Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Aizawa!”

Shouta has to hold back a groan as he hears his co-worker approach him. Nemuri probably still thinks they’re friends, although he’s already told her that he wasn’t interested countless times. This kind of relationship at work is unprofessional, and that is the last thing he wants to be.

The sound of pencils scratching paper and the tapping on computer keys stops while she tries making her way through the rows of desks. Shouta can’t help but hope that if he ignores her she might understand that he is busy at the moment, but he knows it’s useless.

She is a kind woman, but her behavior at work is… absurd. He remembers one time, people had started thinking they were dating because of how over-friendly she acted around him, and then he had needed to go and tell her he strictly wasn’t interested in her, nor would he ever be. He was good on his own. She’d been shocked for a moment before starting to laugh and telling him he’d got the entire thing wrong.

He doesn’t understand how she has a higher position than him, even after all those years. Not that he would want it, of course. He is fond of the work he does, or at least, content. There is nothing else for him to wish for. 

The Hero Public Safety Commission is not to be taken lightly and requires much seriousness. Shouta knows how things work, how they should be, and Nemuri simply goes against all those ideals. Nevertheless, she is his superior, and he must respect her.

Preparing himself internally for what’s about to come, he inhales heavily without taking his eyes off his computer. “Ms. Nemuri,”

“Come on, drop the formalities already, will you?” She tells him, resting her hips on his desk and making him look up. She takes her glasses off and takes the end of her blouse to clean the lenses. Shouta has been there for eighteen years now, and Nemuri had started working for this company only a few months before him.  

Still, he prides himself on keeping his professional attitude even after all this time. He ought to be rational and straight to the point, especially since his work often consists of delicate situations regarding children with meta abilities.

When he doesn’t answer, Nemuri sighs and brings her glasses up to the light before putting them back on her face. “Say, did something happen with your last case?”

Shouta frowns, thinking back on his last case. It had been the same as usual, concerning one of those orphanages meant to raise peculiar children in a safe environment. His job, like always, had been to determine if the place was everything it should be, or if it should be closed. There hadn’t been anything out of the ordinary, and he’d written so in his latest report.

The problem with these children isn’t their abilities themselves. They aren’t exactly rare in these days and age. In fact, the majority of the population possesses a meta ability, but their use is heavily restricted, and the Hero Public Safety Commission is there to make sure it stays that way.

“No, the same as always.” He answers, seeing the envelope in her hands for the first time. “Why?”

 “Well, no matter,” She continues, eyeing him to see if he’s hiding something from her. “You’ve been… requested, tomorrow morning, to meet with the Upper Management Council.” Nemuri puts a hand down on his desk. “Come on, Aizawa, what’d you do?”

Shouta is stunned, unable to utter a single word. Of all the things he’d expected to hear, this hadn’t even been part of the list. He has worked here for years, and he has never met with the Upper Management Council, never had to.

People either meet them because they accomplish something incredible, or because they make a terrible mistake. Or because they’re part of the council. It’s nothing short of casual.

“I didn’t do anything,” He replies. Shouta has never broken a single rule and he always makes sure his reports are perfect. He also never takes any vacation, because work comes before everything else, and he doesn’t have anything else. “There has to be a mistake,”

“The Upper Management Council doesn’t make mistakes, Aizawa, and you know that.”

The people around them have all stopped working to listen to their conversation by now. Most of them straining their ears to catch what they’re saying, others full-on turned around in their chairs, not trying to be subtle anymore.

“I don’t know what to tell you, I didn’t do anything,” Shouta says, a little louder so that the people around him hear. Rumors are sure to start spreading when lunch break comes; nothing ever happens, but he doesn’t want people thinking he’s done something horrifying. Maybe he has, and he doesn’t know.

“I know,” Nemuri sighs, a distant look on her face, “that’s what worries me.”

She walks away afterward, telling people to get back to work, and Shouta finally opens the mail on his computer he had neglected to read today in order to finish working on another case.

Hero Public Safety Commission, Upper Management Council

To: Aizawa Shouta
CC: Nemuri Kayama

You are requested for a meeting tomorrow at 8 a.m. sharp with the Upper Management Council. Alone. Do be on time, delays will not be tolerated.

Shouta passes a hand down his face and slumps back in his chair. He hears the person behind him click their tongue in annoyance, but right now he cannot get himself to care. This can either be extremely good, or extremely bad, there’s no telling which one it would be.

His eyes start to hurt from rereading the email too many times. After a while, he finally closes the tab and is met with a starry night sky picture in his desktop’s background.

The doctor had told him staring at computer screens would only aggravate the burning in his eyes, and that a good exercise would be to look at things far away. Technically, the stars in these pictures were incredibly far. Far from earth, far from Musutafu. He has always wanted to see a night sky filled with stars, but there never are any to look at in the city.

There are bigger problems he needs to take care of at the moment. Shouta gets back to work and doesn’t leave until he has looked through every file piled up on his desk. By the time he finishes, everyone has already left.

Shouta arrives home late. He always does, but no one waits for him, so it doesn’t matter.

Well, that’s not entirely true. He has a cat; one he found in the streets six years ago when she was still just a scrawny kitten.

Back then, he had thought she was a black cat, the kind people seem to love blaming for all their misfortune on when crossing their paths. He began going out of his way every night to bring her some food, although most of it probably shouldn’t have been fed to a cat.

Little by little, she let him approach her, stroke her back, then her head, and eventually bring her home with him. After a well-deserved bath, her caramel-like fur was revealed, the same shade of autumn leaves, of sweet maple.

And so it became her name. Maple.

Hanging his raincoat on one of the hooks by the front door, Shouta takes off his shoes and discards them to the side. He lights up the kitchen lamp above the table, warming the place up in color, although the air stays awfully cold.

There’s not much in the fridge, definitely not enough to cook something decent. He makes a mental note to go to the grocery store later this week and takes out a ramen cup.

When he starts eating, he realizes he isn’t hungry at all, not after everything that happened today. Well, to most people it wouldn’t be much, but this is the most that has happened to Shouta in months.

Maple jumps on the table while he moves his noodles around with his chopsticks, not picking up any. He lifts his head to find the cat staring back at him, head tilted in curiosity. Perhaps, being a forty-year-old man and having only a cat for company is not all that good for his sanity.

“I wonder what kind of worries you have,” Maple then laid down and rolled on her back. “If you do have any, that is.” He scoffs lightly, the corner of his lips turning upwards as he reaches to stroke her fluffy fur collar.

Truly, Shouta is happy. He has a job where he gets to help people and a small but comfortable apartment. And a cat, of course. It’s not like he has other things he would rather be doing. He had tried going on vacation before, but he always ends up going back to work early because of how bored he is sitting at home.

There’s a bang followed by shouts coming from the apartment above him. He’d been worried when he moved in a few years back, but when he met the couple living there, he had realized they were just grumpy people always yelling at one another.

Opening his balcony door, Shouta steps outside in his gray linen slippers, the balcony of his neighbors above protecting him from the soft rain falling outside. He is careful not to spill the cup of tea in his hand.

He has this old wooden stool he keeps outside and uses as a chair. His mother had given him when he’d moved out because she hadn’t known what to do with it then and now it’s Shouta who doesn’t know where to put it. So he leaves it here.

It’s convenient, really. He spends quite a lot of time outside before bed just staring out at the sky—or what’s visible of it between the skyscrapers. He scrutinizes the dark gray space and knows he won’t find any stars tonight, so instead, he looks at the buildings' windows further away.

The people passing by in a hurry, especially those without umbrellas, those in offices working late. He looks at the hero publicities plastered all over buildings. He grumbles.

Shouta doesn’t hate heroes; he actually appreciates their work quite a lot. He even wanted to become one when he was younger. But he also knows that the Hero Public Safety Commission, or HPSC, spends a lot of money on those ads to reinforce positive ideas about them to the public.

Ever since the new system was put in place, the people have been… on edge. About meta abilities, their own and those of other people. He knows it’s important to gain the trust of civilians, but he also wishes the money could go to places like the orphanages Shouta visits ever so often because of work.

Well, nothing he can do here. His job is to make a detailed report about those places and send recommendations to require them to close if he deems it necessary. Nothing less, nothing more.

Normally that’s what he would do, but tomorrow is different, and he dreads change. No, not change. The unexpected. The not knowing what’s ahead.

He can do nothing but wait, though. When he goes to bed that night, that’s all he does. He waits to fall asleep (which he doesn’t do until many hours have passed), waits for the night to be over, and waits for tomorrow.

Shouta stops the elevator door from closing, the people already inside eyeing him. He tugs at his tie, loosening it slightly. He looks at the small round buttons indicating the floors. He looks at the fourth one and retreats his hand because this is the floor where his desk is, before remembering that’s not where he’s supposed to go.

He has been so nervous this morning that he keeps forgetting everything. First, it was Maple’s bowl of water, then the key to lock his apartment which he had to turn back to go get. It made him faintly late, but just enough that he missed the metro and had to wait for the next one.

He’d had even taken the time to put his hair up in a half-bun and had decided to wear one of his best suit—well, his only suit, along with a blue tie.

Raising his hand back up, he presses the twelfth’s floor button, watching him light up a golden color. The people in the elevator – eight of them – stare at him for a moment before the man next to him moves to the side to give him more space.

Oh. These people have definitely got the wrong idea, but who is he to correct them?

The elevator doors open and close, people get out on the fourth and sixth floor, then many more above. The only man left, the same one who’d move to the side, steps out at the eleventh floor and glances back at Shouta with a frown once before walking away.

Anxiety prickles at his skin when the elevator’s bell chimes, the number twelve glaring at him, mocking him, from the tiny screen in the corner of the box he stands in. The doors open one last time: this is as far as it goes.

Shouta steps out, and the first thing he sees is a huge clock hanging from a metal pole connected to the ceiling indicating he still has a little less than twenty minutes before he’s officially late.

Then, he realizes he has no idea where to go. There’s a single corridor, so truly Shouta shouldn’t doubt himself, but he can’t afford to make a mistake today. He hasn’t made one since he started working here, he won’t start today.

He wishes the email had been just a little more specific about what he needed to do. Surely, they wouldn’t go through all this trouble just to fire him. But then again, they wouldn’t do this for a promotion, either.

At some point, he reaches a double door with golden handles. He tries to open it, but the thing won’t budge. Shouta looks behind him, contemplating whether he should go back – but that would make him late—

A buzzing sound, then the doors open in sync, and he’s met with the sight of a short woman with blond hair tucked in a tight bun. She’s wearing a black blazer with a pencil skirt, a serious look plastered on her face.

“Uhm, I’m not sure if—I’m in the right place,” Shouta says. She doesn’t say a thing and scans the paper attached to her clipboard.

“Aizawa Shouta?”

“Yes,”

She looks back at him and offers him a smile that doesn’t hold any sincerity. “The council will meet you shortly.” She moves to the side and holds her hand up, pointing him further down another corridor. He nods once and walks past her.

The walls of the hallway are painted in black and the hanging lights above him reflect on the stone-tiled floor. There’s no decoration, just the passage going on and on in a circle until he eventually reaches the end.

A door stands before him, the same kind that he’d just walked through. He might be late by now, but Shouta tries not to think about it. He raises his hand to knock, but before the back of his index finger does so much as grazing the wood, the doors open.

This time, two men with tinted glasses hiding their eyes stand beside each door. Behind them, a dazzling light makes Shouta squints until his eyes have time to adjust. Then, sitting at a u-shaped conference table, seven people stare at him.

The Upper Management Council.

Suddenly, Shouta feels awfully out of place. The higher-ups have their backs to the windows, the daylight casting a shadow on all of them. The first man on the left has plain gray hair, much similar to the one next to him. On the right side of the table, a man with a bored expression, his chin resting on his hand. The other broader person next to him is bald—or almost, Shouta can’t quite tell. In the middle sit three people, two gentlemen on each end, each with forgettable faces, and in the center of it all, a woman with pale blond hair and tired eyes.

For people who hold so much power all over Japan, they look so… normal. Average. People he could bump into at the grocery store and that he’d forget to apologize to because he’s in too much of a hurry. The civilians walking the streets under his balcony. Anyone at all. Shouta doesn’t even know their names.

The doors close behind him. He turns his head around and sees the two men — guards, whatever they are — standing in front of them. He swallows and turns his head back towards the higher-ups.

“Aizawa Shouta,” the woman says. It might be a question, a test, a statement. All of these answers.

She waits for an answer, and Shouta doesn’t know what to say, so he simply says, “Yes,” and then, “You wanted to meet me,”

The bored man on the right hums, straightening up in his seat. “That would be correct.” He opens a file on his desk, the sound of turning pages filling the silent room. “We’ve read your reports. They are very straightforward and simple, yet they never lack any information.”

“It is my job to remain objective.”

They nod, writing something down. “It must be hard at times, though, isn’t it, Mr. Aizawa?  Especially when working with children, which we noticed you do quite often.” The man on the far left end questions.

“I make sure that they have a safe environment to grow and live in. My reports don’t include my personal feelings, only my observations.”

One individual besides the woman looks up from the page in front of him. “For how long have you worked for us?”

“Eighteen years.” He replies.

The bald man intertwines his fingers and leans forward in his chair. “That’s almost half your age, and plenty of time to live a life. Why not do so?”

Shouta has thought about this quite a lot. Sometimes he wonders what his life could have been if he’d never worked for the Commission. Would he have met someone? Would he have a family? Would he be happy?

But now he has grown old, too old, to keep wondering about such things. He has things in his life: he knows it is not meaningless. He helps people, and he has a cat named Maple he cares after. It is enough.

“I am satisfied with the work that I do.” He answers.

Another one, a man on the left side of the table, lifts a pencil to his lip and keeps his gaze on Shouta. “But surely, to keep a job for so long, you must care for those children you visit.”

Shouta frowns. “Of course. Caring is part of my job, and I must add that it is a necessity. Doing otherwise would be irrational.”

“Exactly. Rationality, Mr. Aizawa.” The woman says, a small smile tugging at her lips.

The bored man rests his cheek in his palm, one ankle sitting on his knee. “He’ll do perfectly.”

They all look at each other and nod their approval in silence.

“What is all this about?” Shouta finally asks, perhaps a little too harshly, but he has waited and delayed his question long enough now. He doesn’t understand what he’s doing here, standing there when he should be sitting downstairs on the fourth floor, examining cases like he’s done for so long.

“Our system is based on logic and objectivity. There are facts, and we make decisions based on those.” The woman continues, placing both her hands flat against the table. “We have a… special case that we simply cannot afford to let the public know about. Someone needs to be sent to investigate, and we believe you are the perfect choice for it, Mr. Aizawa.”

Shouta doesn’t know what to say, again. His life had been so uneventful until yesterday, and he isn’t sure if it was better that way yet.

“Why me?”

“The mission, or whatever you wish to call it, requires that your sudden departure brings as little attention as possible.” The bald man explains.

“You’re unmarried, and have little contact with anyone outside of work, if at all. Except for…” one of the gray-haired men says, reading something on the sheet in front of him, “a cat,”

“And what if I refuse?” Shouta asks, boldly.

The woman – he ought to learn her name eventually – doesn’t seem surprised by his question, unlike the other people sitting with her.

“Then you will continue your work as you would usually. We will not bother you again, you are free to walk away now if you wish,” the doors behind him open, lighting up the faces of the higher-ups. His dark irises meet cold, violet ones. “But we both know this would be a foolish thing to do.”  

Shouta purses his lips. He glances over his shoulder to the corridor behind him. This will never happen again. He knows it won’t. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and he’s sick of missing them when they appear all because he’s scared of what might happen.

“Alright,” he says, turning his head back to The Upper Management Council. “I’ll do it.”

Chapter Text

“And… that should be everything.” The woman with the tight bun says after he’s been dismissed by the council, handing him a stack of red folders.

Shouta takes them, noticing that there are quite a few, though he’s not sure how many exactly, and how thin they all are. She doesn’t let go immediately and keeps holding onto them while maintaining his gaze.

“You absolutely cannot tell anyone about this. Although, from what I heard, I doubt this will be an issue for you.”

Shouta purses his lips into a tight smile. “Have you been listening to the conversation?” He asks, annoyance laced in his voice.

The last thing he needs is someone going around the building spreading misinformation about him because he doesn’t talk to anyone. Well, he can’t truly worry about ruining his reputation seeing as he doesn’t have one, but he also doesn’t want to build one based on something so stupid.

“I’m paid to keep my mouth shut, not to refrain from listening.” She answers, finally letting go of the documents. Shouta opens the first page to peek inside, but the woman presses her hand down to close it. “Take the day off, Mr. Aizawa. Get familiar with those files before you leave.”

He straightens up and places the files under his arm. “And when would that be?”

“As soon as the next train comes, which will be tomorrow morning at five-thirty. Weekly reports are expected from you, and I must remind you not to leave anything out. Every detail counts.”

“Weekly reports? I thought it was only going to last for a few days,”

The longest assignment Shouta has had before had only lasted half a week, and it had been terrible, truly. The orphanage was good on its own, but the experience was intolerable for an outsider like him. Still, the idea of leaving this town he’s lived in his entire life for a week or more – as laughable as it is – scares him.

“It will last a month exactly.”

“A month?”

“A month.” She repeats, and then, smiling, “View this as an opportunity to… explore life.”

He gives her a deadpan look. Something about this woman, or this conversation, makes him dreadfully uncomfortable. Perhaps it’s this entire day and situation. Normally, Shouta would consider himself good when dealing with stressful situations, but this feels different than all the work he’s done in the last eighteen years.

The lady – he isn’t sure what she is, or what her job consists of – opens her mouth, then closes it again as if hesitating. After a moment, she says, “It’s strange, really. That they would send someone like you for something like this. It’s… new.”

Her eyes widen a fraction when she realizes what she’d just said, like she didn’t think she’d spoken those words out loud.

“Do I have everything I need?” Shouta questions, ignoring her comment.

She nods. “Yes, that—that should be all.”

And so, Shouta turns around and leaves. He presses the golden button with a little arrow pointing to the ground down the hall and waits for the elevator to climb all those floors to reach him. The bell rings and he steps inside.

He holds the folder tighter against his side. Those are children he’ll be dealing with, and he honestly isn’t sure what to expect. What makes this case so different than all the others? Even if he had already known, and even if he hadn’t liked it, he would still have taken the job.

This world has let too many children down, too many times, and Shouta wants to help make things better, if only a little.

The doors open to the first floor of the building. He’s alone, and the windows outside light up the space brightly. It’s an unusual sight whilst leaving work, seeing as Shouta more often than not leaves after everyone else.

He’s lost in thoughts, wondering what he should do today. Well, he’ll probably have to pack his bag eventually. He wants to delay having to read those files as much as possible.

As he walks down the corridor, he notices a little too late Nemuri sitting down on one of those cushioned benches near the entrance of the building. He stops in his tracks and contemplates going back up – a random floor if he needs to – and coming back later. But then the navy blue-haired woman looks up from her phone and her eyes widen. Damn it.

“Aizawa! Dear fucking God,” she exclaims, putting the small device back inside the bag next to her. “I thought you’d finally lost it, doing the same job over and over for so many goddamn years, and that you’d gone ahead and done something terrible.” And then, more cautiously, “You haven’t, have you?”

“No.” If he really wanted to, he could easily walk past her and exit the place. She could potentially follow him outside, but there are also chances she wouldn’t. It might be worth the risk, just to avoid what she has to tell him. If anything at all. This woman likes to talk, and it seems that’s all she ever does, without ever saying anything, taking a dozen different paths before getting to the point.

She stands up and her eyes flicker to the folders nested under his arms. “What’s all this, a promotion?”

“I’m not sure,” comes his short reply.

“A new case, then?” She doesn’t walk up to him like Shouta had thought she would. She seems concerned, worried.

The thing with her is that he can never tell what she’s thinking, and he hates it. He can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic or serious, although it seems to always be the former and never the latter. Whenever they talk, it seems always to be the same thing.

Tiptoeing around the subject endlessly until, eventually, she tells him the thing she could have said from the very beginning. He doesn’t understand it, this love she has for small talk.

“It’s confidential, I’m supposed to go home and take a look at these.”

“Come on, then. I’ll give you a ride.” She turns and goes to the door, pushing it open. The wind blows in her hair and cools the air in the room.

Shouta takes a step forward, almost dropping all the files to the floor but catching them at the last second. “There’s really no need to bother, the bus—”

“The bus,” she interrupts, “won’t be here until another hour.”

Grumbling, he marches towards her, and she jokingly – is she joking? He can never tell – gestures him outside with her palm, a tiny smile on her lips.

They both get to her car, crossing the street until they reach a gray car with a narrow design. It’s small, but convenient. Shouta goes around to the other side and waits for his co-worker to grab her keys.

“Don’t you have other things to do?” He asks her out of pure curiosity. He might have sounded rude to someone else, but the woman was a long time past getting upset over his tone.

“Everyone always does,” she answers, pulling out her keys and unlocking the doors. “you just have to set your priorities correctly. You should try it sometime.”

She lowers her head to enter the car. What would she know? She’s not the one who has to go visit orphan children on an extremely confidential mission because they might be in danger from something, while she just…

Actually, Shouta has no idea what Nemuri does all day. She’s in her office, he thinks. Well, she’s always there where he has to hand in his reports.

“I know plenty about setting my priorities, I’ll have you know,” he opens the door and slides into the passenger seat. For some reason, her snarky comment sets him off. Normally he can ignore them quite easily, but something about this whole exchange feels… different. He’s about to open his mouth to add another thing when something in the corner of his eye catches his attention.

A kid’s seat. Right behind Nemuri’s own.

“Oh yeah, sorry for the mess,” she says when she sees him staring at the small plastic seat. “I didn’t have time to clean it up this morning.”

Shouta continues to stare at her incredulously.

“You have a child,” he blurts out, more a statement than an actual question.

Nemuri snorts, looking behind her when she pulls the car out of the parking lot to see where she’s going. “No, this is for some random kid I kidnapped. Of course I have a child, two, even.” She looks out of his window to watch if any cars are coming, and then hers. “Didn’t I tell you that before?”

“You,” Shouta says, looking at her, though her eyes are focused on the road ahead. “a mother,”

“Is that so hard to believe?” she asks, amused. 

The truth is he really can’t quite wrap the idea around his head of this woman he’s known for so long, is completely different from what he’d always thought she was. Who she was.

If Shouta were to be completely and utterly honest, he would admit that he’d been too preoccupied with work to worry about anything else (except for Maple), and so he never spared a second thought to the other people around him, like Nemuri.

It’s at this moment that he realizes he knows nothing of her.

“No, no, that’s not what I meant,” Shouta struggles to find the right words without offending her. “It’s just—I never saw you…” he gestures at the air.

“Pregnant?” She questions, still with that tiny smile on her face.

“Yes, pregnant.” He says, turning his head to look out the window. There’s no way he wouldn’t have noticed it.

He wonders what kind of man she’s with. Perhaps someone like her; sarcastic always and who can’t help but slip snarky comments every now and then. Or maybe someone completely different. He’s heard somewhere before that opposites attract, but Shouta can’t imagine wanting to be with someone so different from himself. Can’t imagine anyone wanting this, truly.

She laughs. “That’s because I never was,”

Shouta turns to her. “Did you adopt then?” It would make sense, he thinks, for someone spending so much time with orphan children, to adopt one. “Your husband must be a fucking saint.”

“There’s no father involved,” she says coldly.

“Sorry, I assumed you were…” Frowning, he looks at her hands wrapped on the steering wheel and his gaze falls onto the silver hoop around her left ring finger. “Married,”

“I am. My wife carried our two children,” She looks at him, and the hostile look in her eyes only lasts a second before she breaks into laughter. “You should see the look on your face!”

Shouta can only stare at her, once again, his mouth hung open like fish gaping. All those years and he’d failed to see it. Well, not like he’d actually tried to find something, or learn anything at all about Nemuri before, but still. “You’re…”

“Yes, I am in a relationship with another woman.” Leaning back in her seat, she sighs, “You know, your thinking is incredibly heteronormative for someone who’s gay,”

“I—What?”

“Come on, when we started working together you always had that little rainbow pin on your coat—And I must say, all your coats. God, did you always take the time in the morning to change it to the one you’d wear, or did you just have a dozen of them?”

He’d forgotten about that. At the time, he thought he was being so flashy, that everyone would see and that maybe one day he’d get in trouble because of it. After a while, he realized no one noticed it, so he stopped wearing it. He never thought Nemuri of all people had, and what’s more, that she’d remember.

“I didn’t know anyone when I first got there,” She continues, “But when I saw you with that little rainbow pin, all serious and so very awkward, I knew I had to get to know you!”

Something in Shouta’s chest aches. He doesn’t regret prioritizing work above everything else, no, he wouldn’t change anything if he had to do it all over again. But that Nemuri had tried to be his friend from the very moment they’d met, and that he had completely ignored her, leaves him feeling some sort of guilt.

“You know I don’t do friends,” he says like he’d told her many times before, but his tone holds none of its usual harshnesses. This time, there’s a softness to it.

“I know,” Nemuri answers, “that’s why we’re besties instead.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“Oh! And that woman a few years ago who kept puffing her chest out in front of you and batting her eyelashes whenever she’d talk to you! The only reason I remember her is because of how clueless you were—or maybe just uninterested, you had zero reaction. At all. It was painful to watch, really.”

“You’re making stuff up, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh my God! I’m right!” She says, and although Shouta sighs and runs a hand down his face, he can’t help the small scoff that escapes his lips.

There’s something about this that feels so casual. Maybe he’s misjudged her. Scratch that, he totally did. When he gets back from this mission, he might as well start doing things a bit differently. Or maybe he won’t, only time will tell.

“By the way, I had meant to ask earlier, but then the conversation got too good and I didn’t want to interrupt it. Where do you live?”

After a bit of struggling, Nemuri finally found his apartment block and dropped him off at the main entrance. It had started raining again by then, but Shouta hadn’t thought of bringing an umbrella with him that day, so he just stuffed his folders into the inside of his blazer.

“When am I going to hear from you again?” She asks him as he opens the car door, a few drops of rain already finding their way inside the vehicle.

“A month from now, if everything goes according to plan.”

“Alright then,” she answers, “try not to die on your secret mission,”

“Will do,” He steps out of the car, his clothes instantly getting wet because of the heavy rain. They both tell each other their goodbye, though Shouta’s more of a grumble than anything else.

He hurries his pace inside the building trying to be as quick as possible. He opens the door and takes his drenched coat off, folding it in half and carrying it on his forearm. Walking up to the elevator, he stops in his tracks.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” There on the door, written on a piece of paper with a black marker reads ‘Out of service’. Shouta curses under his breath. “That’s just my luck.”

In the end, he takes the staircase. It’s a much harder task than he had remembered it to be, but then again, Shouta hasn’t used them for months if not longer, and he usually sits at work all day. When he does travel to orphanages, he sits in transports, and then when he gets there, he sits down again.

Fortunately, his cat is there to meet him when he gets there. Maple seems surprised, tilting her head when she sees him opening the door while it’s still bright outside.

Maple. Oh fuck, what is he going to do about her? He can’t leave a cat alone for a month. And he doesn’t know anyone that could take care of her while he’s away. His cat will probably freak out if he brings her to some shelter thing, even just for a month.

There’s Nemuri, but no. Even if today hadn’t been so bad, he still isn’t ready to leave his cat with her. And two young children.

He sighs, sitting down in the single wooden chair at his small dining table that’s placed right in front of the balcony window. Maple leaps on the table in front of him, and lies down like she always does. He extends his hand out, stroking her behind the ears. When he pulls back, she lifts her head up in question.

“We have to start packing,” he tells her, and so he does.

Shouta keeps an old marine blue suitcase with brown straps that he’s only used once before when moving out of his parents’ house, which had actually been their gift to him. A nice way to ask him to leave. At least it’ll be useful for once. Brushing the dust off of it, he gets to work.

How many socks will he need for that? Will they even have a washing machine? Of course they will. Or he hopes so. Will it rain always like it does here? Shouta forgot to check where it was, exactly, or any of the children’s files. Which is terrible, but he still has time to do it later. Maybe.

After what seems like an hour-long of endless questioning and folding, he closes the suitcase, resting both of his palms against its surface. Maple stares at him from her spot on his bed, a curious look in her viridian eyes.

