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There’s a new little boy today.
Hitoshi stares from behind Miss Tanaka’s legs, gripping at her dark blue skirts tightly. He knows she won’t like this, but for now she’s occupied with welcoming the new kid and Hitoshi will take advantage of it for as long as possible.
The boy is dark; dark eyes and dark hair, dark lashes that fan out across his cheeks. Pale skin. It’s been a while since a new boy has come to the orphanage, and this one looks to be about his age. Hitoshi just turned six this year.
“What’s your name, dear?” Miss Tanaka asks in her sickly-sweet tone, the one she uses with certain people that don’t include Hitoshi. It won’t last long. She really likes to yell an awful lot. “What did your parents call you?”
“Shouta,” the boy says immediately. Hitoshi blinks. The boy doesn’t seem shy, unlike most new orphans. Hitoshi is still shy, and he’s been here as long as he can remember.
“Found him in an alley, poor thing,” the social worker says. Hitoshi can’t remember her name. He startles when the boy—Shouta—speaks again.
“I don’t belong here. I have a home—”
“Yes, yes dearie, that’s what they all say,” Miss Tanaka dismisses. Hitoshi looks up at her when he feels her gaze find him, and he fights his natural instinct to cower. Her eyes go cold when she sees the wrinkles his fists have left in her skirt. “Hitoshi, dear,” she grits out between clenched teeth, “why don’t you take Shouta with you upstairs? Show him the boy’s room, yes?”
It’s phrased as a question but Hitoshi knows it isn’t a request. He nods frantically, immediately grabbing one of Shouta’s small wrists in his clammy hand. “Come on, this way.” He can do this. He can be good, useful. They won’t hurt him if they can use him, he’s sure of it.
The boy doesn’t come willingly and yet Hitoshi perseveres, stomping his small socked feet up two flights of stairs to the younger boy’s room; the girls have their own and the older boys as well, across the hall. Every step brings more struggle from the boy behind him but Hitoshi won’t stop, can’t stop when this is him being good. He has to be good.
“Hey kid, stop—”
“No, we have to listen. You’re new here, but I’m telling you, ya’ have to listen or you’ll get in trouble—”
“Kid, stop.”
“My name is Hitoshi.”
“Hitoshi, it’s okay. Just—calm down.”
He hadn’t even realized just how hard he was breathing, and it only dawns on him as they come to a stop in his—theirs, now—slightly rectangular bedroom, filled with bunk beds from corner to corner, with a wide open space in the middle kept meticulously clean. Hitoshi takes a deep breath as he whirls on the boy behind him, the kid’s dark eyes half-hooded with obvious apathy.
Did Hitoshi ever look like that, or was he always afraid? Shouta doesn’t know enough about this place to be scared of it, but fear keeps Hitoshi safe, so he will teach the boy. He’ll teach him. He ignores Shouta’s suggestion that he ‘calm down’.
“You sleep when they say, eat when they say, and play when they say. Do your lessons when Miss Ro says so, and wash behind your ears. They check, believe me…” Hitoshi says darkly. Shouta’s eyebrows are slowly knitting together; that’s fine. It means he’s taking Hitoshi seriously. “It’s alright here, if you follow the rules and stay out of the matrons’ way. The older kids are pretty nice. They’ll help you, if ya’ ask. ‘Specially the ones who have been here a while. They get it.”
Hitoshi wants to tell him about the dark room and the belt, the sly fingers that yank and pull at ears and cheeks and skin without warning, leaving red crescent marks and sometimes blood—but he’s hoping the other boy will never have to experience that.
“I’ll help you. You’ll be alright, with me.” Hitoshi tries to smile reassuringly.
Shouta doesn’t smile back or look relieved like Hitoshi had hoped; if someone had told him this when he first arrived, Hitoshi thinks he himself would have appreciated it. Learning on the fly has ended in too many nights with a raw bottom or aching back when the matrons get too heavy handed with the belt. He cringes inwardly.
Shouta’s face is smooth, impassive. Hitoshi doesn’t like that he can’t read the other boy easily; is that normal for kids their age? Hitoshi can’t seem to hide a single thing from the grown-ups.
Shouta shifts his weight, his eyes narrowing in apparent suspicion. Hitoshi flinches. Did he mess this up, too?
“Do they hurt you, Hitoshi?”
He feels the blood freeze in his veins. Is he that obvious? Oh well, he supposes there’s nothing for it now. He’d rather shelter Shouta from the hard truth of it, but if he already sees it written in the lines of Hitoshi’s tiny body and the sound of his frantic words, then...well the matrons are always telling him to be honest, aren’t they.
“Yeah...but it’s alright. You just gotta be better than me, Shouta. You can do that, right? It’s not so hard. I’ll still help you, I promise, just follow my lead, okay? You don’t have to be scared.”
The thing is, Shouta doesn't look in the least bit scared.
He looks furious.
Hitoshi is about two seconds away from cowering back and finding his bed where he can hide under the blankets and pretend he has some semblance of safety under them. How did he mess this up already? How is Shouta mad at him before he’s even had a chance to get to know Hitoshi?
