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Normally, Inko would have screamed her heart out in a situation like that.
However, it seemed that the latest events had basically drained her of simply everything, including the very natural instinct of being scared of strangers in her room.
Even if, technically speaking, he wasn’t a stranger and it wasn’t her room.
She did have the keys to it, though, so at least she wasn’t properly intruding - something that she wasn’t so sure could be said about him, and not just because he wasn’t supposed to be there: more than that it was the fact that he looked like a deer caught in headlights, and seemed to have the word GUILT written in capital letters all over his face.
The juxtaposition of seeing him standing there like that, while on the wall behind him a huge All Might poster cheerfully exclaimed I AM HERE, was just too much for Inko to bear.
For the first time in weeks, she let out a small, feeble laugh.
That gesture seemed to bring some sort of relief to Toshinori, who, finally, began to breathe again.
“I… I’ll go,” he said, taking a step forward and then stopping, since Inko was still standing in front of the door. “I’m sorry.”
Inko shook her head. She didn't want to force him out of the room - unless she was mistaken, he was probably there for the same reason she was.
“It's ok. But how did you…?”
He showed her a very familiar keychain and the key attached to it.
“Izuku gave it to me,” he explained. “Or rather, I found it in my pockets after he…”
There was a long pause.
“After he dismissed me.”
So that was what had happened, Inko thought. She had noticed All Might had come back to U.A. and that had worried her quite a lot, but the principal and the rest of the staff had quickly reassured her nothing very bad had happened to Izuku, and that there were plans in motion to bring him back safely, and she had decided that she had received the only piece of information that mattered, and that she was just too scared to know the rest.
“I know the feeling,” she said.
If the circumstances had been different, she would have found that strange, unexpected similarity between the two of them almost endearing.
A faint hint of a smile appeared on Toshinori’s face, but soon changed into a worried expression.
His gaze fell on the writing desk, on a framed picture of herself and Izuku.
“I’ll go,” Toshinori repeated, this time with more conviction than before. “I have no right to be here.”
“If we’re judging that based on pictures,” Inko said, nodding towards the one Toshinori was still looking at, “then I’d say you have way more right than me.”
She pointed at the walls covered in posters.
“And he gave you his key,” she added, a very faint tinge of almost-jealousy in her voice. She only had the spare one U.A.’s staff gave her.
With a deep sigh, she sat down on Izuku’s bed.
“Why do you think he gave it to me?” Toshinori asked, in a way that implied he already knew the answer, but was kind of scared of it.
“Isn’t it obvious? So you can take proper care of his stuff and clean his room while he’s not here,” Inko said, trying to sound cheerful and adding a forced, poorly executed giggle at the end.
She patted the place next to her, inviting Toshinori to sit down.
He accepted.
“It’s not some sort of last will, if that is what is worrying you. It’s his own way to tell you he expects to find you here when he comes back,” Inko said. She couldn't really say why or how, but she was sure of it.
He seemed to be considering her words. Then he turned towards her, his expression slightly less tense than before.
“So, you're sure he didn’t mean I have to clean his room, then?”
“Yes, I am." She almost giggled for real, this time.
“Well, I’m really glad this is not going to be my problem,” Toshinori said, picking up an extremely smelly All Might-themed sock from the ground and showing it to Inko.
They stared at each other for a while and then they both laughed, until what had started as a genuine laughter turned to something a bit more forced, until it became silence.
And just like that, without any forewarning, the pain became so unbearable that Inko burst into tears.
She clutched Toshinori’s shirt, clinging to it like it was her one and only grip on sanity.
For all those long, interminable days she had felt so alone that she had convinced herself no one could ever understand her pain. Sure, there were other parents who had reached out to her with kind words, some even offering her their help, varying from professional therapy to fraudulent palmistry, and she had very soon realized there was always someone from U.A’s staff watching over her when she wasn't in her room (or in Izuku's). She knew that she hadn’t been left alone, and yet… Logic seldom applies to feelings, after all.
But for the first time in weeks, when she had seen All Might in the very same room she had started to visit just to catch a faint trace of Izuku’s presence, standing there for the very same reason, she had felt as if the immense weight on her shoulders had been lifted, even if just for the shortest of times, even if just a little.
For the first time she had felt as if her pain wasn’t only her own.
And when Toshinori’s arms tightened around her, grasping her shoulder with the same desperate need with which she was now clutching him, his own sobs - softer and surely more dignified - getting lost in hers, she felt a little less scared, and a little less alone.
She didn’t know for how long they had cried, and how long they had just stayed there in silence, finding solace in each other’s arms.
She realized it must have been hours when he gently called her name and pointed at the night sky outside the window.
“Miss Midoriya? We need to go.”
She nodded.
“Inko,” she added.
“Inko. It’s getting late.”
He helped her to get up from the bed and accompanied her outside the room.
After he locked the door he paused, the key still in his hand.
“You can keep it,” Inko said. “He gave it to you.”
“But I might use it again, if I have it.”
She smiled.
“It’s ok. Just keep in mind… I might use mine, too.”
There was a moment of awkward silence - it was clear to Inko that their meeting wasn’t going to be discussed, and, if possible, not even acknowledged. But she also had the weird certainty that neither of them was discarding the possibility of having another one.
“You know, Inko... Had the circumstances been different… I think I would have liked to invite you for a cup of tea.”
She fell silent, taken aback by that sudden... non-invitation. But she couldn't agree more with him: that was nor the time, nor the place. And she perfectly knew there were chances it could never be.
However, she had no intention to allow herself to even think about that.
“When Izuku's back,” she said. “When Izuku’s back, let’s have that cup of tea.”
Toshinori seemed surprised, as if he wasn’t really expecting her answer to be some sort of a positive one. But then he smiled - and even if it was a bittersweet one, Inko felt a small, tiny tug at her heart.
“I am counting on that,” he said.
With that, he bowed and went his way.
Inko’s gaze followed him until he disappeared behind a corner down the hallway.
“When Izuku’s back,” she whispered to herself.