“You’re going to hate me for this,”

Shouta has barely been able to get a wink of sleep. He gets out of bed at four in the morning anyway and decides he’ll rest on the train instead. Or maybe he won’t, there are still those files he needs to take a look at.

Getting maple into the small cage isn’t too much of a problem. The issue has more to do with getting her to shut up after he closes the door on her. “I know,” he says, picking up the box he only ever uses to go to the veterinary twice or thrice before.

To no one’s surprise, at least not Shouta’s, it’s still raining by the time he gets to the train station. Though this time he’s had the decency to put on a raincoat over his black suit. He still has to look professional when he gets there, of course.

His hair is down today. Not because he’d forgotten to put it up; he was just too lazy to do anything about it this morning.

The sky is still dark when he finally sits down in his seat. He places his suitcase above his head in the compartment reserved for it, struggling a bit when a hand appears next to his own.

“Here, let me help you out sir,” a boy who couldn’t be so far in his twenties says. Shouta thanks him before turning back to his seat where he places a very unhappy Maple down on the one next to him. “And who’s that little guy over there?” he asks, looking at her.

“Her name’s Maple,” Shouta answers without any heat to his words. He doesn’t know what possesses him to reply instead of just ignoring the boy and pretending he didn’t hear him as he would usually.

The crew member approaches his fingers to the opening of the cage, probably thinking he could pet her through the small barrier.

“I wouldn’t do that if—” Shouta tries to warn him, but it’s too late. Maple jumps and hisses against the thin wires of metal. Luckily, the boy manages to pull back in time. He stays there for a moment longer, frozen. He’s pulled out of his thoughts, suddenly, and he offers Shouta an awkward smile and bows before leaving.

The man slumps down in the gray seat, watching his cat from the corner of his eye judgingly, and turns his head back toward the window, watching the sky turn an aquamarine shade of blue. The trip is supposed to take a few hours anyway, so he should have time to look through all the documents stored in his brown copper briefcase.

Shouta’s car is almost completely empty, except for an older woman sitting further ahead, and a man he thinks he saw sitting at the back.

A clock somewhere, ticking, ticking, ticking. Shouta closes his eyes and sighs for the millionth time in the last few days. He takes out the document from his bag and sets them on his lap.

These can wait, only for a few more minutes, surely. Just until the train starts moving. And then, he’ll read them.

Chapter Text

Nebu Island. That’s the place Shouta’s going. He’s never heard of it before, but the brief document pinned to the first of twelve files explains he’ll have to take a boat to get there on top of this eight hours long ride.

There are no pictures attached, no description of what he should expect. Hell, the small text doesn’t even take up the whole page.

Someone is supposed to meet him when he arrives at the port – which just so happens to be the very last stop. Then, after having traveled all the way, will he finally meet a supposed… Yamada Hizashi.

The next page – Shouta hadn’t known there was a page behind this one, they were so carefully and perfectly placed – gives a bit of information on the man, this time with a picture in the upper right corner.

Long, blond hair fell past the man’s shoulders, with green, sparkling eyes staring right back at him. The sheet doesn’t tell him much about the guy. He’s forty like Shouta, and he has a meta ability that has something to do with his voice.

But so far, Shouta still hasn’t found any clue as to what makes this orphanage so different than all the others he’s had to visit. Not that he’s looked very far, either. He unclips the two papers off the first file and sets them off on top of Maple’s cage beside him, the cherry-red files glaring back at him mockingly.

Okay, he’ll open them. He just has to tell himself that those files are the same ones he reads every day – which they aren’t, because they’re normally cream-colored – and that the faster he gets this done, the faster he can go to sleep.

When he opens the first document, he’s greeted with the picture of a young pink-haired girl with matching skin and an odd pair of eyes. She’s smiling in the picture, but the information beside it makes him wince.

NAME: Mina Ashido

AGE: 8

MOTHER: Unknown (Believed deceased)

FATHER: Unknown (Believed deceased)

META ABILITY: Acid

Believed to be implied in her parent’s disappearance—

What? This child? They think a little thing like her could have done something to make her parent… Shouta runs a hand down his face, reading the rest of the file – which happens to be incredibly quick due to how little information there is on her.

Her quirk is a danger to both herself and others, which, having one is not uncommon, but it’s never a good thing when there’s both.

Once he’s done, he closes the file and opens the next one. Each one is more horrifying than the previous one, full of things he’s never encountered before. He brought a cup of coffee with him, but surely he should have brought more!

At some point, he spits his coffee, too shocked by what he’s reading. This… All of this… There’s something that’s not right. This child with blond hair and adventurous eyes couldn’t possibly have…

The woman seated a few seats in front of him turns her head slightly, clearly annoyed with him, and he utters a small apology before going back to work.

Shouta closes the file and decides it’ll be enough for now. This has exhausted him more than it should, and so he places the unread documents on top of the ones he’s already read and with a sigh, rests back in his seat.

“Sir?” Shouta hums in response, not bothering to open his eyes. “Sir,”

“What—”

“This is the last stop,” he finally cracks one eye open, the sun blinding his vision. It takes a second for his eyes to adjust, and when they do he turns his head in direction of the boy he had talked to earlier.

Shouta looks outside and sees an ocean—stretching on for what seems to be forever. Seagulls flying so high in the sky that they appear to be tiny white dots in the distance, kind of like stars. He turns around to the train and notices he’s the only one left.

Picking up the files where he’d left them, he grabs his suitcase stored in the compartment above his head and places Maple’s cage on top of it. He gives a small nod to the boy who’s still standing beside him and takes his leave.

The air outside is fresh, fresher than it could ever be in the city. The wind brushes against his face, the air cool but in a different way than the refrigerated section at the grocery store, he can’t quite explain it. It’s damp, too, but it doesn’t feel as heavy and suffocating as the atmosphere after the rain has stopped.

He looks around, wondering where he should go. He turns his head back, opening his mouth to ask for some direction when the train’s automatic doors close in his face.

Well, there goes his chance to not be lost. Really, the small sheet of paper he was given the day before truly wasn’t enough for him to get around! The commission should have given him clearer instruction, that way he wouldn’t be here right now—

“Aizawa Shouta?” A voice behind him asks.

Shouta snaps his head in its direction and is greeted by the sight of a tall woman with tanned skin, milky hair pulled back in a low ponytail, and bunny ears on top of her head. “Well, are you?”

“Yes,” Shouta replies after a moment of hesitation. “And you’re…”

She eyes him from head to toe. “Rumi Usagiyama,”

He ignores her terrible (and unprofessional) attitude. “I wasn’t informed someone was supposed to meet me here,” he says simply.

“Who d’ya think is gonna give you a ride to the island?” She sneers.

His eye twitches, and he gives her a tight smile. She’s so… irritating. The same way Nemuri always is, except for when she gave him that ride yesterday. He has to remind himself that this is for work and not some vacation he’s on, so it’s essential that he remains professional.

She gives him one last look and starts walking off. Shouta stands there, frozen. “Well, you coming?”

That’s all it takes for Shouta to hurry after her, dragging a very gloomy Maple behind him. They walk down a deserted road for a few minutes in tense silence, Usagiyama glancing back at him from time to time.

They reach the port, which is really just two long paths of wood on water, empty except for a small old-looking boat with a dark green line on the side, and Mirko written in chipping gold paint. She lifts his luggage before he has a chance to protest, and he’s embarrassed at how easily she carries them to the front of the boat.

Surprisingly, Maple doesn’t protest. The woman goes to the driver’s seat and begins starting the engine.

“I’m sorry,” Shouta says, struggling to get inside the boat. “I think we’ve started on the wrong foot earlier,”

“Nah,” she replies, keeping her back to him. “I just don’t like you much. Or well, people like you.”

“People like me?” he asks, curious. She’s annoying, yes, but there’s also something about her that he can’t quite put his finger on.

She looks at him from over her shoulder, “The commission’s people,” she tells him, turning back around to start moving the boat.

It’s understandable, Shouta thinks. Well, he’s not sure where this hate from so many people comes from, but he’s not oblivious to it, nor is it the first time he meets people like her. “You wouldn’t be the first,” he answers, and although she doesn’t reply, he’s certain she heard him over all the noise, considering how little space there is between them.

The ride there is shorter than he had expected. It takes them fifteen minutes to arrive at the island’s dock, and five more to leave the port. The place is bigger than he had expected, but still rather small.

Usagiyama leads him to a car parked just by the port’s exit. It’s an old thing, but clearly taken good care of. The bright burnt orange color makes the car look brand new, but with the way the doors creak when opened, he guesses it isn’t.

She opens the trunk of the car for him to place his luggage inside, taking Maple’s little box from his hands again. He lets out an annoyed sigh and places his suitcase in the compartment before slamming it shut.

Despite his dislike for the woman, he sits in the passenger seat at the front. He places the red files on his lap while he puts Maple in the backseat behind him.

“The fuck are those?” Usagiyama asks, taking a file in her hand. Shouta quickly grabs it from her and holds his documents tighter.

“They’re confidential,” he glares at her. She simply scoffs, starting up the car.

The people outside, however few they might be, give them odd looks, staring at them from their spot until the car is out of view.

He makes a mental note to ask about it later, and to include it in his report if it turns out to be important. Really, it might just be because they’re not used to seeing new people.

Everyone here is… old. Except for Usagiyama, so far. Living in the city, he meets all kinds of people. Well, he sees them through his window or when he has to go out to go buy Maple some food, but he rarely talks to them. Never does if he can avoid it.

“It’s about the children, isn’t it?” The woman with a rabbit mutation asks.

It takes him a second to realize she’s talking about the files sitting on his laps, and when he does he tightens his hold on them. It doesn’t surprise him that she knows. She’s probably known he was coming for a bit now, and so it’s only natural she would know the reason. He doesn’t answer her question, instead asking his own. “You know them?”

She snorts. “‘Course I do. It’s hard not to; those annoying little things are everywhere.” There’s a fondness in her tone that betrays her choice of words. The corner of her lips turns up briefly before she frowns, careful to keep her eyes on the road ahead. “I don’t know what’s written in those files, but—” she sighs, “they deserve a chance, they’re just… children.”

Shouta doesn’t answer. He doesn’t think she expects him to.

They take a turn, and for an instant, the only thing Shouta sees is the blue ocean in the distance. But slowly, another smaller island separated from the main one if not for the rough path connecting them begins to take form.

“I thought the orphanage would be on the main island,” Shouta comments. So far he doesn’t see anything, really, except for a chunk of land with green foliage and rocks splattered everywhere. It’s one of those places people look at from afar but never wander to because there’s nothing else to explore that the eyes can’t see.

“Well, you thought wrong.”

The salt in the air reaches Shouta’s nostril from the open window on Usagiyama’s side. He reaches for the button right under his own window and lowers it.

It’s different than what he’s used to, but not unpleasant. He remembers going to the beach once or twice with his mother before, but they were made of dark gravel that hurt his feet instead of soft sand, and the air was freezing instead of this pleasant cold.

He’ll have to finish reading those files when he gets there, and as much as he doesn’t want to do that, he also doesn’t want someone else to take care of it and mess it up. What has he gotten himself into?

“This is it,” Usagiyama tells him, closing back the trunk after getting his suitcase out. She nods to a sapphire house further away. She doesn’t need to mention that this is the orphanage; it’s the only building on here. Well, the only one he’s seen.

Tangled vines climb up each side of the two-story house, matching the front door’s height and covering a portion of the windows on the first floor. The stairs at the front are made out of the same rich-colored wood forming the building’s structure.

The roof is a darkened orange color, probably because of the strain of time. It’s triangular, the edges rounded up, as if straight out of a child’s drawing! It strikes him to see such odd forms and bright tones all in one place, compared to the dusky atmosphere of the city and its square buildings.

Flowers of all sorts grow in front of it, bees dancing and buzzing busily before autumn finally comes in less than a month. He recognizes roses and margarites, but his knowledge is very limited when it comes to plants. All around the house, trees grow too; small and tall, thin and thick.

Shouta hears Usagiyama open the car door behind him, but he pays her no attention. That is, until an amber mass of fur runs past him and in between both his legs, making him stumble.

“What—Maple!” he freezes in place, watching her get lost in the thousands of flowers at his feet. He turns back to glance at Usagiyama, glaring when he sees her closing the door of the car.

“Relax,” she reassures him with a laid-back posture, “if you’re gonna stay here for a month, might as well let your cat explore a bit.” She watches him with a daring look, her arms crossed, waiting for him to do so something.

Still, he can’t help the worry that creeps up in his chest. Maple doesn’t go outside, ever. He knows it sounds bad, but there’s just not enough space. Or time. Well, she gets out on the balcony with him sometimes, but that’s pretty much it. That’s how it’s always been since he found her.

“I’m going to go look for her,” he says, turning around and hesitating because he doesn’t want to crush any flowers, before he sees the path a little to his right.

“Sure,” is all she says. He doesn’t know what she does next or where she goes; he doesn’t care. A bee starts flying around him and he picks up his pace; not because he’s scared, but because he would like to avoid being stung if he can.

So far, he doesn’t see anything out of the ordinary. It’s calm, peaceful. He searches for maple and instead discovers dozens of new colors he’d never seen before. It’s strange, so very peculiar, to discover something he had thought he knew everything about. But they are still just meaningless flowers that will die in the winter, and Shouta has a cat to find.

He sees two little butterflies further away, drinking pollen from deep purple flowers with little orbs for leaves and a red stem. One side of its wing is a neon blue, and the orange a dull cedar brown.

Maple could be anywhere now, maybe she’s on the other side of the island, even. There are so many nooks to hide, plants for her to crawl under, and trees to climb into. Where would he go if he were Maple? He doesn’t know, he’s not a cat.

“You there!” a high-pitched voice shouts. Shouta’s head turns in direction of the sound, and then lowers his gaze to meet fierce ruby irises. Recognition from a file he’d read earlier hits him instantly, but he doesn’t remember his name. He doesn’t have the time to say anything (not that he would know what) before the blond child speaks again, his finger pointed at him. “What brings you to my land?”

“Kacchan, I don’t think—” a child with green hair and freckled cheeks says worriedly, shaking Kacchan’s arm slightly. He doesn’t remember reading this one’s file yet – which he realizes he should have, because there are a lot of small children here with (probably) unstable or dangerous quirks or both, and he knows nothing about half of them.

The blond turns around and whispers something to the smaller child. It seems to ease him a little, his shoulders relaxing but not completely. He eyes Shouta, waiting, and after a moment of silence he realizes they’re waiting for him to talk.

“Uh,” he searches for something to say, but somehow those two pairs of eyes watching him make it much more difficult than it should. “My cat,”  

Kacchan frowns. “Your cat?” he asks, dropping his serious accent, perhaps without meaning to.

“Yes, she ran away somewhere around here,” Shouta replies.

Kacchan and the green-haired child share a glance before the blond says, “One moment,” and turns his back to him, his friend doing the same thing. They mumble and whisper inaudible words, though Shouta does try to understand what they’re saying, he fails miserably. After, exactly, one moment, they turn around and Kacchan picks up his mighty voice again.

“We have decided to help you, but before that, you shall prove to us you are worthy of our help first!” the grin on his face is confident whereas the smaller one’s more reserved.

When Shouta visits orphanages, he doesn’t play with the children there. He interviews them sometimes to see if things are as they should be, but most of the work happens with the adults. He considers going back to fetch his suitcase – which he realizes he’s left by Usagiyama’s car! – and leave Maple be. She got herself into this mess, after all.

But he doesn’t, for some reason. Well, one of them being he cares more about Maple than his luggage. “And how should I do that?”

The taller kid frowns again, glancing again at the freckled one who simply shrugs in answer, before suddenly a thought seems to emerge in him, and he whispers something in the blond’s ear.

“Alright! We will help you, but you will owe us a favor—” The smaller child nudges his friend’s side and whispers something else, “a favor each,” The blond corrects. “and you will be obligated to accept!”

Shouta hesitates and reminds himself that those are children, so they’ll probably forget about it by the time tomorrow comes. “Okay,”

Chapter Text

Ducking under a thick crooked branch, Shouta begins to think this might have been a bad idea. Well, he’s been thinking this since before stepping foot on this island, really, but following two small children into an unknown forest wasn’t all that… rational.

Although, there isn’t much else he could’ve done to find Maple. Wait her out, maybe, but something might happen to her. Damn Usagiyama.

“Are you sure you know where I might find my cat?” he asks, almost tripping on a branch sticking from the ground. This place might be a lot easier to get around for them, seeing as they’re not as tall as him, but they seem to forget that. Or they just don’t care. Shouta thinks it’s something more akin to the latter.

“Of course I do!” The blond – Kacchan – exclaims, continuing to advance confidently, the green-haired kid following right behind him, a little to his right. God, he really has to learn their names soon. Read those files, too, while he’s at it.

The smaller of the two, the one closest to Shouta, keeps glancing back at him, and then averts his gaze when their eyes meet. No, not at him, he notices after the fifth time; the places where he steps.

Shouta looks down to see bland mushrooms right beside his foot. He notices how both children’s walk aren’t clumsy as he had originally thought, but careful not to step on them, and perhaps other things he’d failed to see before. He then looks behind him to see a few mushrooms crushed and winces.

They keep on walking, but this time he takes more care in seeing where he places his feet. He meets eyes with the kid with emerald eyes and it lasts longer than the previous times. He holds it for about two seconds, enough time to see the tiny corners of his lips turn up, and then an embarrassed blush on those freckled cheeks.

Overall, the entire walk must have lasted less than five minutes, but this is the most exercise he’s done in such a long time, he’s left having a hard time catching his breath. He’ll have to clean his suit after today. He hadn’t expected to be shoved on an almost inhabited island in the middle of a forest.

He walks up to where the two children have stopped in front of a clearing and catches himself on the side of an oak tree. There, sitting on a fallen tree trunk right in the middle of the place, a boy with lavender hair, and in his lap, his cat.

“Maple,” he sighs of relief, a little too loudly it seems because Kacchan turns to him swiftly and hits his leg, telling him to be quiet or else—

The boy startles, his eyes wide when he notices all three of them watching him. He freezes in place, the hand that had been stroking Maple stilling in place.

Unexpectantly, it’s the little one with hair green as leaves that takes a step forward and in a small voice that would go unheard, if not for the quiet of the forest, utters, “It’s okay, he’s not… mean,”

“And I was right!” the blond adds triumphantly. “You’ve got his cat,” he then turns to the adult and says, “and you owe us two favors.”

Shouta isn’t quite sure what to do from here. Luckily, he doesn’t have to: the boy with lilac hair speaks up before he can come up with anything. “Your cat?” he asks, confusion laced in his tone and his eyes fixed on the ball of autumn-colored fur lying on his lap.

“Um, yes,” Shouta clears his throat, “She ran away and then I lost her—”

“Lost her?” he responds, “If you lost her, then you must be shit at taking care of her, so that means I get to keep her.”

He’s taken aback by his blunt language, and if he were being honest, a bit offended. “I’m not…I take good care of her—”

“You said she ran away from you,”

“That’s not what I said—” Shouta sighs, because arguing with a child right now is unreasonable and honestly a huge waste of time. Maple is safe: that’s all that matters. He has other things to do – not ones he would rather do, but of a much higher priority – and has no time for this. “Okay, sure. But just for now.”

The kid seems surprised, not in a bad way. He tightens his hold on Maple and his irises shine just a bit brighter. His cat doesn’t seem to be uncomfortable in the slightest, with the way he treats her gently. She’ll be fine for today.

“Are you always… out here like this, alone?” Shouta asks, changing the subject, a frown forming on his face. Usually, a caretaker should be looking out for those children, but he has yet to meet this infamous Yamada.

“We’re not alone, old man,” The blond answers, though it sounds more like an insult (somehow) than anything else. “There’s three of us. Can’t you count?”

“Oh, that would be sad,” The green-haired child comments softly, concern in his eyes.

This whole interaction is such an odd thing. Shouta can’t say he’s ever had one like it before. Yes, he has talked with small children of a wide range of ages, but they always held a purpose and were planned cautiously. It was more of an interview than whatever they’re having right now.

The three children keep staring at him, waiting for an answer. “I can count,” he replies.

“Bet ya can’t do it to a thousand like me!” Kacchan answers rapidly, seizing the opportunity to show off. Shouta is starting to understand this one a little more, and he thinks perhaps he’s a bit too full of himself. But that’s not for him to say.

“Kacchan’s amazing,” the freckled one adds.

“I can too!” The one with purple hair says, lifting Maple up. They start arguing and the older man pinches the bridge of his nose.

In the end, Shouta doesn’t get the answer he was looking for. They lead him back to the house, keeping their distance. Shouta takes extra care to see that he doesn’t damage any mushrooms on their way back whilst attempting to keep up with the children.

They’re almost there; Shouta can see the outline of the curious house between the vines falling from the thick branches. Then, he hears a small gasp.

In the middle of the flower field, a pink-skinned girl stares back at him with big round eyes. “You’ve found a weird man!” she exclaims.

Weird? I look normal, Shouta thinks. Beside her, a boy with a black lightning bolt marked in his golden hair pops up from seemingly nowhere, as he’d probably been crouched down a moment ago. His eyes widen and he adds, “He looks so pale,”

“Kinda like a ghost,” The girl comments.

Five pairs of eyes turn to look at him wearily. Already, he misses the comfort of his office chair back in the city, or the stool on his balcony. Though he must admit the weather is nice, that’s pretty much the only thing that isn’t too bad. “I’m not a ghost,”

Kacchan turns back to look at the two children surrounded by flowers. He points a finger at them and says, “Also, you’ve been found! Surrender at once!”

The one with pink curls – Mina, he remembers now – throws her head back and pulls slightly on her tiny horns. “Awh man, I had totally forgotten about that!”

Shouta stands there, feeling very much out of place. “What?” he asks, frowning.

There is something about today that feels so unfamiliar, new. When was the last time he’d seen so many flowers in one place, except for the small flower shop run by a grumpy old lady near his bus stop?

All the orphanages he usually visits are dull buildings made of stone in the middle of cities, stuffed in between other buildings. This place is fresh, unlike any other he might’ve seen before.

“We were playing hide and seek,” Mina informs him, making herself a path through the flowers and overgrown plants to get to them.

“Katsuki’s too good at it,” The one with golden hair whines, following the girl closely.

It takes Shouta a moment to realize that Katsuki is actually Kacchan, and then he remembers the rest of the file. He clenches his jaw and doesn’t say anything.

“We’ve still got to find the others,” the blond, Katsuki, says, pride plastered on his face. He turns to the man, “And you’ve got to help us, ‘cause I found you too.”

Shouta considers turning them down and walking back to where he’s left his suitcase on the side of the road, although the said road is empty. His legs already ache from all the walking they’ve done, and his mind is tired of all the travel it took to get here.

He must have taken too long, because the next thing he knows, the children are all walking away following Katsuki, and leaving him behind. Well, leaving him and expecting him to follow after them. And follow he does.

The air turns hot, or perhaps it’s just the wind settling down the farther they get from the sea. Shouta takes off his blazer and sets it on his forearm, loosening his too-tight tie. He rolls up the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows and ties his hair back to stop it from getting stuck in small branches.

They’re looking for the others, apparently, but there are only so many Shouta knows to look out for. He’s still oblivious to who half of them are, what they look like, and their names.

Katsuki is followed closely by the green-haired kid, who sometimes catches the taller blond by the end of his shirt and tugs slightly to get him to slow down a bit, which he does.

Going around the house, they find a tree, singled out by the others because of its huge trunk and height exceeding the house’s roof. Its leaves are of a dark teal color, with small white flowers hidden amongst them.

At the base of the trunk, a girl sits surrounded by daisies, a book opened in her lap. She doesn’t notice them until Katsuki shouts with a devilish grin on his face, both hands on his hips, “You’ve been found, there is no use in trying to run!”

The girl with dark hair pulled up in a low ponytail startles, her book slides from her lap, but she manages to catch it a moment before it makes contact with the ground. She lifts her head up, her eyes going to Shouta first, and then to the rest of the children. “I said I didn’t want to play,” she says quietly.

No one says anything for a moment, but then the child with green hair cups his hands around his mouth and whispers something to Katsuki. The blond straightens up ever so slightly and then in a louder voice says, “Then you shall tell us where the earphone girl is hiding!”

A gush of wind passes over them all, drowning out the beginning of the dark-haired girl’s sentence, “—ow would I know?”

The boy with purple hair who hadn’t said anything in a while lets maple settle on his shoulder. “You’re always hanging out with that weird girl, aren’t you?”

Her cheeks redden and she opens her mouth, “She’s not—”

She stills, a blank expression replacing her embarrassed one.

“Point to where she is,” The boy holding maple says, and so she does. She holds a finger up to the foliage above her head, and then they hear someone curse.

Shouta stands there. Is this allowed? Well, meta abilities rarely are, so the answer is probably no. He should probably have done something, but then again, he wouldn’t know what. Except using his own quirk, which is only to be used in the utmost urgent situation, and unfortunately, he doubts this falls into it.

“Damn you, Hitoshi!” ‘Earphone girl’, or who he assumes is the person they were looking for, climbs down from the tree, plopping down on the spot next to the girl with the book and gives her a light tap on her shoulder.

It’s enough to wake her up from whatever it is that just happened. Her head turns to look at the new arrival and utters out an apology. “Kyouka! I didn’t mean—”

“It’s alright Momo,” she reassures her, “I knew they were coming; I should’ve told you.” She eyes them all and her gaze lingers on Shouta for a bit. “Who’s he?”

They look at each other, then at him, and the one with golden hair with the lightning bolt shrugs. “My name is Aizawa Shouta, and—”

“Kinda sounds like Shouto,” Mina observes, deep in thought.

“I’d rather you call me Mr. Aizawa,” Shouta replies. This is a work trip, after all, and he must remain professional throughout the entire thing.

Katsuki rubs his palms on his shorts before straightening up and saying loudly, “We’ve still got the others to find, and I’m not losing,”

They each seem to agree with the statement, nodding and staying quiet. The sun sets lower in the sky, floating above the sea but under where the stars usually are, or well, where Shouta guesses they are. He hadn’t noticed it was getting so late so quickly, and it seems the children were plunged into their own game as well.

“I think Shouto stayed inside,” the girl near the tall tree, Momo, says. Suddenly, this gives Shouta an idea.

“Maybe I should head inside and meet him, then,” he says and adds, “I’m sure you can manage without me.”

Katsuki turns swiftly to him; he opens his mouth and then snaps it shut. He opens his arms a bit, like he was walking on a rope and was trying to find balance. “Do you guys hear that?” he questions in what is by far the lowest tone Shouta heard him take so far, which isn’t considerably low, but still surprising enough that he and everyone else keep quiet to listen.

Surely enough, faint voices can be heard from the other side of the house if he listens closely enough. Katsuki walks past him, completely ignoring his suggestion from earlier, and the green-haired kid follows after him immediately, the others doing the same after a moment.

He decides he’ll just go pick up his suitcase where he’s left it, enter the house, meet this Yamada and fucking go to sleep.

The children all start looking around, searching the place to find the source of the voices. They suggest the most improbable places, like under the ground in a hole they might’ve dug, or on top of the roof, which Shouta does glance up to just in case.

As he makes his way to the spot Usagiyama dropped him off, making sure to be quiet as he does, he sees three small figures crowded around something.

A suitcase. His suitcase.

“Hey—What are you—” Three pairs of eyes widen at the sight of him. He can practically hear all the other kids turning their heads in the direction he spoke in.

A short girl with a brown bob cut squints her eyes at him while a taller boy with marine hair and square glasses leans in slightly to whisper something to her. Another boy stands next to them, straight black hair grazing his shoulders and soft ruby-colored eyes.

“You could’ve at least tried to find a better place to hide,” Kyouka says in an accusing tone, startling Shouta from how close she is to him.

The child with the blue hair pushes his glasses up his nose, “We are currently trying to solve a mystery,” he informs them, gesturing to the suitcase.

“Are you the mysterious owner of his box?” The girl asks loudly, attempting to use a serious voice, but her high-pitched voice makes it sound more childish than anything else.

Shouta walks up to them, “Yes, and I very much would like to have it back.”

Their faces quickly take on a look of disappointment. “Aw man, I really thought we were onto something,” the one with dark hair says.

The girl with the bob cut places her hands on both sides of his suitcase and right when he’s about to tell her to leave it, she lifts the thing like it weighs nothing! She closes the distance between them and hands it to him, which he takes, too stunned to say anything.

