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There’s a blank sheet of paper in front of him.
It’s pure white, unmarked by any ink. Enji stares at it, and it stares back at him. The pen he holds in a tight grip feels heavier than it should — it weighs his entire hand down like a sandbag, and he’s unable to write anything. Next to him, pro-heroes are scribbling furiously, some surreptitiously wiping at their eyes as they pen a letter to their loved ones.
They’ve been told to spend this hour writing letters to their family before they head off for their mission. It’s a dangerous one, coloured red in terms of the danger rating, and they’re supposed to waste time on this pointless exercise in case they don’t make it back. Enji scoffs. There’s no way he would be defeated. There’s no need to be so sentimental.
The empty letter mocks Enji, along with the sounds of scratching pens on paper. He’s the only one sitting ramrod straight, stock still, when the other heroes are —
To hell with it. He just has to get it over with.
With a forceful grip, he puts pen to paper. The person he thinks of is his wife. He wrote her letters a long, long time ago, back when he was still courting her. He has always been a simple man, and being straightforward was his usual style.
To: Rei
I will be
Enji pauses, unsure how to continue. Would she even want to read a letter from him? Would she open it? The doctors had advised him to not visit her in case it would agitate her and worsen her condition. What if this letter causes an adverse reaction?
“Ah! Monster, you monster! Oh, Shouto, my poor baby… Get away from me, get away! You stole my son! You made him into a monster! You made me into a monster too!”
Her pale visage was twisted into a tormented expression and the tubes inserted in her boney arms swayed dangerously with her frantic arm movements. Objects she threw at him clattered at his feet from her lack of strength. Enji stood at the door, unable to cross the threshold. The woman he had married resembled a total stranger. Had their marriage… had he made her this way?
“Madam, please calm down! Get the sedative and hold her down!” Nurses and doctors pushed past his frozen body in order to get to Todoroki Rei. He stood there for a long, long time, watching as a crowd of professionals held her down as she shrieked and thrashed like a wounded animal, and continued watching when she fell unconscious. Even as the doctor explained to him about her condition, Enji watched her, a ghost of the beautiful woman she had once been.
The pillows she had thrown at him had not hurt even in the slightest. However...
Enji shakes his head, willing the memory away. Although he sends her favourite flowers every week through the nurse, sending a letter is different. While she accepted the anonymous flowers (according to the nurses… who’s to say they haven’t been lying in a misguided attempt to spare his feelings?), a letter signed by his name might cause her to relapse into a fit of hysteria. There was no need to test her. If she reacted like she did when he visited her…
His heart throbs, weak, like the flickering of a candle flame in the wind.
Enji hates feeling this way. He isn’t the type of man to hesitate — he’s supposed to burn like wildfire, strong and powerful and unstoppable. Why are they doing this instead of spending more time preparing for the battle?
However... all the other heroes are taking it seriously, including All Might, who writes seriously with a rare unsmiling expression. Enji scrunches the paper into a ball and starts anew. He supposes he should write to the man of the house should he be gone. His second oldest turned oldest son. He would have to take care of the women in the house in his stead, as well as his youngest who was still in school.
Natsuo,
Enji halts once again.
He doesn’t know what to say.
Enji and his son have been estranged since Natsuo was young. Weak. Slow. With a Quirk that was nothing spectacular. Enji had focused on training Touya, his eldest, while hoping for a stronger child next. The next one was weak too. Fuyumi, a fragile little girl who always shied away from his gaze, resembling his wife rather than himself. Natsuo and her often scurried away like little gutter rats, hiding in rooms of the house he would not visit as he had no need to. At times he had heard stifled laughter, but not once did he witness the sight of their smiling faces.
Enji did eventually get a stronger child — Todoroki Shouto. However, he lost his oldest one, Todoroki Touya, and Natsuo never stopped hating him for it. The two boys had always been close growing up, sharing the same room, games and hobbies. After Touya departed, Natsuo never stopped looking at him with a heated gaze that burned with bottomless anger.
