shriek of an alarm tears Hitoshi from his thoughts. Maybe another prisoner has managed to escape. He hopes they have.
As the alarm continues, Hitoshi’s curiosity grows. He uncurls himself from his perch on the bed mat and peers down the corridor. As he watches, the door at the end of the hall flies clean off its hinges.
“Hitoshi!” a familiar voice calls.
Hitoshi’s grip on the bars tightens until his knuckles are white. He wants to cry.
“We’re going to get you out of here!”
The first face that comes into view before Hitoshi’s cell is Izuku’s, cheeks cherry red from running and fear, eyes wide with worry and concern. If Hitoshi wasn’t going to cry for himself, then Izuku would do it for him - and he did, the second his gaze landed on Hitoshi.
The rest of their friends file in quickly.
“Stand back,” Shouto tells Hitoshi, wrapping his right hand around the bars and sending a sheen of ice rippling across the web of metal.
Katsuki follows up quickly with a targeted blast, sending shards of brittle metal flying into the cell while Hitoshi protects himself with the bed mat.
Tossing his shield aside, Hitoshi glares at them. “You dumbasses! Why the hell are you here? It’s dangerous! These people are completely psychotic!”
“Clearly,” Shouto quips.
“They locked you in a freaking cell, like some prisoner!” Ochako exclaims.
“No time to talk now,” Tsuyu reminds them urgently. “Now is the time to run.”
The rest of them nod, taking off at a sprint behind her down the hall, passing through the faintly smoking wreckage of the door Katsuki blasted and weaving their way through the derelict halls of the facility.
“How did you even get in here?” Hitoshi huffs.
“Wasn’t that hard, surprisingly,” Ochako replies. “Katsuki was able to bust through most of their security - literally - and Shouto took care of most of the guards.”
“Less talking, more running!” Katsuki shouts, using a small blast to rocket himself around another corner.
The seven of them continue tearing down the labyrinth of intersecting corridors and hallways as the alarm keeps ringing. It’s so loud it drowns out the mysterious humming sound in the back of Hitoshi’s mind. But as they run, something feels off. Since breaking Hitoshi out of his cell, they haven’t encountered a single guard.
The alarm stops. The snake of fluorescent lights overhead grows dim, causing the emergency lights lining the sides of the halls to flicker to life, casting beams of white light that are somehow even more eerie and unsettling than the fluorescent glow had been.
The hair on the back of Hitoshi’s neck stands up. As they round the next corner, they come face-to-face with one of Hitoshi’s handlers, Agent Johnson, flanked by a squad of armed guards, blocking off any chance of escape.
The children stop in their tracks.
The man smiles pleasantly. “Hello, Hitoshi. These must be your friends.”
Hitoshi steps forward, motioning for his friends to stand behind him. He stretches out an arm before them, to divide the people he cares about from the man he’s come to loathe.
“I’ve noticed from the security tapes that two of them have quite fascinating quirks of their own,” Johnson continues, glancing at Katsuki and Shouto. “Quirks that could prove useful to us as well, if you’re interested in recruitment.”
“Like hell we are,” Katsuki growls, letting off a few blasts.
The smile on Johnson’s face drops. “That’s a shame. You can bet those Rusky bastards are exploiting every quirk they can get their hands on, so we must do the same.” Johnson gestures to the camera above them, bringing in another squad of guards around the children, completely surrounding them. “Thankfully, we’re much more humane. I even heard the Russians arranged for a little ‘accident’ at one of their nuclear plants, to infect more of their children with this curse.”
Hitoshi glances at his friends. He’d heard about that accident. It was all over the news that past April. The thought of what the agent could be insinuating makes him sick. “You can have me back, just let my friends go,” Hitoshi says.
Johnson shakes his head. “I’m afraid I can’t promise that, son.”
At Johnson’s signal, one of the guards raises his gun and fires, clipping Izuku on the shoulder. The boy cries out in shock and falls back, unconscious. Tsuyu and Tenya catch him before he hits the ground, pulling out a tranquilizer dart from the wound.
Hitoshi gapes in horror. He turns back and glowers at Johnson, the edges of his vision clouding over with rage. The humming sound returns again, louder than ever, filling the entire hall until it’s all Hitoshi can hear.
Johnson raises a hand, readying the guards to fire again.
The humming stops.
A thread in Hitoshi’s mind snaps.
Before Johnson can complete the order, his arm freezes, rigid like a plaster cast. His eyes widen in horror as he struggles to move the limb. The whites of his eyes leak red as the vessels burst from the strain, followed by streams of bloody tears from his ears, mouth, and nose. The agent’s jaw hangs open in a silent scream of agony, until the man crumples to the floor, lifeless. Dead.
The wish he’d had before had finally come true: he could manipulate a person’s actions - perhaps even their physical state - with nothing but a look.
But Hitoshi has no time to reflect on that now. He keeps going, staring down the mass of guards until one by one they topple over, like dominos. Once the path is clear, he grabs Ochako’s arm and leads his friends through the mass of bodies down the hall.
The alarm starts ringing again. It seems someone else had watched it all take place. Through the storm of rage and adrenaline still coursing through his system, Hitoshi wonders if he should track down and take out Tanaka too. But glancing back at his friends, pale-faced, Tenya struggling to carry an unconscious Izuku, he decides it’s best to leave it here, at least for today. Hitoshi quickly takes care of any guards they run into and leads his friends through the winding maze until they stumble out into the open night air at last. They hop on the bikes they’d stashed in the nearby bushes and take off as quickly as they can, putting as much distance between them and the horror show as possible.
XXX
Not knowing where else to go, the children find themselves stumbling back into Tsuyu’s basement, staggering in through the door as the last of the adrenaline finally wears off and immediately piling on top of one of the sofas, giving the unconscious Izuku his own spot on the armchair.
It takes a while before any of them are in a state to talk. Hitoshi is the first to speak, glancing around at his friends’ exhausted faces as he cards through the back of his hair with a shaking hand.
“Thanks…” he mutters, immediately hating himself for how small the word sounds.
Katsuki rolls his eyes. “You dumbass.”
“What… happened back there?” Ochako asks Hitoshi carefully.
The hand on the back of Hitoshi’s head stops. He knows exactly what she’s talking about. A flash of blood-streaked eyes sears across his mind’s eye. “... I don’t know,” he replies simply. “I think it had something to do with my quirk, but I’ve never been able to do something like that before.” He feels tears prick at the corners of his eyes. “You have every right to be afraid of me.”
He glances from one face to the next, from Katsuki’s tired scowl to Ochako’s worried eyes to Shouto’s neutral exhaustion. Whatever they tell him next, whatever ultimatum they give, Hitoshi knows he deserves all of it and more.
“Why would we be afraid of you?” Tsuyu asks. “Those were bad men, and you protected us from them.”
“Like I care what you did to a bunch of asshole adults,” Katsuki adds.
The others nod silently in agreement.
“We’re just glad you’re okay,” Ochako says. “And we hope you’ll stay that way, especially with this new development.”
Hitoshi almost collapses from relief. All his life, he’d grown accustomed to the looks of fear, his mother’s inability to look him in the eye, his grandmother’s pointed remarks, his teachers’ refusal to call on him in class. And here, at the end of it all, was a group of people willing to put their trust in him completely, who cared more about his well-being than whatever strange stunt his quirk had just pulled.
Hitoshi looks at them all in turn and gives them a quivering smile, willing himself not to cry, but knowing that tears are inevitable.
The humming never bothers Hitoshi again.