God, what are they feeding these kids? She lets go, and for a moment he realizes his suitcase is actually very light—until it isn’t. He drops it to the ground, stopping it from toppling over at the last second. The child has her fingertips against each other, and he notices the small pinkish pads on them. Her meta ability.

“You shouldn’t—You shouldn’t do that,” he tells her, pulling his suitcase upward. She frowns. “Your meta ability,”

She seems confused by what he’s telling her – or trying to – which confuses him in return. Do these children have no sense of what is allowed and what is not? Especially in orphanages for children like them, where their abilities are not… the safest, to put it simply.

“Do you mean quirks?” She questions, her eyebrows scrunched up together.

“I think he means quirks,” Momo quietly adds from behind him.

Katsuki interrupts them, “No matter, you’ve been found! You lose, which means I win—”

Though Shouta wants to ask more questions to understand what they mean, he decides he’ll take care of it later, and is left even more confused than he was when he first arrived here. They are children, after all. Their wild imagination at their peek, so much that half of what they say might as well be nonsense.

“—Not yet” A voice he doesn’t recognize – though it’s getting hard to tell considering the number of children gathered here – says from behind them. He turns around and sees a girl with long green hair – darker than the boy’s that stays by Katsuki’s side – tied in a bow at the end, and eyes as dark as a starless night sky. “Okay, now you win.”

Katsuki tenses and then he says, “It doesn’t count if I don’t find you myself!”

“It doesn’t really matter,” the kid holding maple (he already forgot his name) tells him.

“Of course it does!”

“Kacchan—” the boy with curly hair starts, lifting his hand up to his friend’s forearm, which is pushed away quickly.

“This game sucks,” is all he says before stomping away angrily toward the entrance of the house. The little boy stays frozen there, clearly debating whether he should follow the blond or not but taking too much time to make up his mind and so he decides to stay there.

Yes, Shouta desperately needs sleep and is about to give a call to the commission to tell them he regrets everything and would rather go back to the comfort of his desk. Would he be fired for knowing too much already? Is this mission really worth it?

Taking a deep breath, he composes himself and takes the handle of his suitcase, dragging it behind him as he makes his way inside the house.

The children rush past him, the one with green hair glancing back at him once while he climbs the stairs leading to the door before turning his back to Shouta again.

The interior of the house is… well, for one, bright. There’s a warm light in the shape of a full moon set above his head in the entryway. Beside him, a series of hooks are attached to the wall, and small shoes are set against the wall.

A wooden staircase leads to the second floor in front of him, and a little on the right of it, a long corridor engulfed in framed lively artworks. Flowers carefully set in a vase on a low side table by the staircase fill the space with a pleasant aroma.

Some of the children are still taking off their shoes when a man with long blond hair pulled up in a half-bun arrives, wearing a simple white shirt with jeans. He has a ridiculous mustache neatly trimmed and rectangular glasses on. He doesn’t notice Shouta standing still in the entryway.

Momo says something to who must be Yamada about ‘Katsuki being mad’ and he nods in response. “I’ll talk to him, thank you for telling me,” he tells her gently, crouched down to her height.

Then the girl with pink skin runs up to the blond adult and points to Shouta, “We also found this weird old man!”

Old man, they keep calling him. Does he really look that old? Maybe it's the lack of sleep making it worse. Or maybe Shouta really is just old. A pang of hurt in his chest at the idea of growing older. These children don't realize at all what it means to grow up. It's terrifying, and yet they're clueless. 

Yamada lifts his head up and finally sees Shouta, his eyes widening. “Oh—” he gets to his feet swiftly. “Hi, sorry, uhm,” he walks up to him and bows down his head, “You must be Aizawa,”

Something about the way he says his name makes Shouta’s heart flutter. He feels his face heat up but ignores it, nodding. “Yamada?”

“I’m surprised you know my name!” he jokes, and Shouta almost answers with ‘I’ve read your file’ but realizes it’s kind of an odd thing to say to someone. He simply nods instead. “I hope they didn’t give you too much trouble” Yamada adds, looking back to where he hears the children chatting.

“You have no idea,” Shouta utters out before he can stop himself, but the man just laughs, offering to show him the room he’ll stay in for the month. The commission worker agrees, and follows the man up the stairs.

Chapter Text

As Shouta begins to undo his suitcase on his bed – not his, or well, only for a month’s length – he thinks back on the day, deciding what he should include in his report, and how to word it.

There doesn’t seem to be any kind of abuse so far, but he’s only barely been here for a day, so it’s hard to tell. Those cases where everything seems to be so peaceful, only to later turn out to be a deception for something quite terrible, are always the most horrible of them all.

But there has to be something, he thinks to himself. If this mission was something so simple, Shouta would have gotten the case in a beige file, handed to him by Nemuri or the sad-looking man who hands out cases from time to time.

Nemuri knew nothing of this, though. She knew he had a case, a very important one at that, and that he needed to leave Musutafu today. She didn’t know there would be twelve children with concerning files and records, or that he would spend a month on a desolated island.

Shouta is alone on this, and now he must figure out what is wrong with this place because, for some Godforsaken reason, the commission couldn’t find someone younger or in better shape than him to do the job.

Earlier today, he had noticed small bruises on some of the children’s legs and arms, but he thinks they probably got them from playing outside (which he noticed isn’t out of the ordinary for them). There had also been a few scars, but he suspected them to be from before arriving at the orphanage.

There’s no way someone like Yamada with such a gentle composure ever would do something like…

He can’t let his emotions affect his judgment; sometimes appearances could be deceiving. Perhaps, the man was a liar. Surely, if he is, it will only take a week or two before the character he’s put on would begin to crumble, and Shouta would be able to see the ugly truth.

After he’s done hanging his clothes in the closet, he closes the thin wooden door. As he turns his face, he’s met with his own reflection in the mirror set in the corner of the room. He looks away, and right when he’s about to close his suitcase back up, he hears whispers from outside the bedroom.

Shouta stops moving altogether, holding his breath so he can listen better. After a moment, he hears it again, confirming he’s not already going insane. The door is only a few steps away from where he currently stands, but still, he tries to be quiet when he walks up to the door and puts his hand on the doorknob, waiting.

A small, muffled gasp is heard behind the door, and then Shouta swings the door open. He’s met with a few surprised pairs of eyes – five, he counts – and all the children freeze up on the spot.

There’s the girl with earphones dangling down her earlobes, and the one with pinkish skin standing right behind her. The boy with the light bolt hair and the one with straight, dark hair, stand near as well. The first to speak up is none of them, though. Instead, it’s the girl with the low ponytail, Momo.

“Sorry,” she bows her head down, her hair falling in front of her shoulder. “I-I tried to tell them it wasn’t a good idea,”

Shouta takes a moment to look at the children before him, really look at them. They look… normal, if only a bit of troublemakers. He wonders again what could possibly be so wrong, so very important, that this place requires a special visit from him.

“What were you doing?” he asks them, a frown forming between his eyebrows.

Momo is about to answer when the girl with the small yellow horns turns and places both her hands on the taller girl’s shoulders, stopping her from saying anything. “You can’t just tell him! We’ve got to run now,”

They begin to scatter away into the long corridor and then down the stairs. Momo lingers behind a bit longer, parting her lips slightly as if about to speak, but she turns away to follow the others before she has the chance to.

That was… actually, Shouta doesn’t know what to make of this. They’re kids, they were probably just playing games or trying to annoy him. Hopefully it won’t last.

There’s music playing downstairs which he’s able to hear now that his door is open. He doesn’t know what song it is; Shouta rarely listens to music. The only time he ever does is when the bus driver decides to put on some music in the morning (never late at night, for some reason) or when he listens to the radio occasionally and has to go through a couple of channels before finding the one speaking about the weather.

Maybe he should go check it out. It’ll be a good opportunity to continue his observations on the children and the place itself. He looks back to where he’s set his red folders down on the small desk by the window, thinking if they were visible he would finally finish reading them, which he was wrong about. Shouta doesn’t feel any more enthusiastic about reading them now. Downstairs it is, then.

Perhaps, this is one of the rare occasions where Shouta just so happens to have been wrong.

Downstairs is not better. At least, it doesn’t seem like it. The music is loud, much louder than he had expected it to be, but going back upstairs to his room where the folders lie would be just as terrible.

The jazzy melody comes from another room farther off, making it sound a bit muffled as he stands at the end of the stairs. He starts to make his way toward it when something else catches his attention.

A door halfway between the room playing music and the staircase had been left ajar.

“—did the right thing back there, removing yourself and all that.”

The voice sounds familiar, and it takes him a second to recognize it.

Usagiyama. What is she doing here? He’d thought she had left, but clearly not if she was in the same house as him.

“They all think I’m still not good enough,” Katsuki says in a small voice. The loudness from earlier is gone, replaced by something fragile.  

Shouta stands by the door, a feeling of guilt growing in his chest. He shouldn’t be here, listening to what feels like a very personal conversation, but he also needs to learn as much as possible about this place. At least, that’s the excuse he tells himself.

Despite all this, he keeps listening.

“I know you’re not happy about how things went, but that happens to everyone.” Usagiyama says, “There’s something else that’s bothering you,” she adds, wording it more as a statement than a question.

Katsuki is silent, and for a bit, the only thing Shouta hears is the faint (but still too loud) music from the other room, and he wishes he could turn it off to hear the conversation better. He stands unmoving by the doorframe, listening closely and imagining Usagiyama crouched down in front of the small boy.

Then, when Shouta thinks the child isn’t going to say anything else, Katsuki unexpectedly speaks.

“Do you think Deku’s gonna forgive me?”

The woman scoffs lightly, and it sounds more like a peal of fond laughter rather than a dismissive sound. “Of course he will,”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,”

“Absolutely, completely sure?”

“Never been more certain in my entire life,” Usagiyama says confidently. “But it won’t just happen like that, ya need to apologize first,”

Shouta moves away, he’s heard enough for now, and he doesn’t want to get caught listening in on them. He turns his back to the door, letting the jazzy music – a different one, slower and with more piano than saxophone – engulf the voices of Katsuki and Usagiyama.

He follows the sound, and as it turns out, the radio playing sits on the counter in the kitchen. It’s a beige-colored thing, probably the same length as his forearm and half of that in height. Its edges are made of redwood, and there’s a little wheel on the right side with numbers surrounding it, each projecting a yellow gleam.

Yamada is cooking something; clearly, it’s more elaborate than the quick ramen noodles Shouta usually eats most of the time (and when he doesn’t, it’s none the better). The girl with the bob cut and the taller boy with square glasses from earlier are helping as well.

The blond man notices him standing in the doorway and offers him a small smile. He wipes his hands on a towel near the sink and turns down the volume of the radio a bit.

“Sorry, was the music a little loud? I know the children like it when it’s turned all the way up, and I don’t have the best hearing, it’s—bad, honestly,” the man rambles on.

“No,” Shouta finds himself saying, and then when he notices his answer isn’t very clear, he coughs and adds, “the music was fine.”

Why did he say that? The music was indeed not fine – excluding now, where the volume is lower and easier to bear. His face feels hot and there’s a knot forming in his stomach. After a moment, he realizes he feels embarrassed.

“So…What are you… Did you need anything?” Yamada asks, uncertain.

Shouta did not, in fact, need anything other than peace and quiet. Something that seemed so very rare in a place filled with so many eight years old kids. Now that he thinks about it, it seems strange to have twelve children that are all (almost) the same age in one orphanage. But he’s getting off-track.

“No, I…” Shouta looks around quickly, “Can I do something to help?” he asks. He wants to slap himself across the face or bash his head on the wall. Either would do.

The other man smiles at him and takes out a cutting board where he places a few carrots down for Shouta to chop down. The girl with the bob cut and padded fingertips specifies that he must make sure they are “pretty triangles but rounder”, which Shouta hasn’t got a clue how he’s supposed to do that, or what it means.

On the other hand, the boy with blue hair doesn’t say a word if it’s not to answer to the short girl. He looks deeply focused on peeling those large potatoes with a knife, and Shouta wonders if things like that are alright for children. He doesn’t comment on it though and continues doing what he can to help.

They’re apparently trying to make something called Nikujaga, which is some old recipe from Yamada’s great-grandmother or something like it. Of course, Shouta ate some before, when his mother would cook it for him.

It’s simple, at least it is for people with greater skills in cooking than Shouta. It basically consists of a mix between pork, noodles, carrots – which Shouta is still working on, making sure he does it right – and potatoes. There are other things, of course, but he’s not sure what exactly yet.

They finish cooking half an hour later, and by then he hasn’t messed up cutting his carrots. He sets the table with a few of the other children, and then the boy with engines on his calves as he’s noticed earlier brings out an extra chair for him, making sure that he sees to sit exactly in this spot, to which Shouta reassures him he will.

Dinner is… animated, to say the least. More than the depressing lunchroom back in the commission’s building. The boy with green hair is sitting beside Katsuki, so he guesses everything is well now. He doesn’t fully understand what happened yet, but he’ll find some time to ask about it later when he gets the chance.

They all speak of different things, and Shouta listens to everything carefully.

It’s late now; the sun has finally set, the sky is turning a darker shade of blue and more clouds are passing by with each passing moment. Shouta sits at the desk in his room, the small lamp reflecting light on the red folders and making them take a burnt orange color. He sets aside those he’s already read and brings the unread pile closer to him.

And then, he opens the first one, which speaks of the boy with the lightning bolt hair, Kaminari Denki. His gaze darkens as he reads through the whole thing.

The next one is on the girl with the earphones, and he understands what she’d been doing earlier at his door. Coincidentally, the next file speaks of the other child she seems to be friends with Momo, and his hand covers his mouth by the time he finishes reading this one.

Oh, he whispers when he reads the one about the purple-haired kid, Shinsou Hitoshi, who still takes care of Maple at this time, and again for the girl with the padded fingertips, Ochako Uraraka.

Only one left, which had been set at the bottom of the pile, perhaps intentionally. The boy with greenish hair and viridian hair looks back at him with an empty stare. He doesn’t have a meta ability, and this information only serves to confuse him.

He doesn’t finish reading the file. As he was trying to pick the sheet of paper, he noticed another one behind it.

ALL FOR ONE, it reads in big. He doesn’t understand what or who it is, or what its purpose is in this file. Maybe it had been placed there by mistake, but the red CLASSIFIED stamp on the top right corner tells him otherwise.

A… Supervillain, they call him, and Shouta could almost snort at the title if not for all the horrifying information below, all the terrible things the man (it is a person, as it turns out) had committed. The most concerning thing of it all was that the villain hasn’t been apprehended yet.

He looks back at the file of the small child, Izuku, and sees it, written right next to the Father's information; All for One.

Shouta reads everything below it, and as he does, he starts to understand why the commission had sent him here. It has nothing to do with all the other children, or if it does, the level of concern they hold for them is nowhere near the one they have for Izuku Midoriya.

A powerful man, with a powerless child.

Setting the paper down, Shouta runs a hand down his face, slumping back in his chair. He doesn’t sleep well that night.

There’s something tremendously dreadful about waking up in a house full of children with terrifying pasts and uncanny abilities.

Shouta has his own meta ability, of course, most people do nowadays. But there is no use for it, and even if there was, it wouldn’t be worth it. The drawback it causes to his eyes could make him go blind if he were to use it too much, according to the doctors, and the burning in his eyes each time he’d actually used it told him they were right.

Getting out of bed seems like an impossible task, his limbs are too heavy to lift or do so much as move them slightly, although he’s been lying on his right arm for an hour or more and he’s beginning to lose the feel of it.

Most people’s thoughts spiral down during the night, right before sleep comes, and some unlucky few, right when they wake up. Shouta often does both.

It’s not that he wants to; he enjoys the time he takes after the sun has set to think, but he cannot always help the dark places his mind wanders to. When it starts being that way is his cue to go to bed (not to sleep, it always takes much longer before he can do that) and when he does he tells himself ‘Tomorrow will be better’, not because he hopes it will, or because his day has gone badly. It simply never goes… good. He’s always so exhausted and worn down by life, although his is so uneventful and dull.

Then, he’ll wake up the next day and think, ‘Not again’, and be in an awful mood because he should have woken up earlier, have finished working on that case the day before, and all those things he has to do and hasn’t done yet.

But, like any other morning, he manages to get up slowly, the sky above a turquoise color, the shade it gets during early autumn when the first sunrays of the day and late night sky merge into one.

He steps out of his room and into the corridor to multiple shut doors, except the one near the very end which has been left slightly open. He hears a quiet melody being played, and for a moment he thinks it might be coming from downstairs again like it had yesterday, but then he realizes the sound is muffled by one of the doors close to his room.

The strings of a guitar are repetitively pulled one after the other before going down faster into a multitude of notes. Shouta doesn’t know the song, nor does he think he’s ever heard it before, but this is no surprising thing.

With light steps, he makes it in front of the room and listens by the door when—it stops abruptly, without any warning and in the middle of a note. He hears some shuffling, and then nothing. Shouta takes this as his cue to leave.

Downstairs is quiet, but not empty. The girl with dark shoulder-length hair – Momo – sits on a blue rocking chair, a book in her lap. It’s the same room he had overheard Usagiyama speak with Katsuki the day before, except now the double doors were open.

There must be a dozen bookshelf filled with books along the wall, and unlike the small one empty of any book Shouta has in his apartment, there is no dust on any of the shelves, showing they are taken good care of.  

Plants potted in ceramic pots stand still in between books or on top of bookshelves. There’s an ocean-blue vase holding a mix of crimson flowers he doesn’t recognize and purple lilacs and some drying leaves in between.

Next to Momo lies a burnt-orange couch on which sits the boy with electric hair, Denki. Momo notices him first and tenses, putting the book flat against her legs. This catches the attention of Denki, whose back is turned to Shouta, and he turns his head to look at him. A few sparks around his face and ears crackle.

Sensing he’s interrupting something, which he most likely is, Shouta opens his mouth to ease the awkward tension in the air, but no sound comes out of it. He frowns and instead he asks, “Have you seen Mr. Yamada?”

He has a few questions he wants to ask the other man, and he might as well do it now while it’s still early and calm. The two children share a glance, a silent message. They keep staring at one another like that for two or three seconds when Denki turns to him. “Do you mean Hizashi?”

His words are all laced up together, and Shouta notices he’s missing a tooth on the right side of his mouth. Of course, he knows who Hizashi is, he’s read the file, but it’s an unusual thing to see children call the head of the orphanage by their first name. “Well, I just assumed—” he stumbles over his words. “Yes,”

“He went on a walk outside,” the boy answers.

At this time? And, most of all, leaving no one to stay with the children. “Does he often do that?”

The boy seems confused by his question, which shows by the crease forming between his eyebrows. “Do what?”

“Leave you alone like this?”

The girl straightens up from her seat, “Oh, he doesn’t—! Um, we don’t mind it, Mr. Aizawa,”

He doesn’t say anything else, and only nods as a way to thank them. His back is half turned to them when Momo speaks up again.

“Will it get him in trouble?” she asks and then adds, as if it weren’t clear enough, “Hizashi?”

Shouta looks at her, and he sees how her brave front is betrayed by the slight quiver in her voice and the fear in her dark irises.

“I don’t know,” he tells her, because truly he doesn’t, and then whispers more to himself than anyone else, “I don’t know.”

Chapter Text

Shouta finds Yamada in the middle of the field of flowers near the house. The man is crouched down to the height of the tallest flowers, moving the plants carefully and sometimes he’ll cut the stem of one of them and hold it in his left hand.

Fortunately for Shouta, the other man notices him before he has to call him out and interrupt whatever it is he might be doing.

“Going for a morning walk?” he asks cheerfully, as if he actually cared about what Shouta is doing. He never understood the people who woke up like this; joyful, energetic, ready to do it all over again.

“No,” he answers bluntly, “I was looking for you.”

Yamada quirks an eyebrow up, “Have you found some problems with this place already?” he says with a hint of humor in his voice.

“I’ve got a few questions,” Shouta says, not laughing along with the man’s joke because one, he doesn’t do that, and two, yes he has found some problems. “About the children,” he clarifies.

The smile falls from the man’s face, and his gaze darkens. He turns his head back down to the flowers in front of him. “Yes, I thought you might.”

Shouta thinks for a moment about how he can word this correctly, and he plays the words over and over in his head, but the more he does the more he realizes that there is no easy way to go about something like this.

“They’re…” Shouta clears his throat. “Dangerous, aren’t they? Well, the children in places like these always are, but this is different.”

“How so?” The man still has his head turned to the ground, his back facing him.

He’s aware Yamada knows exactly what he means, he just wants to hear him say it.

“They’ve caused the death of others,” Shouta says, clenching his fist hidden in his pocket.

Yamada turns his head slightly to the side, but still doesn’t look at him. “The children are not to blame,”

“Then who is?” Shouta snaps. He waits for an answer, knowing very well he won’t get one. He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Their meta abilities are dangerous, extremely so. But out of them all, the kid without one might put them all at risk the most, knowing his history.”

“And what would you know about that?” The man with blond hair tied in a half-bun says, rising his voice and finally standing up to face Shouta. “You think because you just read a file you know everything?”

“No, I—”

“Little Izuku is nothing like his father.” He cuts him off, “As long as he remains in my care, I’ll do everything in my power to protect him, and I know for a fact that sending him away will not be safer for the other children, and even less for him.”

Shouta doesn’t add anything else. There’s nothing else for him to say, and he’s already said enough for today.

“You asked if the children are dangerous,” he says after a while, his tone firm but holding less heat than it did before. “They are not.”

The dark-haired man can only nod, not trusting himself to open his mouth again. He begins walking away and only makes it a few steps when Yamada speaks up again, his voice softer now.

“I know I might be asking you for a lot, but if you could… learn to see them for what they really are, then…” he hesitates a bit, “They’re still people, children most of all. They deserve a chance.”

Shouta lingers in his spot. He remembers Usagiyama telling him the exact same thing. “Of course,” he says, and then he continues walking towards the house, unable to stop playing the conversation over in his head, like it’s on loop.

They deserve a chance. And indeed, he ought to give them one.

For the rest of the day, and another one after that, Shouta keeps mostly to himself. He watches as things happen from afar and only observes without taking part in anything. It gives him the opportunity to see how the children act, or how they would if he wasn’t there at all.

Perhaps they might come off as very average to anyone walking nearby – though this does not happen often, nor has Shouta ever seen someone else on this island – but he knows better than to brush off something as impertinent.

Shouta sits on the stairs leading up to the front door of the house, his hands clasped together and his shoulders a bit hunched over because of the way his kneecaps sit on his thighs.

“You look busy,” he hears Usagiyama say behind him. She walks up to the spot beside him, and he thinks that’s all she’s going to say when she stops her steps.

He looks up and sees her wearing a white camisole tucked inside beige shorts, and he wonders how come her clothes are still so clean. Maybe it’s because they’re new, or because it’s still morning and when he’ll see her again later, they’ll be covered in dirt.

When he doesn’t answer her, she adds, “Or upset. Not sure which one, though. You’ve always got that serious look stuck on your face.”

“I’m observing,” he replies, hoping she’ll be satisfied and go away if he just answers her, but instead it has the opposite effect. She sits down next to him in a similar position.

“You’re not gonna find anything just by sitting on your ass,” she points out.

“Well, asking questions didn’t go so well either,” he says, and he doesn’t know why he’s telling this to someone, Usagiyama of all people. She hums in response.

A gentle gush of wind brushes against his face, making the tall plants bend slightly in unison. The past few days haven’t been the most productive. He’d been so worried about what he would include in his report, thinking there would be too much, but now he worries he might not have much to say after all.

The children are playing in the field, or at least, some of them are. There’s Momo and Kyouka talking with each other near the spot where most of the lavender grows. Nearby, he can spot Hitoshi up in a tree with Maple. The boy has been caring for her greatly, and he wonders if he’ll get his cat back eventually.

After a moment of silence, she points to a quieter place, near the forest where half a bench has been overtaken by climbing plants of all kinds. On it sits Izuku and Katsuki, but it’s too far for him to tell what they’re doing exactly.

“All those kids suffered terribly before coming here, but… these two,” she sighs, “I don’t know how much you know already, or what lies the commission’s been feeding to you, or even the things written down in your fancy documents,” she pauses, “but there’s more to it.”

Shouta brings a hand to his chin. “There always is, isn’t it?” He says more to himself than to her. He runs his hand down his face and lets his gaze shift back to the two children on the wobbly bench. “I know Katsuki’s parents are dead. A fire.”

“An explosion,” she corrects, and when he looks at her, her eyes seem tired. “Well, that’s what they told us, anyways.”

“But that’s not what you believed happened,” Shouta says, more a statement than a question.

The woman purses her lips. “Katsuki’s mother… Her quirk – or meta ability, as you call them – it wasn’t… they didn’t think about it when Katsuki first developed his. Hers was Glycerin, all over her skin. Made her look super young.” She swallows, and it might’ve been the first time he saw Usagiyama look like this. Unsure and… trouble, so unlike her confident self.

“I don’t know how it happened,” she continues, “but when I asked Katsuki what had happened, he kept repeating how he didn’t mean it, so I figured, with his quirk, which is lighting up the glycerin he produces in his palms, that he had…”

There’s no need for her to finish her sentence to know what she means. Katsuki had used his meta ability, and he’d produced the smallest explosion, which had then caused an enormous fire.

“There wasn’t much left of the mother’s body. I mean—it would’ve done the same thing if she’d walked inside a burning building whilst covered in oil. Except, well, she was the flammable thing in the apartment building, and in the end, it caused… a lot of deaths.”

Shouta can picture it; one window lit up in the middle of the night, and then increasingly, the fire spreads whilst the people are sleeping, and then half of them never wake up. “How many?” he asks.

“Twenty-four,”

He nods with his eyes closed. When he opens them, he sees the small blond child grinning, and he wonders how a child so young can look so happy now after such a terrible thing has happened.

“It doesn’t go away,” Usagiyama tells him as if reading his thought. “The guilt, I mean, and everything that comes with it.” She doesn’t look at him, still. Her eyes are focused on the small form of Katsuki in the distance. She plops her legs out and places her palms on the wooden floor behind her. “When he got here, he was always angry, wouldn’t stop yelling at anyone who got too close. I knew it was his way of grieving, but still… it wasn’t easy. Even now, he still has some issues expressing himself, but he's working on it.” She turns her head to him. “He’s come a long way since then.”

Something twists inside Shouta’s chest, and his eyes begin to burn in a different way than when he’s been staring at his computer for too long back at work, sitting at his desk after everyone has already left. He shakes his head slightly. “What about Izuku?” he asks, “His file was… Well, I learnt more about his father than the boy himself reading it.”

She laughs, “I thought so. I’m guessing the commission’s shitting themselves right now cause they can’t find that guy – what do they call him? All for One? –  and that’s why they sent you to check this place.”

It would make sense, Shouta thinks. He had thought about it before but could never seem to find the right answer. Why would the commission send him on a mission for a whole month instead of the usual check-ups? Were there other people out there also on a mission like this? He isn’t sure.

“Izuku,” she says, as if lost in thought. “We don’t really… know what happened to him. Only what we’ve been told by the commission.” She’s looking at Izuku and Katsuki, still on the bench. “And he doesn’t say much,”

It turns out the bench is not just any bench, it’s a swinging bench – and Shouta sees Izuku smiling while the blond pushes the bench to go higher. “They seem to get along well enough,” he observes.

“They do.” Usagiyama laughs softly. “Izuku was actually the last to arrive here, barely a year ago, but he helped Katsuki, a lot. Katsuki started opening up more to us after Izuku arrived, and he began smiling again. Izuku isn’t quite there yet, but Yamada is helping him as best as he can.”

“He doesn’t talk to the others,” Shouta adds, recalling how Izuku would always whisper into Katsuki’s ear, and then the blond would speak in his place. The only time Shouta heard him talk was on his first day when Katsuki stormed away and Izuku called out to him.

“Sometimes, if he has to.” The white-haired woman says. “Other than that…” She shakes her head. “He’s not the only one like that, though. We’re working hard to help them out the best we can but it’s not always an easy thing to do.” She sighs, “They’ve all got their own complicated problems.”

“I know,” Shouta answers, but he’s starting to doubt that. Really, he’s learnt a lot thanks to Usagiyama, but now he feels like he knows even less than before, about everything.

“There’s Shouto for example.” She says. “Haven’t been able to get through him yet.”

He hums. “I haven’t seen much of him around,” Shouta remembers seeing the boy with split-hair at dinner, sitting in the same chair every day, not speaking a word.