“You killed him! Murderer! Return my brother to me!”
His son had shrieked with uncharacteristic fierceness, hellfire alight in his eyes as he accused him. Hot steaming tears had rolled down pale cheeks, still covered with the barest of baby fat. He had been held back by his sobbing sister, the very picture of grief as tears and snot dripped down her face. The cold funeral portrait faced them without a single shred of emotion, his son’s smile flat and cold, and Enji stood there, stone-faced, in front of the picture even as his insides raged like a relentless thunderstorm.
Enji had been careless. He will no longer be.
Natsuo now lives like a normal civilian. In high school, he attended a boarding school to be away from home. In college, he now rents an apartment close to his university with his girlfriend, who Enji has yet to meet. He hears of such details from Fuyumi, who speaks of little tidbits of the other family members’ lives over meals, with such joy and affection that, Enji, too —
…
Enji crushes the paper into a tight ball. He doubts Natsuo would appreciate receiving a letter from him. The boy doesn't even come back during most of the holidays, leaving Enji and Fuyumi to spend them alone. According to Fuyumi, he spends them with his girlfriend’s family, which is hardly proper given how women should be the one spending holidays with their boyfriend’s families and not the other way around. He knows Fuyumi has been trying hard to convince Natsuo to come back home, to some degree of success. He, too, has been trying to get home on time to have dinner with her. The foolish girl makes his share every day without fail, sometimes falling asleep on the dining table without even a cardigan on.
Not Natsuo, then. If he has to write a letter...
There is his youngest son. The son he is most proud of. The beautiful genetic combination where his quirk is half-ice half-fire, although he had stubbornly refused to use the side of fire for the longest time. His son had finally given in, however, and Enji has no doubt Shouto would become the best hero of his time. Enji has to warm the seat of the number one in preparation for his son, the talented genius, to take over him.
Just the thought of it warms his heart.
His son, however, always rejects his calls immediately and leaves messages unread. Fuyumi assures him Shouto is just going through his rebellious phase, a helpless smile on her face. He supposes Shouto would not read his letter. That leaves him with his one and only daughter, Fuyumi. The only family member who lives with him.
Fuyumi is a gentle child. Unambitious and unassuming, she is the thread that ties the fabric of the family together with never-ending patience and effort. Some nights he hears her cry quietly alone in her room, some mornings she spends a long time in front of Touya’s altar. Some days she jumps at the very sight of him, and on some others, she tenses when he gets too close. During all those moments, Enji pauses. He wants to say something, do something, but he never does. In his stead, she faces him with an unsteady smile, but bright eyes full of conviction.
Not once did she ever speak up against him. Her actions spoke for themself. With how she summons the courage and forces herself to face him, he too, wants to make the effort to meet her halfway. Enji has made many mistakes and hurt both her and her mother, and he has to make up for it all. He would become a father she would be proud of. Endeavour would claim victory today, like he always has, and be a hero she could admire and look up to.
Today too, she would be waiting at home for his return. Perhaps he could buy her favourite blueberry cake on the way home. With a slight smile on his lips, he writes to Fuyumi in bold, simple letters:
Fuyumi,
I’ll be back.
There’s no need to say anything else. Enji doesn't have the spare time to reminisce — he has to focus on beating All Might and take the spot of the number one hero. He would definitely win and come back.
Enji seals the letter in an envelope and passes it to the bird-person who would be delivering all of the letters once the mission begins. With renewed conviction, Endeavour rises from his seat to double-check his equipment.
His entire body hurts.
It had been a difficult battle, one of the hardest ones in his entire career. He is covered in minor injuries from head to toe, with the most notable being the multiple stab wounds to his abdomen. They will no doubt leave scars alongside the others that already span across his body. As the villains continue to advance in their research of mutated and combined quirks, heroes have been pushed to the edge to evolve and cope with the new threat.