“Hey, hey kid, no- I…” Hitoshi looks up to see one of Shouta’s small hands, reaching out to him. It’s slow, and this is about the only thing that keeps Hitoshi held fast in place. Once again, he can’t help but think that this boy is strange; he doesn’t hold himself or talk like any other kid Hitoshi has ever met. The confusion only heightens the sense of wrong that all of this brings and it welcomes hot, unbidden tears to his eyes. But it’s been a long time since Hitoshi has let himself cry, so he holds them back and they burn all the more.
Shouta sighs, the little sound echoing out across the bare wooden floors around them as he stares Hitoshi down with a quiet strength that Hitoshi doesn’t know what to do with. “If I tell you something, you have to not freak out, ok?” Hitoshi nods, though he’s not sure if he’ll freak out or not. Shouta nods back resignedly. “I’m not truly a child. My name is Aizawa Shouta and I’m actually...big. A grown up,” he says slowly, as if trying to find the right words to explain himself. Hitoshi on the other hand feels his jaw drop to the floor. “I got hit by a quirk that made me small and I got turned around in the confusion. That stupid woman brought me here, but I’m not an orphan. I’m a pro hero. Eraserhead.” He finishes off by jutting a hand forward, his small fingers poised into a clear invitation for a handshake.
It’s this last detail that settles the thought in Hitoshi’s mind: Shouta is telling the truth.
Hitoshi knows this with every trembling bone in his body for multiple reasons.
One, no kid his age has ever talked the way Shouta does, with slow pauses and thoughtful phrases, with fire in his words ready to stand up to even Miss Tanaka downstairs, lacking any and all fear of authority that Hitoshi has quickly learned to cultivate.
Two, the story seems like it could be true. People are affected by quirks all the time and accidents happen a lot. Hitoshi has been on the receiving end of too many quirks to not believe Shouta when he says this is what happened.
And three...well, three is the most convincing of all.
Because Hitoshi knows of Eraserhead. Hitoshi loves Eraserhead.
Hitoshi thinks back to when it happened. He's pretty sure he was five, though the days tend to all run together. Measurements such as weeks, months, years mean very little to him, but he’s almost sure he’s right. In the summer, the matrons find themselves busier than usual—with school being out and all—the kids running rampant with boundless energy. But not Hitoshi. No, he had taken the opportunity to slip away, out the front door and down the street, where the city was somehow blissfully quiet and where he had gone to enjoy his time alone. Well, not entirely alone.
“You back again, kid?” Eraserhead had asked. After the second time of meeting in the alley, the man had finally introduced himself, though Hitoshi never did return the favor.
Hitoshi had been floored when he learned the man was a pro hero. He nodded in response, kneeling down to observe the real reason the both of them ever found themselves in that alley that smelled of hot, sweltering garbage.
A mother cat had birthed kittens a few weeks back and Hitoshi was fascinated by them. Eraserhead was too.
And now, Eraserhead is a boy with dark hair and dark eyes that Hitoshi recognizes and oh my god it’s real, what are they gonna do—
“Shh, shush, it’s alright Hitoshi.”
The boy pales. “Do you...do you remember me?” He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Shouta says no, it might just break what’s left of his half-starved heart. This is Eraserhead—Shouta, a pro-hero who now knows what happens to Hitoshi in the dark corridors of this place, and he had always wanted to tell Eraserhead but he could never seem to strike up the courage. But now Shouta knows and what if still nothing changes—
“Yes, I remember you, kid. I took one of those cats home, did you know? Never saw you again after that last time.” Hitoshi didn’t know. One day he went back and the cats were just gone. “Took the rest to a shelter. They were old enough to be separated from their mother and it just didn’t feel right leaving them on the streets. Bothered me I couldn’t tell you that,” Shouta sighs. Hitoshi blinks, still trying to reconcile the silhouette of the man he had begun to know and bond with, with the figure of a small boy before him. He feels like he needs to sit down.
“Listen, kid,” Shouta begins, his tone leaving no room for argument, “I’m not staying here. I’ve got people out looking for me and for all I know, this quirk has a time limit.” A small hand comes to rest firmly on Hitoshi’s shoulder and he looks up from where he had unknowingly been staring at his shoes. “And when I leave, I’m taking you with me. I know these places aren’t great but...mm," Shouta shakes his head. "I’m not just gonna leave you here, kid. Hitoshi. Do you want to come with me?”
Hitoshi feels numb, his fingers tingling weirdly, but not unpleasantly. He can’t quite get his mouth to work.
For a moment Shouta looks nervous. “I named her Sakura, by the way. She’s the one with the blue eye, remember?”
The cat. Shouta is talking about the cat. Hitoshi feels a small smile break onto his face, stealing space like a creeping shadow. Shadows. Hitoshi would like to leave behind his shadows. He finds himself nodding. He licks his lips, voice cracking when he speaks.
“Sakura. I like that name.”
Shouta smiles.