“He’s quiet, and I betcha he’s lonely too,” she tells him quirking her chin up in the air, “but he hasn’t got anyone, not like Izuku does.”

No one to speak in his place if he needs something and doesn’t know how to say it, no one to confide to, no one to be around. Shouta can understand, or at least he thinks he can. “It’s different, here, compared to the other places I’ve visited. There’s a lot the commission doesn’t know about the children.”

“All of them, more than you might think,” Usagiyama says, straightening up. “And when you’ll think you know everything, there’ll still be more, because time is always moving forward and things keep happening every day, even if we don’t want them to.”

They both stay quiet after that for a bit, and Shouta thinks this might be the end of it for now, but then she speaks up again, softer this time. Her tone doesn’t quite match her face, or so he would think if he had missed the furrow of her brows.

“I’m worried.” She tells him as the flowers rustle against each other. “About the children, but also this place, and what they’ll become if it…”

As much as Shouta wishes he could reassure her that things will be fine, find the right words to tell her not to worry, there’s nothing to worry about, he can’t promise anything at all. “I’m here for a month, I’ll have time to make up my mind by then.”

And she nods, because she understands that, too.

By now Izuku and Katsuki have left the swinging bench to go find something more interesting, and Shinsou has gone down from his tree. Mina and Tsuyu have come out in the field whilst Momo and Kyouka have left.

“Maybe I did learn some things just by sitting here,” Shouta says, half-meaning it to be a joke, which is unusual, but it feels right after having spoken of all those things.

“You’re a dumbass,” She nudges his side, harsher than what Shouta had expected and so he didn’t think to brace himself. She laughs all the same.

“And I’m learning,” he retorts.

“That’s true.” She smiles and rises to her feet. “In the end, we’re all just unfinished works in progress, we can only get better or worse, no way we can ever stay the same.”

“Why not?” he asks, looking up at her, and she looks back at him.

“Because then we’d all be miserable.”

Shouta sits at the desk in his room for the rest of the afternoon, finally starting to put together what he should write for the report that’s due in three days now, including today. But the process is incredibly slow, and everything around him seems to be a distraction.

The faint sound of music playing downstairs, and the wind rattling against the window. The children's laughs and footsteps echoing in the corridors. A knock at his door.

For a moment Shouta thinks it’s another one of those pranks the children have been trying to pull on him – they seem to be quite fond of his reactions. The last time, they’d come to show him a bug they had caught outside, a dead beetle. He scrunches his nose at the memory.

He thinks the person might’ve left, and so he starts writing again. But then another knock, and a small voice. “Mr. Aizawa?”

Momo, his mind supplies, the tall girl with long coal-black hair. “You can enter,” he tells her, a bit louder than usual so she can hear him through the door.

His writing had been going very poorly, and so he doesn’t mind taking a small break from it. Out of all the children, he’s found that Momo and Tenya were the two most mature. Still, he’s found that Momo would address him much more often than the boy.

She cracks open the door, and when he turns his head in her direction, he can see her face peering inside. She opens it all the way and takes a careful step inside, fidgeting with her hands.

Shouta waits for her to say something, but her gaze is glued to her feet, and she makes no sign to indicate she might start to speak.

“Is there something I can do for you?” he asks calmly.

Her eyes snap up to him and her lips part, but no word comes out. She seems to think for a moment, her brows scrunched up together. “It’s my turn to help make dinner today,” she says, like this explains everything.

The man stares back at her, waiting for the girl to continue.

She licks her lips, “It’s ‘cause Denki was supposed to do it with me, but something happened and now Hizashi is busy helping him.”

“So you’re alone to cook?” Shouta asks, frowning.

She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, “Well, no,” she says. “Rumi said she’d help me,”

It takes his brain a second to understand who Rumi is. He tries to remember all the children’s names, but his mind comes out blank. But then understanding hits him, “Usagiyama?” he asks, and she nods. “Then what’s the issue? Do you not want her to help you?”

She shakes her head, “No that’s not it, it’s just…” her eyes flicker from side to side before she closes them and looks back at him. “She’s really terrible at cooking,”

It takes him by surprise, just how blunt she is, and he snorts despite himself. Still, it doesn’t explain what she’s doing here, why she’s telling him all of this.

“Then, what do you need?” Or better yet, what does she need from him?

“Well, I just—” she fumbles over her words, something she seems to do quite a lot, and the more she does it the worse it gets. Shouta knows the best thing to do with children like this is to give them time and be patient, so that’s what he does. “I wanted to know if you could come and help me cook?”

And oh. She looks at him expectantly, her eyes so big he could probably see his own reflection inside of them if he were close enough. She’s stopped moving her fingers, but he can see her resist the urge to do so, like she was holding her breath.

Shouta lets out a soft exhale. “I can try,” he sees her shoulders relax, “but I make no promise. I might even end up being worse than Usagiyama,”

The little girl smiles, “I doubt that.”

They get downstairs after a minute or two, and Momo keeps glancing back at him every now and then to make sure he’s following. The difference between when he first arrived and now is that she doesn’t avert her gaze anymore, but instead smiles every time their eyes meet.

When they arrive, Usagiyama is already there, and her ears twitch the moment she hears them step inside the kitchen.

“There you are! I was starting to wonder where you’d gone!” She says.

The woman turns her head and notices him lingering in the doorframe. “He said he’d help us,” Momo explains.

She nods approvingly, and then another boy enters the kitchen from another door further into the room. It’s the one with split hair and the scar on one of his eyes. He goes to stand beside Usagiyama and stares at Momo and him with a critical expression, or something like it.

“I’ve found some help as well,” Usagiyama tells them, placing her head on top of the boy’s head, and it doesn’t seem to bother him in the slightest. “Little Shouto over here wanted to make Soba noodles.” She says, and then the boy looks up at her. She chuckles, “Cold ones.”

Shouta looks down at Momo, who looks back at him. The corner of his lips twitches upwards, and so does hers.

“That, I think we can manage.”

Chapter Text

That night, neither Yamada nor the boy named Denki show up when dinner comes. The clock strikes seven when they finish cleaning up the table, and still, Shouta has no clue where they might be.

“I’ll make sure they eat,” Usagiyama nudges him in the side, trying to reassure him. She thinks he’s worried about them skipping a meal, but although yes he is, it’s certainly not the main reason.

“Why’d they miss dinner, anyway?” he asks her, probably a bit too long after silence fell in the kitchen.

She shrugs. “Happens, sometimes.” She doesn’t expand, doesn’t turn to him to see the furrow between his brows. Shouta takes this as his cue to drop it. Another time.

There’s something about this; being in a dimmed-light kitchen with people he barely knows, children mostly, but strangers nonetheless, while the sound of birds chirping at this unusual time makes its way inside through the window they never close.

Simply taking the time to wash the dishes too big to be put in the dishwasher, getting his hands wet with burning water and soap for so long they stay soft afterward. These kinds of things, where he doesn’t have to worry about a thing.

Mundane tasks while the sun is only starting to get dark, when he knows he would usually still be at his desk back in the city, at his desk so far from the windows. When he knows other people are doing exactly this, and he’s here.

Well, technically, he’s working right now, but it doesn’t feel like he is. It feels too… unusual, untypical of him. Where he has never done a single thing differently, after eighteen years, he finally does.

And it feels rather nice.

Shouta tells Usagiyama goodnight before climbing back upstairs, and maybe, just maybe, the woman is starting to be a bit more bearable.

The inside of the house looks so much smaller on the outside than it actually is, and the corridor on the second floor is so large he wonders how there’s still some space left. Six rooms on each side, and one on each end. Places like these are rare, where each child gets to have their own room. Through his visit, he’s found that one single room would often be deemed big enough for a dozen children or more. He thinks this is nicer.

Right when he goes to put his hand on the doorknob of his room, he hears another door creak two rooms down the corridor. Yamada is softly closing a door, like he’s trying to be quiet, but it still makes so much noise in the vast silence. The man doesn’t notice him right away, but when he does, his eyes light up in a way that makes Shouta’s heart skip a beat.

“Were you heading to sleep?” he whispers.

It’s an easy question; Shouta could tell him yes and enter his room, and then instead go work on his report. He could do precisely that and get to work quicker. And yet, for some reason, he doesn’t. “I’ve got some work to do before that.”

Yamada throws him a sympathetic smile. “You should take some breaks, it’s good for the morale.” He leans against the doorframe.

“You’re one to talk, your job doesn’t offer you many breaks,” Shouta replies, wondering what on earth he’s doing, making small talk like this.

“I suppose that’s true. But it doesn’t feel like work: I love what I do.” The man says, pushing his glasses up, and his eyes look tired, but they don’t look glum. A pause, and then he asks, “Do you?”

A beat of hesitation, a fraction of second too long. “Of course,” he answers, perhaps with a harsher tone than he had intended.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to assume—” Yamada cuts himself off, clearing his throat. “But uhm, I wanted to apologize about the other day, the disagreement we had…”

Shouta lifts his hand to stop him, “No, you were right. I’m sorry,”

The man with blond hair tied in a bun looks like he wants to add something, but he simply nods instead.   

“Tomorrow—You should attend class with us.” He tells Shouta, “I think the children would like that,”

The first thing that comes to Shouta’s mind is to deny the offer, as he had already done once or twice with the children’s invitation because there had been other things to see first. But now, there’s no reason to deny it, and it would be a good opportunity to see how this place works.

“Sure,” he agrees, or at least a part of him does, and the words seem to have escaped his lips before he could think more on it.

Yamada smiles and walks past him down the stairs, and only after he’s completely out of sight does Shouta open the door to his room.

The classroom is located on the first floor, in a large room that seems to be both a place completely different than the house itself, and yet so much like it.

It’s getting colder with each passing day, but the weather today is nice, so the children ask to open the window so they can smell the flowers outside, to which Yamada doesn’t object.

Usagiyama is there, too, but Shouta hasn’t got a clue what she’s doing here. None of the files had specified her, but by now he’s aware the commission has also omitted to tell him quite a bit of information.

Shouta is sitting at the back of the class, near where Usagiyama is so that he can see everything in front of him. The desks are in good condition, but it looks as if the children had been the ones to decide how to place them – which, he’s almost certain they were – and so they’re arranged in a disorderly way.

“Oral presentations,” Yamada tells them, though Shouta is the only one who really needs to be told. He expects the children to start sulking, and then later see them with sheets of paper in their hands, unnatural tones as they read them, but they all seem excited.

“What’s the subject?” Shouta asks in a low voice to Usagiyama.

She turns her head slightly towards him without taking her eyes off the front of the classroom. “Whatever they’d like,”

They’re about to start when Shouta notices some children are missing. He opens his mouth to tell Yamada so when the door swings open.

Katsuki and Izuku have dressed up as pirates and the smaller one is following shyly behind the bolder child, but both wear a smile nonetheless.

“Ahoy, Me Hearties!” Katsuki shouts, and the whole room has their eyes on them. Shinsou makes a comment on how it’s weird for the blond to use a word so loving, and the ruby-eyed child retorts with a few insults and how it’s not what it means at all.

Both new arrivals walk up to the front of the class near the green board where they present a play together. Katsuki does the speaking for the most part, but Izuku is very invested in his role as well without a doubt. They pretend to be on a ship, and the remaining children seem to love every bit of it. Yamada makes sure to compliment the play and their costumes at the end, to which little Izuku beams.

Next up, Denki, Eijiro and Mina have teamed up to present the best arrangements of flowers (in their opinion) which they have all collected outside. Momo has decided to talk about her favorite kind of tea, and Shouta has found her looking at him from time to time when she becomes unsure, and then smiling before continuing.

Kyouka stands up to go whisper a few words in Yamada’s ear. They keep a quiet conversation that only lasts a few seconds while the other children talk until the man nods, and she goes back to her seat.

Shinsou is next, and surprisingly, he brings maple with him. He presents her, and her name, things she likes (apparently) that Shouta had no idea were even a thing. “She likes Limonium best,” he tells them. “And trees, the ones taller than the rest.”

All of them go, each at a time or in teams of two or three; Ochako and Iida make a presentation on martial arts and a small demonstration. Tsuyu goes after them to talk about the different kinds of frogs she’s seen around the place, and where to find them.

The little boy who had helped Shouta, Momo and Usagiyama make dinner the previous night goes last, the one with split hair the colors of a candy cane. He stands at the front, silent. After a moment, in which everyone is careful to stay quiet, he blinks.

His presentation is so quick, yet it’s the most Shouta’s heard him speak since he arrived here. He talks about Soba Noodles – the cold ones – like they’d eat the day before.

Yamada claps again for what seems like the hundredth time in the last hour. “Kyouka?” he asks, and she shakes her head, slumping back in her chair. He doesn’t press it, and instead stands from his seat, a murky green chair.

Later, when all the children have left the space, he asks why the girl didn’t go.

“She’s very shy, and self-conscious,” Yamada tells him. “She loves music, and I know she likes to play a few instruments, the guitar the most, but she doesn’t let many people hear her play.”

There’s something so unique about the way Yamada knows the children so well. Of course, Shouta understands it must be natural after spending enough time with them, but not many would respect their needs and be so patient.

“Will she do it?” Shouta asks, now curious. If he is to write a report due in two days, he should perhaps learn as much as possible about each one.

The corners of Yamada’s lips tug upwards. “Of course,” he says with such certainty in his voice, Shouta doesn’t dare doubt his words. “When the right time comes.”

The first week has been uneventful. Or well, it had, but then of course things could not continue to go so well. Not in a place like this.

“Mr. Aizawa!” he hears someone cry out. He’s sitting at his usual spot, right in front of the front door, under the shade.

He’d been watching the children play, making sure nothing bad would happen, but it seems he had failed to do so. He can begin to make out Mina’s pink curls in the mess of flowers as she runs his way.

“It’s—It’s Izuku,”

Shouta has never gotten to his feet so quickly in his entire life. The girl stops in her tracks, suddenly unsure what to do.

“Where is he?” he asks her, trying to remain calm but some of his worries must’ve slipped in the tone he used because Mina doesn’t seem reassured in the slightest.

“The woods,” she points her arm to a spot in the forest – one so large he doesn’t know how one can manage to find their way back here. She leads him through the foliage at the same speed she’d been running when he first saw her.

This time, Shouta doesn’t bother to be careful with the mushrooms on the ground.

The way Mina’s steps begin to slow, and then stop, tells him they’re here. There’s a kind of stillness in the air, one only present in empty streets late at night, listening to the gentle wind rustle papers on the ground.

Except there is no street; there is only a forest and a few children gathered around a curled-up child. He looks like he’s in pain, at first, but the closer Shouta gets, the better he begins to understand.

“I meant Hizashi,” Little Katsuki says, a snarl on his lips, yet the fear behind those red irises is hard to ignore, and the boy is doing a poor job at hiding it.

“Mr. Aizawa was closer!” Mina retorts, but their bickering stops when the black-haired man raises his hand.

There are four different bodies gathered around the trembling boy, but Shouta can’t afford to rush this, nor to lose time. Mina, Katsuki, Ochako and Shinsou all wear guilty looks on their faces.

He knows the rational thing to do would be to actually go get Yamada: he would know how to help the trembling boy, his head hidden in his arms wrapped around him, his back resting and pushing on the trunk of a tree.

“What happened?” he settles on instead.

“Dunno,” Katsuki answers, “It happens sometimes,” he stops for a while and clenches his fist, as if a thought had angered him. “I don’t know—can’t you do something?” he snaps, a slight tremble in his voice.

Shouta nods, and the blond doesn’t seem convinced in the slightest, but he lets Shouta approach them anyway, even taking a step back.

“Izuku?” his voice is soft, and the word cuts through the thick silence, as a knife might with butter.

There is no immediate answer. Instead, he’s met with a slight shake of the head from the green-haired kid. “Izuku? Can you hear me?”

The boy nods and brings his feet closer to himself. “I don’t wanna go back,” he whispers, his voice so small it makes something inside Shouta’s chest twist.

“Go back where?” Shouta crouches down in front of the shivering figure.

“T-the room,” he mumbles just barely above a whisper. “I don’t want to go back,”

Shouta isn’t sure what the boy means, and he won’t ask either by fear of making it worse. “No one will force you to go back,”

Izuku shakes his head, wiping his eyes on his arms as he does. Shouta catches a glimpse of the child’s tear-stained face, his eyes shut tightly. “You—You lie, I always have to.”

“I promise you I’m telling the truth,” the boy doesn’t nod or shake his head, and for a moment all he can hear are quiet sniffles and hiccups. Then, he puts both his hands over his face and places his shut eyes against his knees.

He’s going to suffocate like this.

“Izuku, can you move your hands from there?” The boy complies, and a heavy exhale follows. “Here, do you mind if I take your hand?”

A beat. Katsuki shifting from his spot, a bird chirping in the distance. A nod. Izuku slowly lets his hand fall from his side, keeping the other one to hold his legs together. Shouta takes it, and the boy flinches but doesn’t pull away.

The man places the tiny hand over his chest. “Breathe with me, will you?” He inhales, counting to four, then holding his breath for four, and exhaling to four again. At first, Izuku has a hard time copying him, but after a few minutes, his breathing has slowed down and the tears have stopped falling.

They stay like this, sitting on the ground with four pairs of eyes on them who probably don’t understand what’s going on, but trying to. Katsuki is staring at him, and Shouta points his head at the way he arrived from. The child seems to understand what he means, and he leads the others back toward the house.

A golden leaf falls right beside the freckled boy, and Shouta would wait another hour he needed to, and even more. Izuku lifts his head up and blinks, his tired gaze meeting his. “I was back in the room,”

“It’s over now,” Shouta tells him, squeezing the small hand in his and bringing his other hand to the child’s shoulder. “You’re safe, you don’t have to go back ever again,”

Emerald eyes begin to shine as though they were made of glass, and then a single tear falls. Izuku hides his head in Shouta’s chest. The man stays frozen for a fraction of second, unsure what he should do. He looks so fragile like this. Despite this, he brings a hand behind his head, and his fingers slip through disheveled curls.

Shouta ends up carrying him back to the house where a worried Yamada waits for them. The man doesn’t notice them right away, and instead, he keeps pacing on the front porch until they’ve come close enough.

Izuku doesn’t stir from his place in Shouta’s arms, and he could almost think the kid has fallen asleep from the way his chest rises and falls in a slow pattern, if not for the hand he brings to wipe his eyes every now and then.

Yamada meets them halfway through the field of withering flowers, the crease between his brows replaced by relaxed eyes and a relieved sigh. He keeps his gaze on Izuku for a moment, taking him in before his eyes meet Shouta’s.

“Oh, Izuku,” Yamada whispers and said boy turns his head to look at the man.

“It’s over now,” Izuku mumbles, almost to himself. It takes Shouta a moment to realize these are the words he had told him, and he’s simply repeating them, as though he were testing them on his tongue. He fumbles with his hands. “It’s over, so it’s—it’s better,”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Yamada apologizes, but the child only shakes his head in response.

“Mr. Aizawa was there,” he says, like that made up for everything. Which it didn’t, Shouta is still thinking about what Izuku had been mumbling. The room, he’d kept repeating. “He helped,”

Izuku doesn’t have his face pressed against his chest anymore, and so he figures maybe the boy has had enough of being in his arms. He puts him down carefully.

“I tried,”

Yamada looks at him and bows his head slightly. “Thank you for that, really.”

This entire thing leaves him with a lot to think about, and even more to think about what to think about. It is not something that can be overlooked, and dread fills his heart as he begins to understand this is only a fraction of everything there is to know, about one of twelve children.

When nighttime comes, and Shouta is alone in his room, sitting at his desk, he picks up a pencil and begins writing the report he had been putting off until now. He has questions to which he needs answers.

It’s about time he stops delaying his work and starts doing what he came here to do.

Investigate.

Chapter Text

HERO PUBLIC SAFETY COMMISSION
Report #1 Orphanage Yawarageru, Nabu Island

Aizawa Shouta

===

I do solemnly, sincerely, and truly declare and affirm that the content of this report shall be the truth. I understand any falsehood will bring unwanted consequences and could result in my dismissal.

 

The first week has been most puzzling.

Firstly, the reports you have given me contained a very limited amount of information, which refrained me from gaining a better understanding of this place beforehand. Most of the folders were empty minus a single sheet naming troubling facts and omitting an awful lot of crucial details.

Some things that I know the commission was already aware of should have been included. If I must be able to do my job properly, I should hope to have all the information you possess on this place at my disposal.

The orphanage itself is located on a place cut off from the main island and thus giving the children very little contact with the population. I hear the people are rather old, but we have yet to leave this place.

I have observed the structure of the main building where the children are housed along with Mr. Yamada, and although it is most unusual (by its colors and foreign structure), all seems to be in order.

Each child occupies a bedroom of their own, but I have not yet had the time to visit them. I suspect they are much similar to the one I have been given, so I do not worry.

You have given me the files of twelve children, and another for Mr. Yamada, but another person seems to reside on the remote island. Her name is Usagiyama Rumi, a woman with certain rabbit traits. I had not been informed she would be here, and considering she helps quite a big deal take care of the children, I had thought she ought to have been mentioned. That is, if you knew of her presence here.

Mr. Yamada himself has not given me any reason to doubt his capacity to care for the children here, and he has shown great skill in teaching and caring for them this past week.

I have not had the time to get to know each child individually yet, but so far Yaoyorozu Momo seems to have opened up to me the most. She is an eight-year-old girl with a meta ability to create things from her body, though I have not seen it for myself. She is very self-conscious, but she makes a good deal of effort to overcome it. She favors spending time alone, but she does spend some time with the others each day. Considering her history of being exploited for her ability, I was impressed at her ability to live peacefully.

Bakugou Katsuki and Midoriya Izuku come in a pair (quite literally). They spend their days together and it is almost impossible to catch them alone. Katsuki does most of the talking, while Izuku follows behind. Their relationship is an unusual one, but it works for them.

Katsuki’s file was very vague, and I have been told more about the incident mentioned in his file – an explosion, not a fire – that had caused the death of his parents and many others. Usagiyama helps him deal with his anger and his grief. This place does him a lot of good.

Izuku is quieter. Reading his file, I learnt more about his father than the boy himself. He does not possess a meta ability, as I am sure you already know, and I wonder why he was ever sent to a place like this in the first place. I do not wish to make assumptions, and thus would like to know more about the information you have on Izuku Midoriya (and not his father).

Shinsou Hitoshi also talks very rarely, but I believe it is less because he is shy and more because he doesn’t want to talk to anyone. I have brought my cat with me on the island, and Hitoshi has been taking care of her. He is gentle, but he has been wronged in the past because of his ability and I do not blame him for distrusting others. When the children play together, he often joins them, and I have seen him use his ability, but no one seemed to mind.

On the contrary, Mina Ashido is very energetic and likes to engage in any kind of conversation. I often see her with a group, but she seems to have befriended almost everyone. Her file deemed her dangerous, but I do not believe this to be true. I have seen her use her meta ability – acid – once, and it had caused her some pain. She lacks some control still, but Mr. Yamada helps her a lot.

Kaminari Denki is often playing with Mina, but I know very little about him other than the concerning information in his file. I have heard of an incident happening with him while I was there, but I have not asked about it yet (though I plan on doing that when I get the opportunity). I have seen him play with another boy Kirishima Eijirou, but I haven’t interacted with him yet.

There’s also Todoroki Shouto. I haven’t heard him talk yet to anyone at all, except maybe Usagiyama and Mr. Yamada. He doesn’t interact with the other children, and I believe it is a form of response to his past trauma.

Uraraka Ochako often spends her time with the boy named Iida Tenya and another girl, Asui Tsuyu. I do not have enough information on them yet to include in this report, but I plan on asking more of them this week.

Still, I am worried about what might happen with all those children gathered in one place. They’ve done tragic acts in the past, alone each, and so I try not to think about what they might do as a whole. There is no indication of this happening soon, or ever, but it makes me wonder why they were all placed in this same place.                                                   

I have used this week mainly for taking in the orphanage, and nothing seems out of place yet. As I’ve stated previously, the only thing I lack is information. With this, I conclude my first report.

Best regards,

 

Aizawa Shouta

 

It has rained last night, leaving puddles of water on the uneven roads of the small island. The air feels damp, like it would in the city, but it’s fresher too, and the wilted flowers drip drops of water onto blades of grass. The scenery that had once looked so lively now felt much gloomier.

The island where the orphanage is located doesn’t have a small box where he can put his report in, unfortunately for him. It is mandatory that he sends his report in a sealed letter instead of an email. For precaution, they’d said, though Shouta isn’t sure whom. It must be an older rule that no one ever thought of getting rid of.

Right now, though, letter in hand, Shouta wishes he could ignore the rule. He won’t, but he’ll still think about it.

So, he walks outside, barely a few steps made into the wilting flower field, when a small figure appears – Shouta thinks she’s come out of nowhere, having not heard her come his way over the rushing wind.

“Where are you going?” It’s the girl with the bob cut who’d carried his suitcase for him on the first day. Ochako, his mind supplies.

It’s one of those mornings where he’s woken up too early, and so he’d waited in bed for a bit, but then he would’ve taken too long to get out of bed, and by the time he did, he’d been too late. Too cold. Too tired. He should’ve put on something warmer.

Instead, he’d put on his white button-up shirt, still wrinkled because he’d left it curled up on his chair the previous night. This, along with his black pants, makes him look like a cheap version of those businessmen in movies and magazines. He’d hoped pulling his hair back in a low bun might help, but it probably didn’t.

“The post office,” he replies, still walking and barely sparing the child a glance. She follows him, still, and he slows his steps without realizing it. “For a letter.”

Ochako nods seriously, her eyebrows scrunched up in thought. “That’s very nice,” she finally says, and then she smiles, as if content with her reflection. “I don’t think I ever got a letter. The person you’re sending it to is very lucky.”

He hums, paying her little mind. The clouds are becoming thicker with each minute passing, carpeting the island with their shadow. He scans the front of the field where Usagiyama is supposed to join him with her car so that she can take him to the post office, but she hasn’t arrived yet.

A small gasp escapes the girl’s lips. Shouta whips his head to see her hands covering her mouth, round-eyed with something he couldn’t quite pinpoint.

“Is it a love letter?”

The man opens his mouth to answer, telling her that no, it most definitely isn’t, when a moving car grabs his attention from the corner of his eye. Usagiyama has the window rolled down, her elbow sticking out of it. She honks twice, the sound horrid in his ears, making him wince.

“Rumi!” Ochako shouts, running up to the white-haired woman. “Can I go post the love letter too?”

“Love letter?” Usagiyama asks, glancing up to him with one eyebrow raised in question, a grin stretching on her lips.

“No,” Shouta sends her a glare, “and no. It’s important business, I don’t have time to waste.”

The last thing he needs right now is having to deal with a child while he tries to get his only set task of the day done. He makes his way around the car and opens the door to the passenger seat.

“Actually, little Hitoshi here is already coming with me, so I don’t mind if you come along as well,” Usagiyama says, and it takes Shouta a moment to realize she’s talking to Ochako, and not him. He turns his head to look behind it after fastening his seatbelt and sees the boy with purple hair, Hitoshi, with Maple laying on his lap.

It’s alright, Shouta thinks. It’ll be quick.

Without any warning, Maple jumps over to him. He startles, and suddenly realizes how much he’d been missing her lately. She would still sleep in his room at night, but he hadn’t had time to just be with her in a while. Behind him, Hitoshi looks out the window.

When they arrive, Ochako unbuckles her seatbelt to go with him. She’s convinced he’s written a love letter, and he doesn’t see the point in correcting her. She’s a child, and he has no patience today. He probably would’ve been harsh with his tone to tell her to stay, if Usagiyama hadn’t done it before him, gentler.

“Ya can’t go, sugar,”

He’d seen her pout, but by that time he already had half his leg outside the car. The post office is an old building, like all the others on this island. It only has four parking spaces with some patches of unkept grass around them. A giant wall of windows faces the road and the parking lot, but the sun hitting them makes it impossible to see inside. That, or they’re tinted. Shouta isn’t sure, and he doesn’t care much.

A bell churns when he steps inside, and the space is so small that it would feel cramped if more than five people were to be there at once. But there’s no one. No one but Shouta. He walks to the counter, being mindful to make his steps louder so that someone will hear him.