Enji, too, pushed himself, overheating to a point where his body was scarred. Burns cover every inch of his skin and every single minute movement results in excruciating pain — every breath he takes is difficult and causes a stabbing pain through his chest. His heart beats weakly, damaged by the excessive heat. It feels as though his organs are failing and misbehaving, and simply existing, simply lying there, was painful despite the morphine currently being pumped through his veins.
After making sure the IV drips are securely attached, the nurse hovers by his bedside with an expression full of concern. She hems and haws, holding a clipboard close to her chest. Finally, she asks shyly, “Would you like me to call anyone, Endeavour-san? Maybe your family?”
Firmly, he replies, “There is no need to do so.”
He did not have any life-threatening injuries, and there is no need for them to come over for something so minor. Having injuries is a shameful thing — it means he is still too weak. Still unable to defeat All Might.
The nurse hesitates, but upon seeing his face of frustration, she chooses to leave without a word.
It’s now quiet, save for his soft breaths and the slow beeping of the monitor beside him tells him he’s alive. Enji stares at the white ceiling before him, bored.
In the large private room, Enji sits alone in the hospital bed. The fire-proof sheets beneath him are uncomfortable and scratchy, making it difficult for him to get proper rest. With so much time on his hands, there’s nothing to do but think. He replays the previous battle again and again in his mind, burning it into memory. There were times he should have moved better, faster, stronger. Opportunities he missed. Other strategies he could have taken. They burn and fester like blisters beneath his skin, growing in size and itching, itching, itching.
He wants to be the strongest person, strong enough to always win, to not be looked down on, to protect what is his. He wants to be strong enough to overwhelm his enemies, to defeat them quickly before he overheats, to defeat them before there are any casualties. He wants a perfect victory, but those feel so few and far between, and he’s extremely frustrated by his slow rate of improvement. At this rate, how would he catch up to, no, overcome All Might?
There’s no time to be lying here. There’s no time to lose.
Exhaustion overwhelms his entire body as his thoughts cycle again and again with frustration and self-reflection. Before long, his eyes fall shut and he falls into disturbed slumber. He drifts in and out of consciousness as his body works earnestly to fix itself.
...
When he wakes up again, it’s dawn. Soft light filters into the hospital room in gentle warm hues. Enji struggles to sit up, feeling sore from lying down for so long. His throat is parched, and he pours himself a cup of water with some difficulty.
Finally, he sees what’s on the table. Wrapped in soft, baby blue fabric is a three-layered lunchbox. He knows who it is from once he lays his eyes upon it. It’s his daughter’s favourite colour — he’s noticed how she often picked the same colour, from her water bottle to her umbrella. She must have visited him while he was unconscious, after receiving news he was injured. It might have been pesky All Might who told her. The man always liked to overstep his bounds and stick his nose where it doesn’t belong. Perhaps it was a good thing since it means she would not have stayed up waiting for him.
He notices the white envelope pressed underneath the lunchbox. Carefully, he pulls it out and tears it open with aching fingers. Unfolding the letter, he sees her neat, cursive handwriting in soft blue ink.
Dad,
I’m sure it was a difficult battle, but I knew you would win. I hope you will recover soon, please eat the food I’ve made and regain your strength. Let me know if you need anything from home.
Love,
Fuyumi
Enji reads the letter, again and again, pausing on some words — it fills him with a complex emotion he can’t quite name. Yes, she knew he would win, just as he promised he would. Her words are simple, yet hold so much gentle affection just like herself. Enji keeps the letter safe in the drawer by his bedside when he’s not reading it. No one comes to visit or calls him on his phone, but the letter accompanies him throughout his stay at the hospital.
He gets discharged three days later. He isn’t so weak as to be beaten down so easily. The badge of honour on his chest glints golden as it reflects the sun rays that descend upon it. He received it after participating in this tough battle against the villains. He will show it to her...
After he brings his only daughter a blueberry cake as an apology for not making it to dinner that day.