The clock ticks and tacks for five minutes before someone comes at the counter – an old lady with wrinkled hands, freckles fading on her skin – muttering an apology about being incredibly busy. “It’s that time of the year,” she tells him, as if that explained anything. Shouta simply hums.

He hands her the report and pays for the stamp, (he hadn’t thought of bringing any with him).  She’s peering out the window, printing a receipt that he absolutely doesn’t need, not when it only cost a few yens, and he feels terribly impatient. She hands him the bit of paper half-mindedly, still looking outside with a frown on her face.

“Always lookin’ for trouble, those children,” He mirrors the frown between the lady’s brows and turns his head to the window, searching for what she might be looking at, and reaching for the receipt as he does. “they’re fiendish,”

Outside, right there, Ochako and Shinsou were playing with Maple, making a small pile of leaves under a tree and urging the cat to jump in. “Excuse me?”

“Fiendish,” she repeats, “they villainous,”

Shouta had heard her well the first time, but he still wishes he’d been wrong. He knew very well what fiendish meant, there was no need for her to explain the word to him. He looks at the receipt in his hand, printed by the same machines he used the see when he was younger. They’d all been replaced in the city. “This place is still using those old receipt printers?”

“I like them better,” she answers, “the paper’s nicer.” She’s the kind of person who always has a lot to say, and a lot of opinions about everything, but no one to share them with.

He hums, and then he crumples the smooth paper in the palm of his hand, dropping its ruined state on the counter. The woman stares at him, dumbfounded, or insulted. Perhaps both. He turns around and walks out the door, the cheery bell churning as he does.

“Did you post your love letter?” Ochako asks him when they’re sitting outside the shop where Hitoshi had wanted to go.

“Not a love letter,” he corrects her. Maple is walking back and forth between their legs. The girl brushes the back of her hand against the cat’s fur absentmindedly every time she comes close.

“Why not?” she tilts her head.

Shouta’s back rests against the concrete building, right by the door. “There’s no one I could send it to.” She blinks, not seeming to understand what he means. “I don’t have a lover,”

“Doesn’t have to be a lover. Could be anyone you love. There’s got to be some people you could write love letters to!” She then gives him examples of people she loves, which turns out to be a complete list of the people at the orphanage. “I think everyone should write love letters, so that everyone can get some.”

“Wouldn’t you become bored of them, though?” he asks.

She knits her brows in thought for a moment, placing her fingers on her chin. “No, I don’t think so.” She looks up, still with the same look on her face, probably looking for a better answer. “It’s like… Mochis!”

“Mochis?”

“Yes, well, no—Mochis, over there!” she points her finger to a shop right across the street, with stripped white and pink fabric acting as a small roof for the front of the shop. ‘MOCHI’ is written in big golden letters on the window. “Can we?”

Shouta turns around to look to his right, where the door which Usagiyama and little Hitoshi are sure to step out of any minute now. But of course, they don’t, and when he turns to look at Ochako with her caramel-colored eyes, he sighs and helps her up.

The cold of the outside air is quickly left behind as they step inside the shop, where it’s much warmer. It’s small, a lot more than the post office had been. There’s a display on their left when they walk in, filled with a dozen different flavors of Mochis, and behind it are posters explaining each of them. Against the other side, three round tables in blueish metal are set, with two matching chairs at each.

A girl with muted pink curls lifts her head and greets them. Her hair reminds him of Mina’s if she were to let her hair grow out. Ochako looks up at him, and he nods his chin to the counter. “Stay rational.”

“Hizashi always says reasonable,” is her answer.

“They’re the same thing.”

The lady smiles as Ochako gives out her order, and the young woman – she looks more like she’s in her late teenage years than anything else – stays patient and explains some things to the girl from time to time, and both glance back a few times at Shouta to make sure it’s alright.

She takes a box of fifteen mochis, and fourteen different flavors, taking twice the one the lady behind the counter had said to be her favorite of all time. After she’s done, Shouta walks up to them to pay, but the cashier shakes her head. “They deserve it well enough,”

And so he stands there awkwardly for a bit more, Maple licking her paws at his feet. Her comment leaves him wondering just what the people of this island know, exactly. Ochako puts the small box wrapped in a pink ribbon down on the table while she sits on a chair.

“You’re going to be hungry enough for all of those?” he asks.

She fumbles with the ribbon, pulling at it until it finally gives out and opening the lid. “I’m always hungry for Mochis,” she takes two napkins inside a metal box on the side of the table and presses them flat against the surface. “But they’re not all for me. That wouldn’t be very reasonable, or rational.”

“For the people at the house, then?” He’d taken to calling it the house when talking with the children, because they’d corrected him so many times.

She nods, “Yes, and Rumi,” she scans the box, clearly looking for something in particular. She finds the two the lady had recommended and places one on each napkin. “And you,”

“Me?” Shouta frowns.

“Yea,” she smiles, sliding one of the napkins his way until it’s right in front of him, the paper mimicking a plate. And then he understands what she’d been doing.

Oh. Shouta has never had mochi before. There had always been an excuse, and never a good opportunity. Then he’d grown up and busied himself with work so much he never thought of sweets in such a long time. At least, not for himself.

He thinks of declining, at first, but with the way she beams at him, and her eyes are watching him so intently. So instead, he looks down at the pink ball of rice, and asks, “Are they good?”

“Not sure,” she shrugs, “but they’re always good. At least, the ones Saki likes always are.” The woman behind the counter busies herself with something – he really doesn’t know what there could be to do in a place like this – but she catches his eyes and shoots him a quick smile.

Ochako explains they have to try it at the same time, or else it won’t be as good. She holds his gaze, and then they bite down on it. It’s soft, at first, and in the middle of everything, there’s a strawberry. It’s good. Unexpected, but better than he had thought.

Still munching, Ochako tells him, “Love letters are kinda like Mochis, but instead of words, it’s food.” She puts the rest of the sweet in her mouth. “And you only have them with the people you like, or else it doesn’t make sense.”

He’s pretty sure they would taste the same either way, but who is he to tell her that?

Saki, like Shouta had heard Ochako had called the teen earlier, sighs, her head turned toward the window. “Not this again,” she says quietly, but it’s so silent they have no trouble hearing her talk. Shouta turns his head to look at what she’s seeing, and so does the little girl. A soft gasp escapes her lips.

Usagiyama is on the other side of the street, Shinsou right behind her arm. She’s visibly arguing with someone inside the store, and now that he’s looking at her, he can hear her voice faintly in the background. He doesn’t know what the pink-haired girl might mean by ‘Again’, but he’ll keep his questions for later.

What must that woman be thinking, searching for trouble like that?

He gets to his feet and the door is already half opened when he urges Ochako to stay inside while he takes care of this.

Chapter Text

“The fuck do you think you are?” Shouta hears Usagiyama say – or yell, for how loud she’s being – from across the street.

He looks both ways, a habit from living in a city full of cars at any time of the day, which doesn’t prove very useful here. He could probably count the amount cars he’s seen here on both hands.

The woman’s ears are pointing up to the sky. She holds her arm in front of Hitoshi, who in turn lingers awkwardly behind her.

“Rumi,” he tugs at the fabric of her shirt to get her attention, and although she doesn’t turn, her ears betray her by twitching. “Rumi, ‘s fine, let’s go,”

“Not ‘til this dickhead lets us get what we came for,” she answers sternly. She’s standing outside the store, right in front of the door where a man stands in the doorway. He’s tall, and he’s got short, graying hair on his head.

Shouta approaches the three people, trying to make his footstep louder so that they hear him come, but they’re too quiet, and he’d look ridiculous stomping in the middle of the road. So, when he’s close enough, he clears his throat.

“Excuse me, is there a problem here?” he asks, quickly glancing at Usagiyama. She doesn’t smile, nor let out a sigh of relief. She also doesn’t jab him with her infamous insults. She simply holds her head up, her gaze steady, even when he turns back to the older man.

“And who’re you supposed to be?” the stranger asks instead of answering his question, pointing towards him with his chin.

Shouta reaches into his back pocket, in a fast, effective manner, as he’s done so many times in the past when arriving in new orphanages. He pulls out his wallet and takes out a card, lifting it so it faces them, and repeating familiar words. “Aizawa Shouta, I work for the Hero Public Safety Commission.”

The man squints his eyes to read, although there’s no way he can read the information written on the card from his spot. He hums anyway.

“Those two won’t leave my shop,” he says, crossing his arms and tilting his head to Usagiyama and Hitoshi with a distasteful expression on his face. It surprises Shouta. He had expected more… he’s not sure what. He had expected more.

“Did they do something?” Shouta questions, careful to sound uninterested, and putting his card back where it belongs. He’s better playing like he doesn’t know anything in these kinds of situations.

He catches Hitoshi looking at him from the corner of his eyes, the boy watching him with a weary expression.

“They sure did!” the man straightens up, “Tried to attack me, they did,”

“Attack you?” Shouta looks up, a frown forming between his brows.

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” Usagiyama throws her arms in the air. She’s a dynamic person who likes to move and say what she thinks. Of course she’d explode after staying still and keeping quiet for a tad too long. “Just let us buy the damn thing,”

“They tryna fool you, but lemme tell you, I’ve seen how it is. How it goes.” The stranger talks as if Usagiyama had never talked in the first place, completely unbothered. “They’re bad luck, those children. I don’t want ‘em anywhere near my shop.”

“But they didn’t attack you,” Shouta says, trying to stop his eye from twitching. He keeps his head up high. Professional. “Did they?”

The man’s posture falters ever so slightly, but Shouta sees it, nonetheless. “Well, no, but they were going to—”

“Then,” he cuts him off sternly, “they should be able to go inside. I’ll come as well.”

The shop owner, or the employee, it doesn’t make the slightest difference to Shouta, stutters, obviously insulted that the commission’s employee hadn’t taken his side.

And so, Usagiyama pulls her lips into a tight smile, holding the stranger’s gaze as she pushes past him, Hitoshi following behind her with his head hung low. They head to one isle in particular, though Shouta doesn’t really get the organization of the objects, if there’s any.

It’s unclear as to what the shop is for, and he hadn’t taken the time to read the sign at the front. He guesses it’s some kind of thrift store, with prices ranging from very low to quite expensive.

Hitoshi reaches for a small wooden figurine, the size of his palm. When the boy walks past him towards the counter, he manages to catch tiny pointy ears and a thin tail. A cat.

It kind of looks like…

“Shit,” Shouta curses under his breath, suddenly remembering how he’d left Ochako alone in the mochi store with the cotton-candy-haired girl and Maple.

He looks through the window to the other side of the street, and he catches a glimpse of the girl’s brown hair, sitting at the table he’d been at earlier. He lets out a sigh of relief.

Usagiyama and Hitoshi are now at the counter, and the man from earlier looks with disdain as Hitoshi puts the figurine down. He barely glances at it and utters a ridiculous price.

“That’s bullshit,” the woman answers, crossing her arms.

“Rumi, we can leave, I don’t mind,” Hitoshi tries to reassure her a second time.

“No,” she ruffles his hair gently, perhaps with more care than he’d ever seen before. Though, the hand on the boy’s head did not match her tone. “I’m sick of this.”

Then, she pulls out a few yen from her pockets and to both Shouta and the seller’s surprise, places the amount that had been asked on the counter. She snatches the wooden cat from its spot, tumbled down on the side, and pushes it into Hitoshi’s hands. “There. Now, we’ll leave.”

“Why that one?” Shouta questions once everyone is in Usagiyama’s car, Ochako seated in the backseat with Hitoshi beside her, Maple sitting in his lap. Hitoshi looks up to look at him, and Shouta glances at the figurine held between his fingers.

“It’s maple,” he says, flatly. Shouta frowns. “The wood, I mean. And it’s a cat, so it’s kind of like Maple. The cat, this time.”

“Ya wanted that thing just cause of that?” Usagiyama asks, keeping her eyes straight up ahead. Her tone holds no judgment, or if it does, no one seems to notice.

The corners of the boy’s lips turn up. “Yeah” and then, his eyebrows press down slightly, breaking the beginning of his smile. “For when she’s gone.”

A reply from the Commission makes its way to the house a day later, surprisingly. A boy, barely a teen, had come all the way from the post office to deliver it here. On his bicycle. He lingers a bit longer than he needs to, and it’s only after he left that Shouta goes outside to take it from the outdated mailbox.

He opens it there, right in front of the door he’s left open, and at the top of the wooden stairs leading to it. The envelope feels light in his hands. A frown begins to form on his face.

The single page inside has been folded in three, but the content doesn’t take anywhere near half the space.

Hero Public Safety Commission, Upper Management Council

We have read and reviewed your report, and it has been most informative. Unfortunately, we have given you all the information we deemed would be necessary, and it is not your place to question our decision.

Please, we ask that you complete your tasks with the tools and knowledge we have put at your disposal, and no more. We look forward to your next report,

 

The Upper Management Council

 

Shouta pinches the bridge of his nose and lets his hand slide down his face. Well, this was of no help at all. He should have expected this, the commission would never just tell him ‘Oh! Right, we’ll send you more information, sorry about that’.

He can almost hear Nemuri telling him ‘The commission doesn’t make mistakes, Aizawa’ at the back of his head.

And she had been right then, so why would it have changed now? Perhaps they’re right, and Shouta does have everything he needs. Maybe he’s just been doing a terrible job so far. If he’d known more, would it have changed anything?

There are too many questions and a horrendous amount lack of answers.

“Mr. Aizawa!” He hears Momo call out from inside the house. She’s running – it’s more of a fast pace than anything – towards him from inside the house. “Mr. Aizawa,” she holds her hand up lazily, catching her breath.

“Yes?” he folds the envelope in half, putting it in his pocket. It’s not like he would need to read it again for reference, anyways.

Lately, Momo had been coming to him more with each passing day, to speak of the littlest things, because she felt bored, or for no reason at all.

“There’s going to be a meteor shower tonight! Yamada says we should all go,” There’s a book tucked under her arm. She was probably reading right before coming here and forgot to put it down.

“A meteor shower?” he questions. Her words hadn’t quite hit him until they’d flowed past his own lips. His eyes widen ever so slightly, but he does as best as he can to keep his expression neutral.

“A rare one,” she replies, a smile forming on her face, her gaze sparkling. “Yamada said… that you should come, too.”

Shouta hums, followed by a slight nod, but the beating in his chest betrays his uninterested facade.

“I might,”

Shouta paces in his room, wondering why he’d said he would go to Momo. Well, he had made no promise to her, but he’s certain she thinks otherwise.

They’d gone downstairs to eat, and right after, Yamada had put them all to bed early with a promise to wake them up when the time came. There was still a little over an hour before the meteor shower began.

Being anxious about an excursion with a dozen children felt irrational, somehow. Surely, Shouta was panicking for no reason at all. But it would be at night, and so many things could go wrong. Then what? What would he do, then, when something bad happened and he’d need to take care of it?

This is his job, it has been for eighteen years, but never has he ever needed to go out at night to watch…

Stars. A meteor shower.

The closest thing he can remember to the stars is the night sky picture he had set as his wallpaper on his desktop back at work.

In the city, the clouds would always overwhelm the sky day and night, all year long, and hide the few stars present on those nights. And on the ones where it was free of rain, Shouta could never manage to see more than blurry dots in the distance, making them look much less spectacular than he knew them to truly be.

Shouta would see no stars tonight, and something would go wrong, and then—

A knock at his door interrupted his train of thoughts, snapping him back to reality so quickly that he almost loses his balance.

Yamada calls out his name, telling him he’s about to go wake the children, “If you still wanted to come,” he adds after a pause. There it is. Shouta’s plan to avoid going. He can simply say he changed his mind, or that he’s too tired, now. Which would be true: Shouta is always tired.

But if he did that, Momo might get sad. He pinches the bridge of his nose and shakes his head slightly, still seeing two shadows of what must be Yamada’s feet standing in front of his door. The man moves, half his shadow lifting.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” Shouta says, loud enough so that he can be heard through the door, but not too much as to wake the children.

True to his words, he is outside his door not long after. Yamada has already woken up half of them, but Shouta is pretty much sure some of them had already been up, seeing the excited looks beside the tired ones. The head of the house leaves their doors ajar, in a manner to remember which ones are up, and which are not.

Katsuki comes out of the door closest to Yamada’s own room, and behind him, Izuku follows. Shouta frowns, but then he sees Hitoshi picking Maple up from the corner of his eye, and decides he’ll have time to ask his questions later.

All the children are standing outside the door, right in front of the stairs leading up to the door, through which passes the only source of light. Usagiyama arrives a moment later, and the eager whispers become quieter.

“Alright,” she’s carrying a heavy box, her arms barely big enough to contain it, and she has to lift her chin up to see where to step. She sets it down and takes out small boxes with windows orning each side, and a handle on top of it. “There’s a lantern for everyone, if ya want one,”

Most of them ran up to her to pick up their own, but some stood behind. Usagiyama glances at him, and Shouta goes to take one for himself, just in case he should find himself in need of it. Right when he's about to close his hand around the handle, his finger brushes against another hand, and both pull away. He turns his head and sees Yamada there, who’s quick to apologize and tells him to go ahead.

“Oh, no, I can take another one,” he tells the blond man.

“No need, you can take it,” Yamada replies. “Really, I don’t mind,”

Shouta opens his mouth to insist again when Usagiyama speaks up.

“We haven’t got all night,” she says with a smug expression on her face.

The dark-haired man clears his throat, and then looks at Yamada again, but the man shakes his head and smiles softly, taking a step back. Shouta takes the lantern from the woman.  

They’re all standing in a poorly made half-circle, waiting for Yamada to light the lanterns with the matches he kept in his pockets.

“Why not just use a flashlight or something?” Shouta asks when his turn comes.

“Isn’t it much better like this?” Is Yamada’s simple reply, to which Shouta has no answer.

It’s the first time since Shouta has arrived here a little over a week ago that he steps outside after the sun has set, giving place to a dark sky, spotted with tiny, blurry dots, so far in the distance.

Yamada leads them somewhere towards the woods, Usagiyama following close behind, and Shouta is somewhere in the middle. They go on a different path; one Shouta has never seen before. Or at least, he doesn’t think he has. A week ago, all had appeared the same to him, but now he had begun noticing the small details of the place; the different flowers, the piles of leaves forming on the ground, the trees.

It looks familiar, but something he hadn’t noticed before – many of them – change the forest into something completely different. He remembers that first day, when he’d been led by little Katsuki and Izuku through the woods, which are now walking right in front of him.

Shouta had been careful not to step on the mushrooms, so plain and unimportant then, he hadn’t understood why Izuku took such care in placing his step in places there were none. Bright blue light emerged from the fungi, dazzling his sight.

All around them, fireflies danced around them, guided by the mushrooms which illuminated their path as they walked close to them. He catches Izuku trying to gauge his reaction from the corner of his eye.

The walk is quite hard on Shouta’s legs. He dreads the next morning when all his muscles will have thorn and repaired overnight, leaving him in terrible pain. He doesn’t realize it right away, but they’re going up, heading some place Shouta hadn’t thought they could even go, but now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t know why that would be the case.

They finally reach a clearing, giving them a clear view of the sky, which had never seemed so big to Shouta until now. It stretches on to each corner of the ocean, and unlike the times he had looked at it from his window, it’s all around him; over his head, behind him. His eyes aren’t big enough, or perhaps he simply doesn’t have enough of them, to see it all.

Two fallen trees have been placed to face a fraction of the sky, and a few meters in front of them is where the clearing ends, giving place to a wall made of rock, where falling from it would surely cause some serious injury.

Shouta shakes the thought away, now is not the time. He sets his lamp down and sits on one of the fallen tree trunks. Yamada comes to sit beside him while Usagiyama teases some of the children. It’s a cold night, but the wind is pleasant.

“Excited?” he asks, rubbing his hands together.

Shouta coughs, “Excuse me?” he’d been half-listening, his mind elsewhere.

“I meant for the meteor shower,” Yamada clarifies, a smile forming on his lips.

“Oh,” Shouta says. He looks in the distance, where the blurry splatters are. “Yes,”

“You don’t sound very… convincing,” Shouta turns his head to look at him, and their eyes meet. There’s something about the man that makes him want to tell him everything, and that’s dangerous because Shouta’s work consists of keeping his mouth shut at all times.

“I am,” he tries to answer confidently, but his voice wavers. It’s true, Shouta has always loved stars. The thought of them was always incredibly comforting. “I just doubt I’ll see any,”

Yamada gives him a light shove in the side, a frown between his brows, just above where the bridge of his glasses sits. Still, he smiles. “Come on, there’ll be plenty, I’ll make sure to leave some for you.”

Shouta wants to laugh, not because he’s funny but because he’s certain that’s what Yamada had been trying to do. “It’s true,” he replies, a small laugh in his voice. He looks to the floor, where his shoes are tucked between yellowing blades of grass. “I really can’t see them, they’re too far.”

“Oh, I thought you were…” Yamada’s smile falls, and Shouta mentally scolds himself. Why did he have to say that? Now it’s awkward, and none of them know what to say, and he probably should have just kept this for himself. “What about glasses?” The blond man points to his own.

“It’s not a vision problem, not really,” Shouta replies, putting his elbows on his knees, lazily crossing his arms, his hand hanging limp. “It’s my meta ability, it… ruins my eyesight, over time, and glasses can’t do anything to fix it.”

“That’s…” Yamada draws out the word for a moment in thought. “that’s one shitty quirk you got,”

Despite himself, Shouta laughs, rubbing his eyes. “That’s not everything there is to it,” he looks back to those green eyes, which appear to be more bluish in the dark of the night.

“You had me worried for a second there,” Yamada says, half-joking.

A few steps from them, Mina points her hand to the sky. “I saw one!” she shouts.

“Oh, it’s beginning already?” The blond whispers, though it comes out more like a statement.

He looks back to Shouta and shoots him a small smile, holding his finger up. He stands and walks to Usagiyama, who points to him somewhere a bit farther behind them.

Shouta looks to his left, where Izuku and Katsuki have sat on the tree, and watches them point to the sky with the tip of their fingers. In the clear spot, a few of the children have taken it upon themselves to lie down on the grass, including Momo and Kyouka.

Yamada comes back, his arms full of… Well, Shouta isn’t sure what it is, exactly. There are many pieces, most are made of some kind of metal that shimmers under the starlit sky. His eyes widen, his mind finally recognizing the object. “You brought a telescope?”

“I thought it might be nice,” he answers, setting the tripod – it hadn’t been three different pieces, but simply three legs of the same, it turns out. “I’m glad to know I was right. It’s the perfect opportunity to use it,” he looks up to Shouta from his crouched position, twisting a lens of some kind, or perhaps something different.

He finishes setting it up and looks through the eyepiece, a smile stretching on his face for the hundredth time in that same hour. He fiddles with a tiny wheel, and then pulls back, seemingly satisfied with his work.

“Should be perfect for you now,” Yamada tells him, stepping back slightly and leaving the place for Shouta to take.

“For me?” It makes sense, now, the reason why the man would have gone to fetch his device and spent a few minutes setting it up. Minutes he could have otherwise spent looking at the sky, the stars, and watching them fall in turn. But he doesn’t understand why, and he doesn’t think the man will give him an answer.  

Instead, the blond man with glasses sitting on his nose simply nods.

Shouta stands and walks to the spot where Yamada had been standing not too long ago. He puts his hand on the tube, unsure where else to place it. He hesitates.

He hears Yamada take a small breath of air, like he always does when he’s about to speak, but this time Shouta cuts him off.

“I don’t know what I’ll do when I go back.” He says, and he doesn’t know – doesn’t understand – why he’s speaking all of a sudden, like he had lost all control of his lips, his mouth. As if the voice speaking now was so very distant from his own, he could not recognize it. “I don’t know what I’ll look forward to.”

Shouta’s heart races, and he hates it, because this is the silliest thing in the world, and it should not matter, but it does anyway.

“I didn’t think that dreams… should become true.” He finally says, just barely above a whisper. The wind has calmed now, as if hushing itself to hear him speak. He looks at Yamada for answers, searching those eyes either for answers or for judgment, scared of what he’ll find.

But again, Yamada simply smiles, as if all the worries in the world had been put aside, or ceased to exist, even for only a moment. “You’ll get new dreams after, that’s how it is. That’s how it always is.”

The dark-haired man turns again to his left, where he sees Katsuki and Izuku watching the stars. And then he looks up, where he sees nothing but small bulbs of blurs. It’s a funny thing to go so long without seeing something or someone so mesmerizing, that it becomes unreal, and then be able to see it again, truly.

Shouta lowers his head slightly, just enough to align his eye with the eyepiece, and sees the stars in all their glory. He watches them intently and unblinkingly as they fall in the distance, quickly and graciously.

His eyes quickly become blurry again, but for once his terrible eyesight is not to blame. A slight thread of water forms right under his pupil, until it finally falls and rolls down his cheek.

Chapter Text

The trees outside have shed the last of their leaves, and now only a few remain on branches, barely hanging on, waiting for a gentle breeze to carry them to the floor.

Shouta’s report is due tomorrow. He’d forgotten about it for a while if he’s being honest, and he’s not sure if he’s really learned anything new worth including in his report. The information he has now feels strangely personal, so perhaps that’s why he doesn’t want to include it. He wants to keep it all to himself.

Yet, he has a job to do, and getting emotional has no place in it. His pen remains unmoving in his hand, the tip pressed against the sheet of paper right underneath it. Ink starts to spread, forming a perfect dot that keeps eating away the pure white of the paper.

This entire mission reminds Shouta why he dislikes longer assignments. Normally, he would simply refuse them and let someone else take care of them, but he hadn’t had a choice this time. Places like these don’t take a lot of time before getting quite depressing, and it’s easy to forget they’re mostly filled with traumatized children.

He remembers what the secretary lady back in the city had told him, the one on the Upper Management Council floor.

“It will last a month exactly.”

“A  month ?”

“A month.” She repeats, and then, smiling, “View this as an opportunity to… explore  life .”

A month here had been nothing more than a promise for miserable moments. Like now, when Shouta can’t get himself to do anything at all, even less try to do something as vague as exploring life.

Shouta takes out the eye drops he keeps in his pocket and throws his head back, holding his eye open with his index finger one at a time, and blinks when the drop of water makes contact with his iris.

He stays like this and looks out the window where the faint lights of stars are beginning to appear, slowly. He recalls a few nights before when Yamada had let him look in the telescope. If he tries hard enough, he can imagine plastered in the sky, exactly as they had been back then.

In all the night’s beauty, he’d still been worried. This time, for the silliest thing of them all, and he’d told Yamada about it because it simply felt right. He’d expected laughter or judgment, but Yamada had done neither, and instead had confidently assured him that he had nothing to fear.

“You’ll get new dreams after, that’s how it is. That’s how it always is.” He’d said.

Had he been honest? Had he been right? Shouta doesn’t know. Frankly, he doesn’t know much about anything, really. Or at least, it doesn’t feel like it does. The past two weeks have only served to prove him right.

There’s music playing outside his room, calm and quiet. Much too quiet from the one the children like to blast outside right around dinner. Except, dinner isn’t supposed to begin until another hour at the very least, and this melody sounds nothing like what he’s heard so far.

Shouta gets up from his chair. He knows he won’t get anything done now, there’s no use staying there sulking.

His door opens with a creek. He’d gotten used to the sound, but now he wishes it would be silent for once. Standing outside his room, it becomes clear that the music doesn’t come from downstairs. No, it’s closer. Two doors down from his, on the opposite wall, exactly.

Careful to make as little noise as possible, Shouta walks up to the door. He’s not sure whose it is, he hasn’t taken the time to visit any of them, and now that he thinks about it, he realizes he might’ve neglected to do so, which is quite terrible. What if their rooms aren’t like the one he’d been given? Why do Izuku and Katsuki share one?

Right now, though, in this very moment, it doesn’t matter. There are things to do, so many of them, but he must do them one at a time. Right now, there’s a door with music playing behind it. It’s probably nothing important, but it’s better than sitting at his desk and watching ink stain another one of his sheets of paper.

He draws his ear closer to the door, the floorboards underneath him cracking – a mistake, it seems. The music stops abruptly.

“Who’s there?” Kyouka’s voice comes out muffled behind the door.

“It’s Aizawa,” Shouta answers. He doesn’t know what to say next. He doesn’t have an excuse to tell her. “I heard music,” he adds, but it comes out more like a question.

“I’ll turn it down,” she tells him, and he hears a bit of shuffling.

Even after being here for nearly two weeks, Shouta still hasn’t learned much about the children. He’s seen them play together a few times, and he knows that Yaoyorozu likes to read, or that Hitoshi likes cats, especially Maple. He knows Katsuki and Izuku are inseparable, and that Ochako loves eating and sharing mochis.

It doesn’t feel like it’s enough, though. He doesn’t know what the commission is looking to learn, because it’s obvious that this place doesn’t treat the children badly. If anything, it keeps them safe from the town’s people’s prejudices.

“No, that’s not…” Shouta is terrible at this, and he hasn’t got a clue why he’s been chosen to do this except for the fact he has no family and stays rational when writing his report. He brushes all of his thoughts away because he can’t think when it starts spiraling like his. He breathes in, and out. “Do you mind if I come in?”

Kyouka doesn’t answer. Shouta hadn’t expected her to, either. His head feels strangely empty now, and he’s not sure if he prefers it to a storming of unpleasant thoughts.

“I won’t if you don’t want me to,” he adds.

Silence again, and then a small voice.

“I don’t care. Do what you want.” There’s no heat in her words, but Shouta still hesitates if he should enter or not. It hadn’t been a clear no, but she hadn’t told him yes, either. He’s not sure what to do now, but he can’t just stay like this forever. His hand hovers over the doorknob a bit longer before wrapping itself around the metal, and ultimately opening the door.

The girl is there, sitting on a stool with her back facing him. Her hair is a darker shade of purple than Hitoshi’s, but right about the same length. Unlike his, her hair is finely brushed, making the light from the lamp sitting on her nightstand dance on every strand of hair with each movement she makes, no matter how small.

In her arms, she holds a purple guitar, the end of it plugged to a long cord, connecting it to an ampere sitting by her feet.

“You were the one playing?” he asks her, his voice made small with disbelief. Kyouka glances back at him, tilting her head slightly to the side.

“It’s bad, I know.” She says.

“No, that’s not what I meant,” Shouta closes the door behind him. “I think it’s really good,”

“You don’t have to pretend to like it, I know you don’t mean it.” She replies, playing with the controls of her amp.

Well. She is incredibly stubborn. She somehow reminds him of himself, sometimes. But she’s incredibly young, much too small still to feel or think those things about herself, and so he can’t leave this room until he’s helped her if only a little.

“And who told you that?” he says. If he keeps trying to convince her he’s being genuine only by telling her she’s good, she won’t believe him, and it’ll all ultimately be for nothing. He needs to try something different.

“No one,” she answers, moving her fingers on the neck of the guitar but without pulling any of the strings. Shouta almost misses it, but he sees her move slightly towards him, just enough so that now he can see the side of her face, even though part of her back is still facing him.

Shouta pulls the chair tucked under the desk right by the door and sits down. “You’ve got a nice guitar,” he says.

The corners of her lips turn up, “Rumi bought it for me,” she whispers, bringing her hand to hold the base, as if taking the time to look at it. And then, she turns to him. “They didn’t let me bring my old one, so she gave me this one.”

“They?” Shouta says, trying to sound casual. A knot begins to form in his stomach, and he already has an idea of who she might mean.

“Hizashi said it’s the Commission or something, but Rumi says he only calls them that to be polite,”

Shouta snorts, his eyelids drooping slightly. “What does she call them?” He slumps back in the chair, his back slowly welcoming the shape of furniture much too small for him.

“Assholes,”

Shouta coughs, bringing his elbow to his mouth. He hadn’t been expecting that from Kyouka, but it makes sense that Usagiyama would tell her something like that. This woman has no filter, but she is in desperate need of one.

“Rumi says you work for them, too,” she adds after he collected himself, as if his reaction had not bothered her at all. “You’re not like them, though. I think,”

“I sure hope not,” he adds, keeping his face straight and his tone serious. Kyouka looks at him and laughs.

Sometimes, it’s easy to forget these are children. Shouta knows this so well; he doesn’t know how he still needs to remind himself of it. They’ve all experienced terrible things, and he will never come close to understanding even half of everything there is to know. They’ve been forced to grow up, and now they play the part so well that they’ve managed to trick everyone into thinking they’ve got more figured out than they actually do. In a way, they’re just like Shouta.

“How about this,” he leans forward, putting his forearm to rest on his thighs and clasping his hands together. He lowers his voice, as if he were about to tell her a secret. “You play something for me, and then I’ll leave. I’ll be gone in two weeks anyways, and then you’ll never have to see me again,”

Kyouka stares down at the guitar in her arms, tracing its shiny purple edge. “But I’m not very good at it,” she replies.

“You don’t have to be good. Even I’m not very good at what I do,” he tells her honestly. “But as long as you like it, it’s the best thing you could be doing.” The words feel strange on his tongue, but he knows the girl needs to hear them.

“Sure,” she mumbles after a small while. “I don’t care,” she repeats, but now it sounds like she’s trying to convince herself more than anything else.

She leaves her fingers hovering over the strings, her thumb pressed against the thicker one. Her other hand clutches the neck of the guitar. Her chest fills with hair, and then she lets it out through her mouth. Her left hand moves, and she begins to play.

The melody is gentle, with each note being played thoughtfully. She misses a few of them, judging by the way Kyouka’s face scrunches up now and then, but Shouta barely notices it. He’s never been one to take the time for music, always opting to listen to the radio, and only ever being exposed to the terrible music playing on the bus he took to get to his apartment.

This one somehow feels… honest, sincere. Like she’d poured all of her heart’s content into it, and she probably had. Through it all, she doesn’t stop once, doesn’t glance up at him. She plays without her door to protect her from all intrusive eyes and ears that might get curious, protecting her by muffling her melody.

Her music was never meant to be contained behind closed doors.

Eventually, the song ends. She could have begun playing it again a second and third time, and Shouta wouldn’t have minded.

“Mr. Aizawa?” she asked, keeping her head bowed down.

“Yes?”

Slowly, she raises her head until their gazes meet. “Was it terrible?”

Shouta smiles softly.

“It was the best thing I’ve ever heard,” and he means it. Kyouka mimics the smile on his face, her eyes blink and soften, and her shoulders relax slightly. Her grip on the guitar melts, and she carefully leaves it to stand on the side of her bed.

Shouta gets up to leave, because that’s what he had told her he would do right after hearing her play. He’s not sure if he’s really done or changed anything at all, maybe he simply wasted both their time. He doesn’t know.

He places the chair back under the desk, exactly how he’d found it when he first came in. He reaches for the doorknob and opens the door.

“Mr. Aizawa?” Kyouka asks, again, but her voice is a bit louder this time.

“Yes?”

She frowns a bit, parting her lips, and then closing them again. “Do you like what you do? Do you like doing it?”

A beat; A fraction of a second: but he’s still not fast enough. “Of course,” he tells her, but neither of them believes his words. By the time he exits the room, it’s as if he’d never been there to begin with.

It’s late again by the time everyone is finished with their plates. Shouta is helping Yamada and Usagiyama clear the table, bringing two or three plates at a time to the sink, and the children doing their part as well. He rinses every single plate and glass, one by one, passing them to Yamada who dries them with a white towel.

Usagiyama eventually leads the children out to their rooms, leaving the two men alone. They’ve been here before, exactly like this, doing this very task. At first, it had been awkward, but now Shouta is grateful for the silence after an entire day exposed to loud voices and high-pitched laughs.

“I heard you and Kyouka talk earlier,” Yamada says, shaking Shouta out of his thoughts. For a moment, it seems that this is all the blond will say. Had Shouta done something he shouldn’t have? He replays their interaction in his head when Yamada speaks again. “Thank you,”

“What for?” he asks; or more, he blurts out, because the moment the words are out of his mouth he thinks maybe he’s been a little too harsh and should’ve gone with a simple you’re welcome instead.

“She doesn’t open up a lot to me, or Rumi, even.” He says, wiping the same spot on a plate that’s obviously already clean, either because he doesn’t realize it, or because Shouta has stopped washing the dishes a minute ago. Maybe both. Shouta picks up another plate on the counter and waits for Yamada to continue. “It worried me for a while, so I was glad when I heard you two speak.”

“I thought she got along well with the others,” Shouta answers, an uncertain statement that comes out more like a question.

The thing is, there are twelve children in this place, all of them with complex and delicate histories. Shouta still hasn’t got a clue what he’s doing here, because surely he doesn’t have the skills to deal with all of this. But for some reason, he’s here anyways, and things aren’t all ruined. Not yet at least.

Yamada hums. “She does, but I also think she’d spend all her time alone in her room if I’d let her.”

“It’s that guitar of hers,” Shouta replies, the crinkles around his eyes soften for a moment, and the corner of his lips turn up for an instant. “She loves it. Said Usagiyama gave it to her,”

The more Shouta learns about each of the tiny children running around in this place, the less he feels he knows about them. Perhaps, he’s only now understanding there would have never been enough paper to write everything there is to know about them in the Commission’s files, and too many things would have been missing.

“Yeah,” Yamada agrees, taking the last dish in his hands. “She’d been devastated when she arrived here, after… Well, I’m sure you know what I mean,”

Shouta isn’t, actually. After having the talk with Usagiyama about Katsuki and Izuku, he’s not sure the information in the files he’s read is even close to the truth. If the commission worker, or the police, whoever had found her, had taken the time to ask Kyouka. If they had believed her.

“She used her meta ability and made a building collapse, and the incident…” he swallows, telling Yamada what he knows and waiting to be corrected, hoping that this never happened at all, and it was all just some bad joke. “It killed her parents,”

“She hadn’t meant to,” Yamada replies instantly, putting the plates in many piles of four, and then of eight. “It’s… She panicked,”

“Panicked?” Shouta questions, urging the other man to tell him more.

“Yes,” he says, putting one pile of plates on the shelves higher up on the wall. “She was lost in the building, and she didn’t know what else to do, and—”

“And then what?” Shouta asks, trying to make his tone a bit louder to match Yamada’s, but then he looks into those wide, emerald irises, and thinks perhaps he’s misjudged the turn this conversation had taken. Yamada was no longer the calm and collected person Shouta had faced the past two weeks.

A break, he thinks. Except, for all the scenarios he’d imagined of before now, he hadn’t thought he would find a panicked being underneath everything else.

“She did what she knew,” Yamada answers, his gaze distant looking out the window set in front of the sink. His breathing hastens, and his voice keeps getting louder. “She plugged her earphones into the ground when there was too much noise around. Her heartbeat—it’s connected to her quirk, and so it—the building was old and—”

He stops when Shouta places a hand on his forearm, not too tight but firmly enough for the grip to be grounding. “I know,” he doesn’t, but his tone is convincing enough that for a moment, even he starts to doubt if maybe he does know. Perhaps it’s not that he knows, but that he understands. “It wasn’t her fault,”

Only then does Yamada look at him. His hand had curled around the edge of the counter without Shouta noticing, and the faintest lights that are left in the kitchen glimmer in his eyes, making them look watery, but it might’ve simply been a trick of the light.

“For Goodness’ sake,” Yamada whispers, covering his eyes with his hands, and Shouta lets his hold slip. The blond runs both his hand down his face, his elbows propped on the counter. “they’re children, they didn’t ask for any of this,” he keeps his eyes shut tight.

“I know,” he says again, in a breath meant to fill the air.

“Well, I feel like you’re the only one,” he trails off with a dry laugh, “the Commission only seems to know how to forget it,”

His stay here had made it obvious to Shouta that the people of this place have a grudge against the Commission. He doesn’t mind it; he’s used to it. Most people with those orphanages are scared of receiving a nice letter with their address carefully written at the front, and a seal at the back, only to open it and find it’s being closed.

Those people usually don’t have to worry about this, but they do anyways. Those who don’t fear are usually the ones to receive a deceiving letter.

But this doesn’t feel the same. There’s something else they’re scared might happen, but Shouta can’t think of anything that would be worse than this place closing up. He doesn’t ask Yamada about it, though, because right now definitely isn’t the time.

“Should we go take some air?” he offers instead, because it’s the least he could do for someone in this state, which Shouta doesn’t fully comprehend, but he thinks if he were in this position, the cold breeze outside might bring him some comfort.

“That would be nice,”

They walk out of the kitchen, and then down the corridor, their footsteps quiet. Shouta opens the door and lets Yamada walk out first, before following the man and closing the door behind him.

Both of them simply stand there, side by side, looking out to where a field of flowers had been blooming vividly not so long ago.

“Now that I think about it, how did you hear Kyouka and I talk?” he’d said this in an attempt to relieve any remnants of tension between the two of them, if there had been any to begin with, but instead of finding Yamada stumbling for an excuse, like Shouta had thought he would, the man blinks.

“Oh right, I almost forgot,” he says, shifting in his spot and reaching for something in his pocket. He pulls out an envelope, and Shouta recognizes them instantly as the ones of the Commissions.

The only problem is that Shouta hadn't been expecting anything, at least not until a few days after he sends out his report.

“I found this in the mailbox today. I had meant to give it to you, but I didn’t want to interrupt…” Yamada clears his throat and hands it to him. Shouta takes it with a frown, which only deepens when he turns it around and sees exactly who wrote it.

Chapter Text

Nemuri Kayama is a strong-headed woman who likes to be in charge, and when she’s got a job to do, she gets it done damn well.

She’s not oblivious to the many opinions people have of her, but she figured she couldn’t make sense of herself if she tried to fit into a nice little box.

After high school, she hadn’t been sure of what she wanted to do with her life. As a child, she’d imagined becoming a hero – everyone did, really – but it had seemed too silly once she’d reached adulthood.

But even then, she’d known that not all heroes end up with their faces plastered on billboards; she’d known that, sometimes, they were simple people who simply did things that mattered. So, from there she had the idea to work for the Hero Public Safety Commission.

She’d kept working hard, after that. Too hard, perhaps.

A few years into the job, she’d seen no reason to quit. Nothing seemed to matter more than ‘children abandoned due to their meta abilities', and she hadn’t had the heart to be another person who would abandon them.

It was pure luck that lead her to meet her wife, the most charming woman on earth. Spilled coffee at an hour much too early for Kayama, the brushing of hands. An exchange of numbers.

She’d learned to appreciate the little things more after that. When she got moved up to a higher position, she started being assigned more office work, but also a great deal fewer visits to orphanages. Nemuri and her wife had then decided to have their first child, and it wasn’t until very recently that they’d had their second.

Life had been quite easy, so far. Too much, she thinks.

So of course, when she’d heard her friend Aizawa would be sent away on a mission for an entire month, she thought it was odd. Visits never last that long; a day, or maybe two. Three on rare occasions, if you were unlucky enough.

When she started looking into it, trying to find every bit of information she could find to satisfy her curiosity – even the tiniest crumb would’ve been enough – she found nothing.

Now, Nemuri finds herself sitting at her dark walnut wooden desk, lit up by one of those green lamps that would feel so much nicer if the light was warmer than this bright shade of white. She’s facing a few rows of much smaller desks, all topped with computers and occupied by sleepless workers.

She’s not the only one in this higher position: there are probably well over fifty people like her, and the moment she dies, they’ll find someone new to replace her within the same minute. But still, she would have liked to have had a say in this setup, because now she feels like a teacher, and that’s her wife’s job, not hers.

There’s a pile of paper on the corner of her desk, smaller sections of sheets placed in different positions to tell which go together, and which don’t. Nemuri hasn’t got another five minutes to spend looking through Aizawa’s file to see what the hell he’s been sent to do. She doesn’t have the time to right now, but she decides she’ll look more into it when the clock doesn’t tick so loudly anymore.

She flips her phone upright, checking to see if she has any new messages. She doesn’t, but she pulls her lock screen up to check anyway. Just in case. Still, no notification pops up in front of the picture of her wife and her two little ones she’d set as her wallpaper.

Kayama picks up the device and opens the messaging app. She sends a quick text, telling her wife I’ll be home late, don’t wait up for me. She rarely stays longer than she needs to, but she’s learned to trust her feelings, which often happened to be right.

A minute later, her phone buzzes quietly and her screen lights up, a gray square framing the response from her wife, replying with Alright, don’t get home too late, with multiple hearts following. She smiles. Putting her phone upside down, she resumes looking over the pile of reports she’d been putting off.

When the clock strikes six, a few chairs scrape the floor harshly, and others more gently. The same noises can be heard overhead, though they are muffled by wooden boards – or some other material, she isn’t quite certain what the ceilings are made of – stacked on top of each other. Kayama watches from the corner of her eyes as more than half the workers under her supervision gather their coats and whatever it is they might’ve brought along with them today.

Some keep on typing or writing as if they couldn’t see or hear the ruckus that comes with the end of each day. On a typical day, Aizawa would be one of those people. But he wouldn’t leave after five or ten minutes, when the room has almost always been completely emptied out. He would wait, and keep typing, typing, typing.

His desk sits there, though. Vacant, undisturbed. Well, the man beside him had made use of Aizawa’s chair by putting his belongings there instead of the floor, so clearly not fully undisturbed.

About a dozen people remain when the half-hour arrives, all looking equally tired. Kayama decides the place must be tranquil enough to do her research now. She pushes her chair back and looks over her desk. She’s tempted to organize the never-ending piles of files and paper, or the unmatching pens laying on the surface, but she decides against it.

The tips of her pointed heels echo against the tiled floors of the halls. There are no windows in the vast room she works in each day, but she kinds of wishes there were. It would be a nice change from the warm glow she sees all day, every day, for the last – almost two – decade.

There’s a door hidden in the middle of the place. In plain sight. No one ever bothers to go inside since it only serves as a storage room for old cases. Kayama isn’t sure who’s in charge of placing each file in the right place. She thinks it might be automatic, somehow. She’s only come here a handful of times before, and she never managed to catch a glance of anyone else being there at the same time as her.

Tilting her head to the left, and then to the right, making sure that no one else is there, she wraps her hand around the cool metal handle. Technically, she’s not doing anything illegal. She simply isn’t certain that if the Upper Management Council were to find out she was searching for some classified files, they might not be happy with her.

But there’s no one here to watch her, no one foolish enough to question her, and so she enters.

It’s dark for a moment, and then slowly, a row of bright, greenish lights, light up with a loud click, and then another, and another.

She had known the lights would do this, but her heart jumps anyway. She waits for a second more before heading to the A section.

There are a thousand different ways this place could have decided to sort the documents, and yet they’d gone with the worker’s names. Kayama had complained about it once, said there would be more efficient ways. She had probably been right, but right now she could only be grateful.

Each worker has a different way of spelling their own name, especially with Kanjis. It makes it easier to sort everything with only the phonetic syllabaries, and lucky for her, Aizawa’s wasn’t too far off in the room.

Soon enough, she finds herself pointing to names beginning in Ai, her gaze scrutinizing each label that’s been carefully printed. She finds it, eventually. There are multiple drawer units, all stacked on top of each other and indicating a different range of years. She pulls the most recent one open and beings her search.

It doesn’t take long for her to realize his latest assignment is from last month, and clearly not the one he’s still working on right now. She puts the file back in the drawer and closes it shut. The sound echoes in the empty space.

Someone makes a noise, like trying to clear their throat of something that had gotten stuck in it. Kayama snaps her head to the side and sees a short woman standing there, her closed fist held to her mouth.

“Are you looking for something?” the lady asks, her voice tight and small, even though it’s clear she’s trying to be loud.

She has her hair held up in a small bun, so tight there must be at least a dozen bobby pins poking her head just to keep it tight. Kayama opens her mouth to dismiss her, but then something catches her attention.

There, on the woman’s dark blazer, a card. No one wears a card here, no one except the employees who work in higher positions. Higher than even Kayama herself. She blinks and pulls her lips into a soft smile.

“Yes, actually,” Kayama walks over to the other woman, taking off her glasses as she does. She untucks a small portion of her blouse, pulling on it slightly and then using the fabric to clean her lenses. She knows what she’s doing, and she doesn’t miss the small blush that creeps on the lady’s cheeks, but she’s also fully aware her wife is going to brutally murder her if she learns about this. “Not sure if a pretty thing like you could help me, though,” she adds with a wink.

“W-well, I can always try,” the woman responds, glancing at Kayama’s chest.

There had been a time when Kayama had been uncomfortable in her own skin, but as she got older, she learned to embrace it. Back then, she couldn’t understand the people who didn’t care about other people’s opinions. Yet somehow, somewhere along the way, she’d become one of those people herself.

And she used that fully to her advantage. For example, right now.

“I’m looking for a file,” Kayama explains, making herself stand taller. “Was supposed to find it on my desk today, but I think it might’ve slipped someone’s mind. I thought I might find it here, but it seems I have no luck.” The lie slips past her lips so easily, she almost believes it herself.

The blonde can’t be much older than twenty-something, so it’s hard to imagine what she might be doing in a higher position, or how she even got there in the first place, but Kayama doesn’t question it too much. The file now, questions later.

“Oh! No wonder you didn’t find anything, they only store completed assignments in here,” the woman chimes. “I was actually here to lock everything up for the day, but I guess I can take a small detour.”

Giving a quick look at the watch on her wrist and then back up, the lady smiles. Kayama mimics her expression back at her. The bright lights of the archive room had made her forget about the time, and how late it might be by now.

They both exit the room, the smaller woman pulling out a set of unmatching keys and locking the door behind them. They have to take the elevator up to a different, much higher floor, and then keep walking for a short while.

At one point, the woman starts babbling on about the place, and how great everything is. Kayama listens half-mindedly and hums every once in a while in agreement with whatever the younger lady is saying. She’s much more intrigued by those halls she’s never seen before.

It makes her wonder about everything else that might be going on in this building. Every floor kind of has its own bubble, and the only time they might ever merge is in the elevator; in the morning or in the evening, when arriving to work or going back home.

They reach a door painted in black, the sound of keys dangling and knocking against each other filling the space. “I usually keep them here. The ongoing assignments, I mean. Well, the person before me did, and I just kept it that way.” She stutters.

“Makes sense,” Kayama replies, looking around. It looks a lot like the place downstairs. By that, she means not at all – but the furniture is similar, and the small lamps set on glistening tables are just as annoyingly bright.

“It might go faster if you tell me what you’re looking for,” The woman points out. Kayama had already walked past her, but she turns her head just slightly enough to look at the blonde.

There are still questions and doubts stuck in her head about whether she’s got the right to continue her search for something that had been deliberately kept from her. Deep down, she knows the answer, but she’s not one to give up easily.

She skims over the shorter woman’s expression, the answer on the tip of her tongue. She hesitates a moment, because if she’s right and the commission doesn’t want her to know about this, then surely she should be doing this by herself in the most discreet way possible.

But there’s a way to make it go faster right in front of her, a woman so eager to help. And she really wants to get home soon.

“A case for Aizawa Shouta.” The name slips past her lips easily. She hadn’t said it in a while now, which feels weird because she would usually bother him daily.

“That sounds familiar…” The woman mutters quietly, almost to herself. “But then again, everything does.”

She starts walking toward a specific section, and Kayama can only follow behind. It’s not as well-organized as the archive room a few floors down. There has to be a sorting system of some kind, but it’s hard to guess how it works with the hundreds of sheets stacked upon the dozens of metal drawers, and the few randomly placed lamps to light the cramped space.

Kayama manages to catch a glance of an A, so she figures they’re getting somewhere. The woman crouches down and opens a drawer, her fingers skimming over each file individually. A crease deepens between her brows where she must frown often.

“I don’t...” Her hands freeze in place and her eyes widen a fraction. She looks up and turns her head towards Kayama. “Aizawa, you said?”

“Yea,” It comes out more like a question than an actual statement.

The lady’s eyes flicker to a farther corner of the room, then back to Kayama, and her face breaks into an awkward smile. “I’m afraid what you’re looking for is confidential,”

Fuck, Kayama thinks. I’m fucked.

“Really?” her voice comes out abnormally high-pitched, but she quickly gathers herself. “That’s strange, they don’t usually keep anything from me,”

“This is different,” the woman quickly adds to defend herself. “Normally they wouldn’t give them to... Well, it doesn’t matter.” She sighs and gets to her feet.

“No way you can help me, then?” Kayama questions.

The lady stares at her a moment before shaking her head. The taller woman makes her way to the blonde and stops right in front of her. “Thank you for your time,” she says, her icy blue eyes boring into the other’s eyes.

Kayama places her right hand on her shoulder while the left prudently reaches into the lady’s dark blazer pocket. She slowly lowers her head until her lips align with the shorter woman’s ear, and whispers, “You’re a bit too young for me,”

She closes her fist around the set of keys, muffling their clanking noise. When she pulls back with a smile on her lips, the other stares back at her, speechless and as red as a ripe strawberry.

The woman with the bun doesn’t even bother speaking a word or two and walks right past Kayama, the door slamming shut behind her. And, most importantly, she forgets to think of her duty to lock the doors, or whatever it is she really does.

There are a thousand ways people might describe Kayama, but an idiot isn’t one of them. She grins to herself, her eyes glancing to the obscure corner of the room where the woman had made the mistake of looking.

At least, the past hour hadn’t been entirely useless. It confirmed her doubts that the Higher Management Council was indeed hiding something from her. Perhaps even a great deal more people than just her.

There’s only a single drawer unit placed in the corner of the room, but although it looks exactly like all the others, it seems incredibly out of place. Perhaps it’s because it looks so deserted and lonely with no paperwork sitting on top of it, right next to a vacant wall.

She lifts up the cluster of keys, and her shoulders sag. “I guess there’s only one way to do this,” One by one, she tries each key, trying to make them fit into the lock on the top corner of the first drawer. Obviously, this one has to be it – there is no other drawer with a lock on it.

After a bit, a minute or maybe five, a cooper key fits right into it; its tip meeting the far end of the lock. She twists it, and then hears a heavy click. Kayama pulls on the drawer, but it doesn’t budge.

Instead, she hears a series of dull clanking and turning of gearwheels. She stands up and takes a step back, startled by the sudden clamor. The wall slightly to the right of the unlocked drawer unit begins to fold into itself, as if opening a door – or building one out of nothing.

She hears the clicking of heels outside the room. Did the blonde woman already notice her keys were missing? Kayama knows that she shouldn’t be here, that she shouldn’t have found any of this. But she can’t undo or unlearn what she’s already found, so she doesn’t give up. She never does, anyway.

Her eyes dart around the room for a place to hide, but each spot would have her found out immediately. She can’t afford to get fired over this. Quickly, she drops the keys to the floor, sending them closer to the door. She scurries into the new opening, hoping the door can be closed – and reopened – from the inside.

Kayama grabs onto the folded doors – wall? – and pushes them close forcefully. They’re heavy, but nothing she can’t handle. She gives them a final push with the weight of her body, pressing her shoulder and palms against them. Darkness engulfs her, and she holds her breath.

A door opens in the distance, the creasing sound it makes faint from where she stands. Her heart beats so loudly in her ears that she can barely hear herself think. She recognizes the sound of the keys being picked up, and then the clicking of heels again, before finally, a door closing shut.

Kayama lets her head fall on the wall-door thing, a sigh slipping past her lips. What the hell is wrong with her, putting her entire career at risk for something as silly as her overwhelming curiosity?

She brings her arm up to the side, tapping the wall for something other than just a wall when her hand comes in contact with cold plastic. A light switch. She turns it up and blinks, giving the time for her eyes to readjust to the brightness.

The room is kind of like a closet. Well, a big one to be fair. There are three lights hanging from the ceiling, warmer than the place she just came from. Each wall is lined with bluish shelves made of metal, but there’s something that feels off. Different.

Clipboards hang from the shelves, each one holding records of people. When she gets close enough to actually see what’s on them, she realizes it’s not just people, but employees. She looks around, and surely enough, her eyes land on Aizawa’s bored expression.

She doesn’t read what’s on it. If she did, it would feel like she was invading his privacy. And she knows how much he hates that. She scoffs; as if she wasn't already doing that. She lifts the clipboard up and looks behind it where she finds a box labeled Orphanage Yawarageru.

Kayama looks behind her, making sure no one is standing there. Maybe she should forget about this, after all. Get home. Maybe even have enough time to fall asleep while watching a movie with her wife.

But she’s already made it this far…

Taking a deep breath, she picks up the box and puts it down by her feet. Her fingers grip the edge of the flimsy lid and lift it up.

There’s a red folder on top, and right under it, more files line the inside of the box like books on a bookshelf. On the front of the top file, CLASSIFIED has been stamped with darker ink. She takes it in her hands gently and flips the cover open.

Children. Of course it would be children. Kayama shouldn’t be surprised. This is her job, after all. But as she begins to scan the content of the files, she starts to think maybe there’s something more to it. It’s short, but the information feels so wrong. She stops reading halfway through.

She sets the red folder aside and looks over the thicker ones. There are thirteen of them, all filled with mismatched papers. She won’t have time to look over all of them – there’s a reason this is confidential, but if she gets found out…

Well, Kayama doesn’t know what will happen then, but she doesn’t think the Higher Management Council will simply let her go with that information.

“Aizawa, what the hell did you get yourself into?” She whispers to herself.

She puts the lid back on the box and puts it back in place, behind Aizawa’s clipboard. Picking up the red file on the floor – the one containing the important stuff, or at least that’s what she thinks it is – she puts it inside her blazer, holding it in place with her forearm so it doesn’t fall off.

It’s not until long after the sun has set that Kayama finally arrives home. She’s still in her car, wondering what she’s going to do tomorrow. She rests her forehead on the steering wheel, both of her hands grabbing at it as well.

A heavy sigh breaks past her lips, and slowly she cracks one eye open to look at the crimson folder resting on the passenger seat. The commission will notice it’s missing sooner or later, surely. And then what?

Kayama enters her house, being careful to make herself quiet in case the children and her wife are already fast asleep. She holds the back of one shoe with her foot, pulling it off, and then does the same thing with the next, leaving her shoes one in front of another as if they were elevated footprints on the carpet.

She walks over to their couch and leaves her bag to rest against its side. She sets the folder down on the coffee table and then presses the heels of her palms against her closed eyelids.

“Why the fuck did I do that?”

She feels her wife plant a soft kiss on the top of her hair, her hands coming to rest on both sides of her head. “Do what?”

Nemuri shakes her head, putting her hand over her lover’s cold one. “Nothing. Just had a long day,”

“I’ll make you some tea, and then you can tell me all about it,” She offers, and Nemuri nods, letting her hand slip to cover the yawn escaping her.

The kettle starts to boil behind her where the kitchen is. She lets herself slump into the softness of the cushions and closes her eyes. Just for a moment, she tells herself. One small moment.

And this is all it takes for sleep to swallow her whole.

Fuyumi comes back and finds her wife sleeping soundly on her side. She could wake her up and urge her to go sleep in their bed, but she looks so peaceful, and she doesn’t dare disturb her.

Setting the cup of tea down on the glass coffee table, she fetches the soft cover draped on the armchair’s back and lays it down carefully on top of Nemuri.

The red folder beside the tea catches her attention. Sometimes, Nemuri will do this – bring a file or two home and speak of the children she’s heard of, their life, and how they were if she’s met them.

She takes it over to the counter while she makes herself a glass of water. She opens it and takes a sip, simply looking at the pictures and imagining what they might be like. Often, she’ll find some that remind her of the children she teaches at school. But these ones, they all look… terribly unhappy.

She turns the pages, her frown deepening until—

Her entire world stops.

Mismatched eyes stare back at her, both shadowed by dual-colored hair, and a scarlet stain painting half his face. 

“Shouto,”

Chapter Text

When Kayama wakes up, the sky is still a dark shade of gray. The moon is probably full, but it hides behind the clouds as it always does. There will be rain again today, certainly.

The first thing she notices is the lack of space – she cannot sprawl her arms and legs to stretch as she usually would. Then, she feels the cover draped over her, knitted instead of smooth. Her eyelids feel heavy, half of one is pressed against the cushion and thus impossible to open.

And then she remembers the events of the day before – the odd room with the folding wall, and the too-bright lights. Aizawa’s bored face on the clipboard. The crimson folder.

She sits up abruptly, the blanket slipping from her shoulders. Her eyes are wide open now, scrutinizing intently the glass table for the document she’d brought home with her.

The one she stole, she thinks, but she crushes the thought.

Except it’s not there. Kayama begins to think she must have dreamt it all – it would make sense. Secret rooms appearing out of nowhere? A woman in her twenties with a higher-up card? She runs a hand down her face. Sometimes, it happens; she’ll wake up and struggle to remember what is real and what isn’t.

The sound of papers ruffling echoes in the emptiness of the room. She looks behind her and sees Fuyumi there, sitting at the counter. She looks frozen in place, like a statue. Her eyes are glued on the table or something on top, but Kayama can’t make out what it is. She tries to stand up straighter, and then she sees it.

It’s only a blur, her glasses are nowhere to be found, but she’s memorized the general shape and size of files, and this one happens to be a scarlet red.

“Did you know?” Fuyumi speaks so softly, Kayama wonders if she’s only imagined it.

“What?” The dark-haired woman finds her glasses on the arm of the couch and puts them on, ignoring the smudge at the bottom of the right lens. She frowns slightly, the corner of her lips tugging upwards awkwardly.

“Did you know?” Her wife repeats more firmly this time. She finally turns her head, and their eyes meet.

“Fuyumi,” Kayama stands up and rounds the couch, not breaking her gaze. “What are you—”

The other woman, her lover, stands up brusquely. Her chair topples over behind her, but she doesn’t even flinch. She grips the edge of the counter hard and stares at Kayama with wide eyes, making her stop in her tracks. Fuyumi, who never raises her voice, and who always manages to stay calm, looks utterly distraught.

“Shouto,” she says, the name cutting through the thick air like a knife. “He’s not dead, he’s—he’s here,” – she points to the file – “but I don’t know if—” the anger in her voice begins to fade into something lighter, sadder. The spot her hand had been gripping begins to freeze, but Fuyumi doesn’t seem to notice. “I don’t know if he’s alright, I—”

She gasps, as if she’d only just remembered to breathe, and clamps both her hands over her mouth and nose. Fuyumi had burst into tears so quickly, her chest hiccupping as she heaves muffled sounds; Kayama had only been able to stand there, too shocked to do anything else.

“Oh God,” Kayama breathes out, making her way gently to her wife. “Oh God, Fuyumi.” She wraps her arms around her lover, enveloping her in an embrace, and soon enough, the smaller woman does the same, holding onto her tightly.

They stay like this for a few minutes, but Kayama doesn’t mind. She soothes Fuyumi the best she can, passing her fingers through the other’s hair.

Breakdowns like these have happened before. Fuyumi had always been convinced her brother was still alive somewhere. Most would only send looks of pity her way when they’d hear her say so, but not Kayama. She’d believed her from the start, but in doing so, they’d both tried not to think about what he could be doing, if not lie in his grave.

But maybe all along what she’d really been looking for was confirmation. There had been no proof of her brother’s death after the incident, so perhaps all this time, she was simply waiting to be proven wrong.

Now, Kayama had brought a file home, and it turns out little Shouto is in it, hidden away in a place Aizawa was sent to.

Fuyumi is the first one to pull away, sniffling and lifting her glasses to wipe the tears from her eyes. “Sorry,” she says, a small humorless laugh escaping her mouth. “I don’t know what to do now,”

Kayama brushes her thumb on her lover’s cheek, leaning forward to look her in the eye. “We’ll figure this out together, alright?” Fuyumi’s hand closes around hers, and she nods. “We’ll figure this out.”

Shouta drops the envelope on his desk, ready to go to bed any moment now. He changes into more comfortable clothes, closes the light and plops down on his bed.

Sleep had seemed so close a moment ago, but now, simply trying to keep his eyelids closed feel like pushing down on metal springs; too much effort, and if he doesn’t try hard enough they’ll open again. He turns on his left side, then his right, and again on his left before finally ending on his back, his dark irises staring at the ceiling.

If he’s not to fall asleep soon, then he should use this time to do something productive, he thinks. Just now, he could be writing his report. It’ll be at least half an hour before his eyes droop again, anyways.

His report sits there, on his desk still, exactly the way it had before he’d gone and heard Kyouka play guitar. He needs it done by tomorrow, so in a way he’s already late.

Shouta moves the sheet of paper on top of the others to the side, because there are already two words barred and a thick stain of ink from when he’d let his pen sit in one spot for too long.

It’s an hour later when he finishes writing his report. He’s not necessarily satisfied with it, but he feels exhausted and is simply glad to be done with it.

Nemuri’s letter lies there too, right next to the envelope he’s just sealed. His eyes feel so heavy, and his mind drained, but somehow he manages to reach for it. His name is right there on top, neatly written in a black pen, and when he turns it around he catches sight of Nemuri’s full name.

Suddenly, he notices the address written under it, or at least what’s left of it. Droplets of water have smudged the ink, making half the text unreadable. He knows the commission’s address by heart, the place he’s worked at for half his lifetime – and he does: he manages to make out a seven, but there are no seven at the commission’s workplace – and this is not the right return address. Shouta is aware that it’s probably Nemuri’s personal address. What else could it be? The real question is why?

There is a certain privacy the commission tries to keep with its employees. Friends rarely meet in such a place. Everyone would rather keep to themselves, and so, no one knows where anyone lives at. Except for odd situations, like Nemuri finding the apartment building he lives at, and him her house, with this letter.

Why risk her privacy, especially with a family of her own, for a letter? But then, a different, more urgent question makes its way into Shouta’s mind:

How did she find him at all?

He remembers how the council had pressed the fact this was very confidential, that he could not speak about it to anyone. And he knows, too, that Nemuri hadn’t been told about what he’d been sent to do, much less where.

“For fuck’s sake,” Shouta whispers under his breath in an attempt to silence his own thoughts. He finally rips the top of the envelope neatly, taking out the folded sheet of paper inside. Slowly, he begins reading it, his frown deepening as he does.

Aizawa,

I’ve been looking through files about your case, trying to figure out what you’d been sent to do. It felt too unusual, and I couldn’t help it.

Last night, I stumbled upon a file about an orphanage with around a dozen children, and I’ve brought it home with me. My wife looked through it as well, and she saw Todoroki Shouto, her ‘dead’ brother. Is he over there with you? If he is, something is incredibly wrong. He is not an orphan, Aizawa. He has family looking for him.

I’ll try finding more information here, but the commission is trying to hide something. I don’t know what it is, but please, be careful.

And if you can, send me some updates?

Love,

Kayama

Shouta has one hand covering up his mouth, his eyes reading and rereading over and over again the words brother, and not an orphan.

The thing is, there is one certainty about the commission and its higher ups: They do not make mistakes.

He knows, Nemuri knows, everybody knows.

“The Upper Management Council doesn’t make mistakes, Aizawa, and you know that.” She’d told him, right before he’d been assigned this mission. This odd, peculiar mission he had neglected to ponder a bit longer on what its purpose might be.

If this assignment truly was like any other, he would have been gone after a day. Nemuri would have been made aware of this. He would never have had to step on the highest floor of the commission’s building.

He slides his hand down his face. “What the hell is this?” he asks into the silent night.

During his days here, Shouta has come to enjoy the peace that comes with mornings far away from the city. The lack of construction drills going off before the sun has even had the time to rise, impatient people honking at other cars, and even villains, deciding to be evil first thing in the morning.

Here, all is peaceful. Well, at least until a letter arrives that says Shouta’s workplace-of-the-last-two-decades is hiding something, and he’s taking part in it somehow.

Falling asleep had taken him half an hour at the very least and waking up had been no easier task. His limbs ache from moving around all night, and his eyes feel restless and dry. He rubs at them, but it only makes the burning worse, as if his eyes would catch on fire any second now.

Through it all, he still manages to sit up and put on some proper clothes for the day. He uses one eyedrop for each eye and then walks out of his room.

By now, he’s come to know which room belongs to who. Each morning, they’ll leave their door ajar after getting up, and this makes it easier to tell who is still sleeping, and who isn’t. 

Downstairs, he finds Momo reading on the burnt-caramel-colored couch, reading a different book than the last time he’s seen her. She looks up at the sound of his approaching footsteps, and he offers her a small wave.

Shouta continues walking further down the hall and to the kitchen. He grabs himself a cup and fills it with water from the sink.

Something isn’t right. In fact, a lot of things have started to feel incredibly wrong in the past few hours. He tries reminding himself to stay rational, but his mind is everything but that.

“What am I supposed to do now?” he asks to no one in particular. He takes one long sip, and the cold liquid helps clear his mind. A soft thump resonates behind him, startling him he almost chokes on the water.

His head turns abruptly, and then his eyes lock with two mismatched ones. The boy doesn’t even say anything – just stands there and stares at him for a moment. Shouta freezes up, and he can only think of one thing.

This boy has family searching for him, and he doesn’t know. This boy has family looking for him, and he’s here instead.

But then the child looks away, untroubled unlike Shouta, and walks past the man to the door further down the kitchen. He opens it just wide enough to let himself through and closes it behind him one moment later.

Shouta’s legs urge him to follow after the boy, but he stays by the sink instead. What would he do, or say, if he went up to him? ‘Your sister is alive and looking for you, living just a few hours from here’, or maybe ‘I don’t know what the commission said to you, but you’re not an orphan’?

A rabbit hole of unanswered questions ensues, with Shouta questioning what he should do, if Nemuri is lying to him for whatever reason, or what he’s doing here to begin with.

There is no one here that can give him answers, though.

No one, except perhaps one person.  

Shouta sits on the porch, right in front of the closed door of the house. When he’d arrived here two weeks ago, the flowers had been so bright and cheery. Autumn had crept up on all of them, and now the vast garden had become full of dead things.

Before any of them had had the chance to realize what was happening, the field had turned into an overpopulated graveyard for flowers and leaves, all unburied and untouched, left to their own device to crumble into nothingness.

But there was an odd comfort to be found in this, too. In the way that they all knew it would only be a matter of months before it went back to its florescent form, thriving on new lives. Shouta will not be there when it happens. Still, he likes to imagine how it will look, if the flowers will grow in the same spots, or if some of them will have traded place with others.

He watches as Yamada walks down the path linking the house to the rest of the world. The blond notices Shouta sitting there, and smiles a bit, pulling his hands out of his pocket and showing his reddened fingers with a small wave.

Shouta gets to his feet, struggling a bit, as if the cool wind had slightly frozen him in place. “Yamada,” he greets.

The blond answers by broadening his smile. “What happened to formalities? No more Mr. Yamada?”

The black-haired man stammers for an apology, perplexed by his own forgetfulness. His stay here had made him become less of himself, somehow. He no longer tried to remain professional in front of all these people – children, mostly – and as a result, he was beginning to slip.

“I’m just messing with you,” Yamada says, laughing softly. “I was wondering when you’d drop that, makes me feel old.” He adds with a hint of humor.

But Shouta understands, and now he feels bad, because feeling old is no good, at least not to him. Yet, as he looks into those green irises, he sees none of the hurt he feels for himself.

“Just Yamada, then.”

And barely, ever so slightly, it feels alright.

“You’re up early this morning,” Yamada points out as the birds further off in the distance begin their chimes and tunes. “I don’t usually see you out here at this hour. Enjoying the quiet time?”

“Yes,” Shouta replies too quickly, instinctively. “Well, I was out waiting for you,” It’s only after the words have left his mouth that he thinks of a hundred different ways he could have worded that better.

Yamada is now standing a few feet away from him. He wears a dark coat made of wool along with a gray scarf, the thing encircling his neck twice, the ends hanging limply over his chest. He frowns faintly and asks, “What for?”

 There is a child here whose dead family isn’t actually dead, a voice in Shouta’s head provides.

“It’s… Rather complicated,” he replies instead.

The wind picks up, just for a moment, before it calms again and settles into a tranquil pace.

“Should we go on a stroll to talk, then?” Yamada proposes, and when he sees the uncertain expression on Shouta’s face he adds. “There’s still time,”

He thinks Shouta is worried about time. The time they have before the day officially begins and children start speaking loudly, running around to drain their endless amount of energy. But he’s wrong.

Shouta worries there’s still too much time, that the moment until all his questions will be answered – if ever – is still too far away. He would be quite glad if the man could respond to all of them, but only time will tell, and so the only way is to let it flow and wait.

They walk in silence, the only thing breaking it being the sound of their footsteps stepping over brittle branches and crumbled leaves. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t know where to even start.

And so, Shouta is left alone with his thoughts and questions and doubts. He doesn’t know what to believe anymore, or who. He doesn’t know what to think, and so his head does all the work for him, going back to wondering how he came to be here.

He is confused, about everything, and yet it also feels so clear somehow. He’s angry, too, because never has he doubted his work might have been flawed before. He’s done a thousand cases and more, spent endless hours caring and trying to find meaning in his life, only for him to learn that, in the end, there never was any to begin with.

And yet, the commission had decided to send him here instead of any of the other employees to choose from.

The Upper Management Council doesn’t make mistakes, the phrase echoes in his mind.

Suddenly, he stops. Yamada doesn’t notice, or perhaps he simply chooses to ignore it. But Shouta cannot bear it anymore, all this nonsense. He refuses to.

Not when the lives of children are intertwined with all those problems, or when he’s still uncertain that all these small beings are not where they should be.

“What is this place?”

His words mingled with the breeze, soft and sharp at the same time. He fears for a moment that he might have spoken too quietly, and the thought of having to repeat the question builds a knot in his stomach. Shouta had not thought before speaking and doing so now feels unbearable.

Yamada stops, too, just then. Slowly, he turns his head, and for an instant, all he does is stare.

“My home,” he replies eventually, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. So far, Yamada has not proven very useful in Shouta’s gathering of information – or at least nothing concrete. He always sidesteps his arguments, and counters back with more bitter ones.

But this is no argument, and Shouta accuses him of nothing at all like he has done before. Perhaps, this is why Yamada doesn’t look angry when he comes back on his steps to reach Shouta, a hand clutching his gray scarf.

“You’ll catch a cold if you stay like this,” he whispers, taking off the neckwear and then tying it around Shouta’s form. It’s only after he’s enveloped in the fabric that he realizes he’d been shivering. The wind keeps biting his cheeks, and now he’s much too aware of it. He probably should have dressed warmer.

They keep walking, side by side, though Yamada is the one leading the two of them. They’ve gone around the house, and a short bit through the woods, but Shouta has learned nothing.

“This is my home,” Yamada says, pointing his chin towards the house. Shouta frowns, not understanding why he’s suddenly talking after all those minutes of silence. He opens his mouth, and closes it again, stopping in his tracks when Yamada does, too. “It is mine, and all those children’s, and Rumi’s. This is all it is.”

“Usagiyama,” Shouta mumbles.

“Yeah, Usagiyama,” Yamada replies with a small laugh. “She’s got a way with the little ones, but I can’t help but think she could’ve been so much more if she’d wanted to.”

“No, I mean—I’ve got to find her,” The man with dark irises stammers, and then unable to explain himself more than this, he simply finishes with a small “Sorry,” and quickly marches off towards the house.

Shouta had been right about one thing: there is only one person who can possibly answer his questions: He’d simply gone to the wrong one.

Chapter Text

Shouta has always been a rational man. He’s had to learn to become this way because, unlike other people, he was not born with anything that made him stand out. He was never meant to become great; and when this happens, one must learn to see reality for what it is.

Yet, there are times when he manages to forget about all these things that have kept him safe throughout his life.

Like now, for one, when he finds himself walking at a fast pace – but not quick enough for it to be called a run – towards the house, and then anywhere his feet might lead him.

Well, he’s searching for Usagiyama, but he has no idea where he might find her. Is she still asleep? And if he barges in with a hundred questions, will she accept to answer any of them?

Shouta’s chest heaves heavily, even though he has only been walking swiftly for a minute. He stops to catch his breath right next to the living room with the dozen bookshelves.

A voice behind him speaks, and Shouta startles once again.

“You’re really old, y’know that?”

“Dear fu—” He turns around and clutches the fabric of his shirt over his chest, as if attempting to keep his heart from jumping out of it. What is it with children appearing behind him out of nowhere?

“You were going to say fuck,” The child points out. It’s Katsuki, the one who often gets angry.

“No, I—” Shouta sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. There’s no way around this kid, or at least not for anyone other than his friend Izuku, who seems to be the complete opposite of him. Maybe that’s why they get along so well.

Shouta recalls the conversation he had with Usagiyama a week or so ago. She had thought Shouta had been sent to this place because of Izuku’s father, but he hadn’t been sure then, and he certainly isn’t now.

“Where’s your friend?” A pang of panic begins to rise in his chest, but he tries to keep it down. “Izuku,” he adds as if it weren’t obvious already. The two of them are always together, and so to find him alone like this makes him wonder where the green-haired one is, especially after the other day in the woods—

“Upstairs. He’s just slow.” Katsuki replies.

His shoulders sag, and he nods. He’s about to say goodbye and head his way – wherever it is he might find the harsh-speaking woman. But the child keeps staring at him, unmoving, and it’s making Shouta uncomfortable.

This is Katsuki – he does unexplainable things sometimes, like this. Shouta knows all that, but still, it makes his feet stuck in place.

“Do you know where Usagiyama is?” he asks, anything to fill the awkward silence hanging between them.

“Why?” Katsuki asks, his tone high and almost authoritarian, if only he were a decade or two older.

It’s too early, and Shouta is ready to go to sleep. Only he’ll need to wait at least fifteen hours until the time to do so finally comes. He hasn’t had coffee, only a sip of cold water really, and he probably caught a cold going outside with nothing more than a T-shirt – so right now, he doesn’t feel like explaining himself to a child that much.

“I need to talk to her,” he manages to grit out. But then he feels bad for taking it out on a child, especially one who’s done nothing wrong. Katsuki doesn’t seem to notice the change in his face, though, or maybe he doesn’t care. “It’s important.”

The blond keeps his lips pursed, and his eyes bore into him, as if searching for something precise, something that would tell him exactly whether he should answer or not.

“We’re going to see her and Mirko,” It’s not exactly an answer, but it’s close enough.

“Mirko?” Shouta frowns, quickly thinking of everyone he’s met here, wondering if he met this ‘Mirko’ before, but his mind comes blank.

Just then, soft footsteps tumbling down the stairs echo in the narrow space. Shouta knows who it is before he sees the freckled child, from the way he probably would’ve never heard him if it weren’t for the house being so utterly silent.

Izuku waits a moment by the staircase, sparing Shouta a quick glance. Katsuki turns to join him, decidedly done with insulting Shouta for the day. The older man takes a step in their direction, seeing as the children are about to leave the house.

But then Katsuki turns around sharply, startling even Izuku. “Who said you could come?” he snaps.

“I won’t be long, I just need to speak with her,” he repeats, a bit more urgency in his voice this time.

The smaller boy cups his hands around Katsuki’s ears, and at this point, Shouta thinks nothing of it. He’s seen it so many times – it just feels normal. He doesn’t know what Izuku says, but it makes something in Katsuki’s face soften.

It’s all up to the explosive boy now – if he decides Shouta cannot follow, he won’t. He needs to respect the boundaries those children have set for themselves, because as much as he wants to find answers as soon as possible, it is no more important than the trust of these children.

Katsuki’s eyebrows press down on his eyes again, but it’s not angry. It’s something else, much more complex than simple childish anger, but Shouta can’t quite put his finger on it.

“You can’t take too long,” the child says, at last.

“I won’t,” Shouta replies.

And so he heads off outside again, following two boys with nothing but feeble hope and a scarf.

The first rays of sunshine are peering through the long, drying blades of grass and weed. The sky is still dark overhead, just enough that if Shouta could see any better, he might be able to spot a few stars here and there.

They head down the mount, walking through a made-up path, crossing through the dirt roads now and then. Both boys walk fast and decisively, so he doesn’t question them one moment.

At some point, they reach the lowest part of the island. A wooden deck comes into view, and a boat along with it. He recognizes it from the one Usagiyama had been using to lead him from the train station to the main island. Soon enough, he manages to spot the woman on it.

He wonders why she hadn’t simply brought him here on that first day, instead of taking the car and passing through the main island.

“There you are!” Usagiyama shouts from her spot, griping the railing of the boat with a hand. “Brought that bastard with you?” She adds with a grin.

Shouta might’ve been offended if it’d been someone else, but he knows this is just the woman’s poor attempt at humor. At least, that’s what he thinks.

“I’m not staying, just got a few questions.” He replies, making sure to be loud enough so as to not repeat himself. He regrets it right after, coughing slightly. His throat already burns from having gone outside inadequately dressed this very morning.

“Watcha waiting for, then?” She’s wearing nothing more than a white camisole and jeans, which reminds Shouta of the goosebumps on his arms. He instinctively reaches for the scarf around his neck.

What is he waiting for? Well, he doesn’t actually want to talk about any of this in front of children or unrelated people. “The kids said there was a… Mirko here?”

There is silence, first. A long silence, one that doesn’t actually last so long, but just enough that Shouta begins to wonder if he’s said something wrong.

Katsuki walks past him, hopping onto the ship with the help of a small ladder. “It’s the boat, you idiot,” he snarls.

“The strongest there is,” Usagiyama laughs, giving the boat a heavy hit to prove her point.

Oh. It’s only then that he notices the gentle calligraphy on the side of the boat, written in chipping gold paint, spelling out the word Mirko. He remembers seeing it on that first day. Shouta feels stupid now.

“I see—Well, it doesn’t matter,” Shouta says, recollecting himself. “I need to talk to you. In private.”

She considers him, her hand fiddling with the engine or something else – it’s hard to see from where Shouta stands.

“Hop on then,” she turns back to her device.

“What?” The blond boy snaps. “But you said—”

“Him being there doesn’t change anything,” she cuts him off. “Don’t be an ass, Katsuki.”

That seems to be enough for the boy to clamp his mouth shut. Her words aren’t… Well, they’re not exactly the ones Shouta would’ve used, but they’re effective. The boy walks away to a farther corner of the boat where Izuku is, annoyed, and Shouta shoots a quick nod to Usagiyama to thank her.

A certain nostalgia fills his chest as he gets onto the boat, reminding him of exactly how he’d felt two weeks ago. Irritated and bored at every small detail. He inhales deeply, letting the cool air settle in his lungs until it becomes warm, and then letting it go.

“We’re just going for a quick ride,” Usagiyama explains when Shouta doesn’t ask, staring at the engine of the boat. “Promised those two we’d go before it gets too cold. Can’t refuse ‘em anything,”

There’s something so grounding about being on a moving boat. Going so fast yet staying so still. It’s different than being inside a car because the air doesn’t feel the same, and there’s no one else around to pass them by. Shouta takes the seat closest to the woman with the rabbit mutation.

But this is no pleasant ride, as much as he would like it to be. He has so many questions – or, he had so many, but for some reason, now that it’s time to ask them, he forgets them all.

“This place isn’t an orphanage, not like the other ones,” he says instead. Usagiyama’s scarlet eyes narrow, but she doesn’t say a thing. It’s hard to guess if she’s heard him over the boat’s loud whirring sound, but then her ear twitches, and he knows she has.

“What about it?” she replies after a while. She’s not denying anything.

“There are some things the commission isn’t telling me, and I don’t know what,” Shouta says, honestly. He truly doesn’t – and it feels like what he does know becomes a bit less with each passing day. “But I know you do, at least more than you’re letting on. You and Yamada, but he won’t say a thing,”

“And with good reasons,” she snaps, messing with tens of buttons, levers, and switches. Roughly so.

“What reasons does he have that you don’t?” Shouta is on the edge of his seat, leaning in with his hands clutching his knees. She already looks annoyed – but she has no idea just how much more terrible it is to not know anything.

“He’s the head of this place, if he doesn’t—” She inhales sharply, closing her eyes and gripping the steering wheel. “Listen, you’ll learn all that crap in time, but I can’t be the one to tell you, so don’t push it.”

And he doesn’t. They both quiet after that, taking a moment to think. Izuku and Katsuki are still at the back of the boat, chatting and playing some games that require only hands to move and heads to think.

The thing with Usagiyama is that she somehow always looks angry – but when Shouta takes the time to look closer, he realizes just how complex it really is. Sometimes she’s happy but has a harsh way of showing it. And other times, he manages to catch a glance of something sadder hiding behind her eyes.

“What makes you think I’d wanna help you, anyway?” The boat is sailing at a softer pace now, and she doesn’t have to shout for him to hear her voice.

“You already have,” he replies, pulling a string of hair and tossing it out of his face. “Since the day I arrived, you’ve been telling me stuff – things you could’ve kept to yourself if you’d wanted to.”

“Maybe I just thought it’d make you leave faster if you got what you wanted,” Usagiyama doesn’t even sound convinced by her own words; like she’s just using this to drag on this conversation, to stretch time until it inevitably snaps.

“Maybe,” Shouta agrees. “But I think we both know that’s not the case, and if it were, then you’d have had no reason to let me on your boat just now.”

It is no surprise that after having worked for the commission for a little less than two decades, Shouta knows to show himself convincing, knows which words to use and which buttons to press to find what he’s looking for. Suddenly, he realizes that there has never been a time before when he was this much aware of himself whilst doing this.

“So now tell me. If you dislike the commission so much, why have you been helping me?”

There’s a certain fatality to his words which doesn’t leave room for one of Usagiyama’s snarky remarks, and for once, Shouta feels like he’s on the right path.

Her ears twitch as Izuku and Katsuki continue playing their game – or perhaps they’ve already changed twice or thrice – but when Shouta turns to look at them, they’re simply looking at the ocean, the water churning in unison with the engine, bubbling back up to the surface infinitely.

“I can’t help them if you don’t give me anything to work with,” he says, a hint of desperation laced in his voice. Usagiyama doesn’t utter a single word, but it looks as if she wants to, with her lips tightly pursed – she only needs one final push. “And if I can’t do this, it’ll be as if they’d never had a chance in the first place.”

“I don’t know what’s written in those files, but— They deserve a chance, they’re just… children.” She’d said to him when they’d first met.

And now, he was repeating the words back to her.

“Did they?” Usagiyama asks, finally turning her head to look at him – her eyes looking so much like little Katsuki’s, sharp and fierce. “Did they ever have a chance?”

“I don’t think they did,” Shouta responds gently. He’s not shutting her off, simply taking the space he needs to gain her trust. “But it’s up to you to decide whether that changes or not,”

It’s an opening – both a risk and a chance to reach their common goal. He’s not sure what Usagiyama’s might be, but Shouta is set on figuring out what he’s been missing about this place all this time. The things he’s failed to notice in his workplace, and perhaps, in the worse of cases, the world they live in.

Usagiyama stares at him, so long Shouta isn’t sure whether she’s not just glaring. He thinks, this is it, and somehow he’s right, because if she decides not to help him, he’ll be back at square one.

The woman clicks her tongue. “You ain’t like them, the commission and shit.” She moves her gaze back to the sea ahead of her. “I don’t think y’are, at least, and I don’t like being wrong.” She pauses, for a moment, then two. “That’s why I’m helping you.”

Relief floods Shouta’s chest almost instantly, only an instant after she’s uttered those words so that his mind could sync with his heart. He slumps back in his seat, dragging his hand down his face. This is one thing less on his list, and fifty more added.

“Rumi!” Katsuki shouts, competing with the wind cutting him off. “A pumpkin patch, right over there!”

Both adults turn their heads at the same time, looking at the place Katsuki points at with the tip of his finger. On the edge of the main island, there’s a pumpkin patch, just as the boy had said. Even from the sea, they can see the small orange dots sprinkled all over a giant field.

“That’s really nice, Katsuki,” Usagiyama says, to which the boy replies with a frustrated sigh.

“You know that’s not what I mean,”

She slows the boat down until it moves as quickly as a bicycle climbing a mountain. Then, she turns to the boys, giving up her seat and keeping only one hand on the steering wheel. “We’ve talked about this last year,”

“And I still don’t understand why we can’t go!” the boy retorts. Izuku lingers beside him. Clearly, the shorter child would much rather stop arguing than go to the pumpkin patch.

Shouta raises an eyebrow at Usagiyama. She catches his questioning look and lets out a soft sigh but doesn’t say anything.

She sits back down, leaving both boys to stare at her back, which is covered by her long, silver hair. Katsuki stands still, arms hanging stiffly at his sides, his face contorting into a small frown. He doesn’t seem offended – probably because he’d expected such a reaction – but he’s thinking with an expression Shouta can’t read.

It takes only a moment, a fraction of a second, and then all seems to click in the boy’s head. Startingly, he looks at Shouta.

“You take us!” he says, calmly but firmly.

Usagiyama turns again, probably thinking he’s still trying to convince her, but then she sees that’s not the case at all. She opens her mouth to interject, but Katsuki continues.

“You owe us, remember?” he adds, and then looks at Izuku before turning back to the man again. “We found your cat,”

Oh for fuck’s sake, Shouta thinks, which translates into a heavy sigh, followed by the beginning of a headache.

He’d forgotten all about this. Yet, they surely hadn’t. He had been so wrong to think they would forget quickly, to believe this wouldn’t come back to bite him in the ass.

“Alright! We will help you, but you will owe us a favor—” The smaller child nudges his friend’s side and whispers something else, “a favor  each ,” The blond corrects. “And you will be obligated to accept!”

There is no malice in the children’s eyes, and it feels as though he’s participating in a competition of whoever can hold the other’s gaze for longer wins. But Shouta’s eyes sting already, from the wind and the lack of sleep, and he doesn’t see the point in disappointing a child who holds nothing but hope.

Shouta looks at Usagiyama, wordlessly telling her, ‘What choices do I have?’ with a slight shrug. The lady’s ears twitch, and she takes her face in her hand as if hiding the disappointed look behind her eyes.

“Fine, but you deal with it,” she tells him, and Shouta decides that it’s fair enough.

They’ve already missed breakfast by the time they get off the boat and climbed the mount back up. It’s warmer now, just barely, but it might just be because of the sun higher in the sky, or maybe it’s because they’re not sailing on the fucking ocean anymore.

Izuku and Katsuki have already run up ahead, straight for the house where it’s warm and comfortable. But Usagiyama and Shouta linger behind.

It had already been silent for a few minutes when she asked, “Why do you start doubting the commission now?”

Shouta doesn’t know if she means that as in, ‘Why did it take you so long?’, or ‘Why do you doubt them at all?’. Yet, he knows the answer is the same for both of those questions. He’d been too trusting, so much he had forgotten how to think for himself.

“I was… suspicious, ever since I was assigned to this,” – this, whatever this is, he would very much like to know – “but then…”

And he stops because the words are unthinkable and even more unspeakable. His lips are stuck half-opened, ready to utter what he needs to say, but not a sound comes out.

“What changed?” Usagiyama asks, keeping her head high, her eyes ahead of her.

She’s so strong compared to him, Shouta thinks in this moment. She doesn’t let anything get in her way, it seems. Instead of cowering behind a mundane, unchanging routine, she faces life head-on, and she does it bravely and boldly.

When he’s with her, it’s like he feels the need to take on some of her mettle for himself. Mettle, that’s what she has. That’s what she gives out to people.

“I got a letter yesterday, from a friend.” He says, swallowing and realizing that his throat had been dried from the cold. “Well—She’s not my friend, she’s just a co-worker.” He stumbles a little over his words and then breathes. “It’s about that Shouto kid,”

“What about him?” the woman responds distantly, making Shouta hesitate once again. But if he waits and continues to doubt for too long, he’ll never find the courage to solve all this messed-up situation again.

“I found his sister,”

And thus, he begins explaining his entire journey, from last night all the way to their walk now. It’s like a ball bouncing and tumbling down the stairs – once he drops it, he cannot take it back until it has made its way to the last step. He cannot stop his talking, and he wouldn’t even if he were able to.

Through it all, Usagiyama doesn’t interrupt him, but her expression hardens. She should be freaking out, just like he did, or at least be angry like she always seem to be. But he can’t tell what she’s thinking. He never can. He ends his monologue and holds his breath. Waiting.

Shouta thinks maybe he’s said too much, actually, and he would like to take it all back. He thinks a ‘sorry’ might do the trick. But then she stops in her track, and he’d been trying to understand her thoughts so intently that he too, stops, at the same time as she does.

Her bloody irises meet his darkened ones.

“Your friend, is she clever?”

Chapter Text

HERO PUBLIC SAFETY COMMISSION
Report #2 Orphanage Yawarageru, Nabu Island

Aizawa Shouta

===

I do solemnly, sincerely, and truly declare and affirm that the content of this report shall be the truth. I understand any falsehood will bring unwanted consequences and could result in my dismissal.

I would first like to begin this report by apologizing for questioning your judgment in my last report and promise to do my best with the information you have given me, which you deem sufficient.  

My second week here has been quite informative. I have had the opportunity to get to know more of the children individually, and I feel they are starting to open up to me.

Shinsou Hitoshi is a shy child who seems to be fond of cats. He does not interact with others much, but when there is a game, he participates. I have gone to town with him and another child, accompanied by Usagiyama Rumi, the woman I talked about in my last report, and I was very displeased with what I found.

There seems to be a lot of discrimination against the children from the civilians, but I plan on investigating more in the following week. My main questions are what do the civilians think they know, and what of this causes such a distinct line between them and the children? I have had to intervene when a shop owner refused to let the boy Hitoshi enter his shop, and I firmly believe this kind of treatment is unacceptable. My theory is that the civilians are so unused to seeing the children – secluded on a different island? – and thus make up their own ideas, which then turn into rumors unfavorable to the children.

On another note, the other child who had come with me is Ochako Uraraka. She is a kind-hearted girl who seems to always be full of energy. I do not think there is anything alarming to report about her. I have had the time to go buy Mochi with her, and she had a lot to talk about. It is a good sign and a relief that her history does not interfere with her social abilities, though I am certain there are many things she would simply rather not share with me, as I am a stranger, and not a friend.

I do not have anything new to report on Bakugou Katsuki. He seems to be angry and untrustful of me, but I assume it is a natural reaction to have for a child with such important trauma. On the other hand, Midoriya Izuku – Katsuki’s closest friend – deals with much more anxiety than I had previously thought. I helped him while he was having a panic attack, which is most uncommon for children his age. It worries me, but still, I think this place does him good.

Jirou Kyouka is very much introverted and would rather spend time alone in her room playing guitar. So far, I have only seen her speak with Yaoyorozu Momo and Kaminari Denki. I believe the incident that caused the death of her parents (as I’m sure you already know, her meta ability caused the collapse of an old building) still haunts her, and understandably so. I see her doing progress, slowly but surely, and so I do not worry she will heal with time.

I remain unsure if Todoroki Shouto is timid or simply prefers to be alone. I haven’t had the time to speak with him yet, but I plan on doing so – as with all the others – before my next report. So far my only interaction with him has been my contribution to cooking dinner one night, in which the boy helped as well, but stayed silent the entire time.

Though, I must admit I find a lot of things strange in this place. Most of all, the children themselves and their presence here, all gathered in one place. Strangely so, they all have extremely dangerous meta abilities (ones they like to call quirks here) and I find it difficult to believe this might only be due to sheer luck.

Is it truly the safest idea to put such powerful children in one place, with only two adults to look after them? Ms. Usagiyama and Mr. Yamada are qualified people, this I am certain, but I do not know just how far their competency goes, or if they could deal with the children’s meta abilities in a dangerous situation.

But for now, all seems to be in order.

Best regards,

Aizawa Shouta

 

Kayama has not been able to get a good night’s sleep in days. Well, Fuyumi hasn’t: stuck between the terror and excitement of knowing her brother is alive – has been alive, for a while – somewhere in Japan.

After a night, Kayama had suggested using her quirk on her lover, to which she agreed, and now she was the only one left awake.

The blue light of her computer is so bright against her eyes. She’s seen Aizawa use eyedrops every now and then, plus the dark bags underneath his eyes. Is this how he always feels?

It’s much too early in the morning to start looking at the time on the bottom right corner of her computer screen, waiting for lunch to come. But she does it anyway. Every single minute. Just wishing it would just go faster.

But it doesn’t, and there are still hours before she can go eat. She’s not even hungry – she just wants out of her chair. Kayama passes a hand down her face, resting her elbows on her desk. She watches all those people before her, typing, turning paper, typing again, writing something down on paper.

It’s so repetitive. And yet, Kayama is doing the same, except she’s got a fancy desk to work on instead of those sorry tables everyone else has.

She looks at the time on her computer again. 9:36. In five minutes, she’ll look again. Unfortunately, it won’t have actually been five minutes. It’ll be written 9:37 instead.

The door into the vast room opens, and with it comes complete and utter silence. The clicking on keycaps stops, and the hushed whispers too. If it were someone late, they would simply keep their head down, and no one would even bother to lift their head up.

But obviously, it’s not. It’s a worker, yes, but not a late one. Because this man standing in the doorway is of higher status, with the small card clipped to his olive blazer. He has a lean shape and stands so straight, clipboard in hand, that Kayama thinks a gush of wind might knock him over.

He looks down at his paper, unbothered by the stillness he’s caused – unphased by it. Kayama waits, her back pressed against her chair. It happened before, employees getting fired like this. The higher-up calls a name, and then brings them out of the room to ‘talk’. And then the person is never seen again. At least, the commission is kind enough not to do it in front of everyone, or through a small letter sealed with a cheap heart-shaped sticker.

It’s never fun though. It’s not fun, but it’s the most that ever happens in those offices, so everyone is quiet so they can hear better and gossip about it later.

The young man looks at Kayama, because she’s the head of this place, and so when he calls a name, she’ll be able to look in the direction of this person with a sorry face and tell them to get up and follow – adding a small ‘you should probably bring your coat with you’.

And he does exactly that, except it’s much worse.

“Nemuri Kayama?” he asks looking bored, though now Kayama wants nothing more than to punch his face.

She straightens up in her chair, fixing her gaze on this stupidly young man. She knows that if she looks at the room and turns her face back straight ahead, she won’t ever recover from the shame.

“Yes?” she finally manages.

“You’ve been requested for a meeting, tomorrow morning, with the Upper Management Council.”

“Say, did something happen with your last case?” She remembers asking Aizawa, two weeks ago.

“No, the same as always.” He had answered. “Why?”

“Well, no matter,” She’d continued, awkward and with an uneasy feeling boiling in her chest. “You’ve been… requested, tomorrow morning, to meet with the Upper Management Council.” And then, “Come on, Aizawa, what’d you do?”

Come on, Kayama.

What did you do?

The boy hands her a letter, breaking Kayama out of her thoughts. She hadn’t noticed he’d made his way over to her.

“Thank you,” she clears her throat, rubbing her palms on her pants to get rid of the sweat that had begun accumulating. “I’ll make sure to be there on time.”

Shouta remembers how time used to act when he was just a child. Each summer stretched on and on for what seemed like forever, the days feeling so long – with the sun rising so early and setting so late – and it felt as if it would last forever.

But each year manages to feel shorter than the last, somehow. He remembers his parents telling him so, but back then, he could only frown, not understanding how their years felt different from his.

Except that now he does. It always feels like he doesn’t have enough time. Like he’ll die and then think to himself: That was it?

This month is different, though, because day after day he’s been pulled out of this comfortable routine he’d made for himself, which had lasted him years, but now he’s unsure if he’ll ever be able to go back to it.

Well, he’ll get other cases after this one, so he’ll probably be back to normal after a week or so.

Shouta doesn’t want to think about this, though. He’s too busy thinking back to the letter he’d sent along with his report, written with the help of Usagiyama.

“You’re sure about this?” he had asked, then.

“Don’t quit on me now, Aizawa,” the woman had replied sternly, and he hadn’t had the courage to say anything else.

Now he clutches the handle of his coffee mug, his index finger coming a bit too close to the fiery hot ceramic and burning his skin. So quickly, he feels more surprised by the sudden heat than the brittle pain itself.

Shouta sighs, running a hand down his face. When he looks up, he’s met with ruby-colored eyes and hair he knows is blond but looks more like an ashy white in the dimmed room.

The boy just stands there, staring. He doesn’t need to say anything to make Shouta understand what he wants, either, crossing his arms and waiting.

Groaning, Shouta pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Next week,” he says.

“Now,” Katsuki replies.

“In a few days, on Wednesday.”

“In five minutes,”

“Tomorrow,” the man ends up proposing, and to his (unfortunate) surprise, the boy smirks. This is probably what he’d wanted all along. The sun has already set, and the sky is starting to turn dark; Katsuki most likely knew the pumpkin patch place was closed, or Shouta guesses it is. He doesn’t know.

Shouta goes to bed that night, on his back, and then on his side. He closes his eyes, a blink, and when he opens them again, it’s morning. He’s slept for hours – judging by the sun beginning to rise outside – but it feels like eight hours ago was actually eight minutes ago.

Standing up feels so heavy like he’s being pulled down towards the earth and wooden floor much harsher than usual.

When he goes downstairs, he doesn’t reach the kitchen. There is need for coffee – even a cold glass of water would do – but there is none of it at his disposal. Instead, there is the same blond child with sparkly hands too powerful for his own good standing right in front of him.

Because, of course, tomorrow has become today in the short span of one night.

He wants to go back to sleep, and do slightly more than blink. Five or ten minutes. But there is noise coming from the living room into which Katsuki has half-stepped inside, the doorframe holding him there.

Past him, Shouta sees after stepping forward that there are many more eight-years-old.

“You said you’d take us,” Katsuki says, with an accusing tone, as if Shouta had already said something to go against his word. “You promised,” he adds.

Shouta tilts his head down, relaxing his crossed arm ever so slightly, and looks at the boy.

The child stands so tall and looks so small, seeming still as a tree if it weren’t for his clenched fist’s slight tremble betraying his confidence. He does not trust Shouta. Even Shouta wonders if he would trust himself, were he the one in the boy’s position.

“I did promise,” Shouta’s eyes wander from one head to another, catching the gaze of most of the children there, all watching him watching them. Finally, his dark irises land on Usagiyama.

“You got a plan to get there?” The woman asks. “Those twelve lil’ devils, you, me, and Hizashi?”

No, Shouta opens his mouth to say. He doesn’t. He hasn’t had the time to think about it between yesterday and this morning – but how is he supposed to explain that? It sounds rather silly, thinking about it now: I slept before I could think about it at all.

But his lack of answer might just be a reply in itself, as the woman nods anyway. “Thought you might’ve not,” She walks past him, the smaller beings following her steps, and with them, Shouta.

“Do you?” he asks, because if she doesn’t—well he doesn’t know what, then. Probably some disappointed faces, and for some reason, the simple thought of that makes Shouta’s heart clench.

“Course I do,” she replies rather harshly, “Had this planned since yesterday, right after I knocked at your door and heard nothing but your loud snores.”

They walk out the front door and into the lifeless field, Shouta struggling to match his step to the woman’s fast ones.

“I don’t—” Shouta slows, the children rushing past him to round the red trailer that’s been attached behind Usagiyama’s beaten car.

Hizashi is right there, too, helping them hop on. It’s not the safest thing there is – but it’s the only thing there is, and for once, Shouta doesn’t mind the risk as much as might have before, a year or a month ago.

Usagiyama nudges him in his side with a grin. “You owe me one,”

And he scoffs, the tiniest of smiles spreading on his lips. “I know.” A minute later, when Hizashi assures them he’s ‘totally got this’, both he and the rabbit-eared woman enter the car. He turns to her, then, and says, “Thank you,”

The day has started so quickly, but right now, sitting here and just being free from having to solve another problem on a never-ending list of everything wrong with the world feels rather nice.

“I wouldn’t thank me too soon if I were you,” Usagiyama glances behind her and starts up the car, adjusting her seat and the rear-view mirror.  

Shouta frowns. Has he missed another detail, adding to his heavy pile of unsolved issues? But Usagiyama doesn’t seem half as concerned as he feels, and so he pushes his thoughts away. “Has it got something to do with the children?”

The woman scoffs but doesn’t reply. Shouta feels foolish the moment the words have left his mouth. It’s always something to do with the children, isn’t it? And so instead he tries something more casual.

“Katsuki’s been in an awful mood lately, hasn’t he?” In fact, Shouta doesn’t know if it’s true. It’s the first thing that’s come to his mind – and from his point of view, it is true: Katsuki has been… Perhaps not grumpy, but he hasn’t softened much to Shouta.

“He’s testing you,” she tells him, uncurling her fingers from the steering wheel, as if to stretch them, before wrapping them back on. “Well, he’s doing it for all the others. You’ve got to understand, lots of promises were made to them, and so few of those were kept. Hollow words if you ask me. Can’t really blame them for not opening up their arms to you and asking for a hug.”

Shouta would be hurt by her words, because she’s right, and because he hadn’t thought of it that way before. He would – if it weren’t for another thing she’d said catching his ear.

“Promises made by who?” He asks the question, but he knows. He already does know. He has known for a while, now. The woman purses her lips, and Shouta slumps further back in his seat. “It’s the commission. It is, isn’t it?”

She does not utter another word for the rest of the ride, and neither does he. A silent question hanging between them, left untouched, unasked.

What did the commission promise?

The cool air brushes against the crooked trees planted on every few corners of the small town, giving their fingers and cheeks a pinkish tint. Fortunately, Shouta has had the brilliant idea to dress warmer today, still wearing the scarf Hizashi had given him.

When they hop off the car, he goes to give it back to the blond man, but the latter simply holds a hand up and tells him to keep it. “I’ve got a ton back home. I’m sure this one will be just fine in your care,” he adds gently to reassure Shouta, which works.

Katsuki disembarks the trailer first, his posture slightly more relaxed, and the hint of a smile hiding on his lips. Izuku follows behind, bringing the side of his hand to wipe at his leaking nose every now and then.

Momo goes towards Shouta with Kyouka by her side. They don’t say a thing, just wait until he does something so they can copy him. A few others round up around him. First comes Mina with her chaotic mass of curls, and then the one with the light bolt hair. Surprisingly, his hand is clasped around Shinsou’s forearm, but the boy doesn’t seem to mind it at all, having brought Maple with him.

Shouta reaches for the hidden pocket inside his coat and takes out the folded poster he and Kayama had unpinned from the post office wall yesterday. They’d been on their way out after posting the letters and Shouta had stumbled onto the poorly made poster.

A child probably could have done a better job: there were at least three different fonts used, and they were most definitely not all the same size. The color was roughed up around the edges, like the printer had malfunctioned or lacked the necessary colors.

But none of that mattered, because on it read ‘Open to all! From Monday to Friday, 7:00 to 18:00!’ And so it meant they could go, and Shouta could fulfill his promise.

It takes a while for them to find the entrance. The place is so vast, and it feels rude to simply start walking around the place. It isn’t until the plain boy with dark hair and the minor scratch over his eye finds a sign indicating the way – it is very big and painted in bright colors, it’s a mystery how it isn’t the first thing they saw upon arriving – that they begin walking with more certainty.

A lady comes out of a small building that looks more like an oversized hut than anything else. She walks up to them and offers them an awkward smile. “Can I do something to help you?”

“We’re here for the pumpkin patch,” Shouta says, looking around to see if he’s truly in the right place – and of course he is, because the small poster says so, and the big bright sign, and also the dozens of pumpkins he’s already spotted everywhere.

“Well, erm, yes,” she fiddles with her hands for a moment, and when the silence stretches on for one bit too long that it becomes uncomfortable, wipes them on her apron.

“Is this the right place?” he asks, glancing over his shoulder to see Hizashi and Usagiyama there, both shrugging slightly.

“Well, of course,” She hasn’t got a coat on her shoulders, and instead her arms are exposed to the biting cold of the air. Shouta wonders how she hasn’t started shivering yet. Her eyes dart over each of the small faces standing behind him. “It’s just – well, you’re a big group, and we’re not really used to that, so,” she trails off, laughing clumsily.

“We can show ourselves around, they won’t cause any problems,” Shouta says, thinking this should be enough for her to bow her head slightly and let them pass.

The woman nods rapidly, but she doesn’t move an inch. “Yes, but, erm…” She hesitates one instant. “You’re that orphanage, right? Near the coast?”

“Does that change something?” Shouta snaps. He’s getting really tired of this, but even more, he’s starting to feel annoyed.

“Aizawa,” Hizashi puts his hand on Shouta’s shoulder. But it’s not him that needs to stand down and apologize – he hasn’t even done anything. Not yet. He pulls out the small poster again, the edges thorned and the paper humid because of the air.

“It’s written there,” He holds it out to the woman. “‘Open to all’”. The lady goes to say something else, but he cuts her off before she can. “Unless there’s some kind of exception we didn’t know about?”

And the face she’s making already tells him everything: ‘Open to All – except for them.’ Because they are too far from all. They are too special, Shouta thinks.

“Well,” the woman sighs, trying to keep her polite face. “Well, I suppose you’re right. Well,” her eyebrows scrunch up slightly as she utters the words, as if it pained her to say them. But Shouta doesn’t care. If he has to deal with this woman in order to give those children one enjoyable experience – out of this secluded island, even if it’s just to go on a slightly bigger one – he’ll do it.

He thinks that the woman might mutter another couple of ‘Well’s, but she doesn’t, and he’s glad for it.

Shouta had never gone to a pumpkin patch before. The opportunity never presented itself, and he never went looking for it, either. This means he has no clue what they’re actually doing here. He doesn’t ask, simply watches, because it seems everyone else already has an idea.

After some time, he understands that they’re simply picking pumpkins out – to do what, he doesn’t know. The woman shoots the children wary glances from time to time, but they ignore her easily.

There, not too far from where he stands, Mina and Eijirou try to lift a large pumpkin, its skin dark as a crow instead of orange. He thinks it might be rotten, but then Mina shrieks and pulls him out of his thoughts.

Eijirou falls to the ground, the pumpkin dropping along with him. Shouta freezes from how quickly it all happened, and because he doesn’t understand what’s happening, exactly.

The boy’s eyes widen a fraction. “Hizashi,” his voice cracks awkwardly as he speaks, and then, more urgently, “Hizashi, it’s—Mina, her quirk,”

The girl has her knees pressed down in the grass, her palms facing the sky with a glittering, watery-like fluid leaking out of them, dripping down onto the yellowing grass. Hizashi is at her side in seconds – and everyone stops around them, noticing the ruckus.

Everyone watches. They watch because they can do nothing else as tears spring from Mina’s eyes, her hands trembling. Hizashi can only put his hand on her shoulder and utter comforting words. Eijirou looks at her with scrunched-up eyebrows, guilt painting his face as he stands there unable to help. And then Shouta realizes it.

She’s hurting, hurting terribly because of her ability. He’d read about it in her file, but he had never…

Before he knows it, his eyes sting and become dry as sand. He sees, very faintly, the golden edges of the bright spark his irises produce. His hair lifts up in the air, leaving his neck bare and unprotected from the cold.

Mina is the first to break out of her stupor, turning her head to look at him with her mouth slightly open, gaping.

And then, he blinks.

Chapter Text

Shouta throws his head back as he holds his bottom eyelid down and presses the small bottle between his thumb and index finger, efficiently putting one drop into his left eye. He blinks once, twice, and then repeats the process with his right eye.

The little girl with pinkish skin – made even redder with the cold air – stares at him from afar, with her eyes sparkling, as if Shouta had done something so formidable. And, in a way, he guesses it may look that way for her, but he knows it isn’t, not really.

“Think you’ll be alright?” Hizashi asks, sitting down next to Shouta on the haystack. It’s uncomfortable and the brittle sticks of hay keep poking at their legs and backs, but at least it’s something.

“Yeah,” Shouta replies half-mindedly.

The blond points toward Mina with his chin. She’s finally turned around and gone back to talking with Eijirou and a few others. “You’ve become a real hero to her,”

Shouta scoffs lightly. “A hero,” he repeats. The word feels funny on his tongue, as if he’d forgotten it even existed outside of the commission’s unnecessarily long title: ‘The Hero Public Safety Commission’. And yet, here it is. “I think she was more surprised than anything. I mean, even I was.”

Hizashi doesn’t look convinced. “I think it’s more than that,” he keeps his gaze straight ahead, even when Shouta turns to look at him. “Mina’s been having a lot of trouble with her quirk. They all have, really, but sometimes hers goes off on its own, and it hurts her. Usagiyama and I aren’t… We can’t do much for her when it happens, or anyone. We just have to wait it out.”

And then, there is Shouta. The first to be able to stop her Meta Ability from going berserk. He turns his attention back to the pumpkin field ahead of him and catches Mina glancing his way. Her face reddens and she turns around again in a swift motion, embarrassed.

“I’m glad I was there, then.” Shouta breathes out softly. “A lucky timing,”

The other man hums. “Luck, maybe, or fate. Perhaps something else entirely,” he says. “We’ll never know,” he ends his sentence dramatically, with a hint of humour in his voice that lightens up the heavy atmosphere.

“The commission might be a good guess,” Shouta replies, the corners of his lips churning up.

Hizashi’s face contorts into an overly surprised one, but his smile betrays him. “I never could’ve guessed you were capable of humour,”

Shouta feigns a wounded expression, “I feel hurt to hear this,” he retorts, clenching his fist over his heart as if it had physically pained him. “I’ll have you know I have phenomenal humour, Hizashi,”

And just like that, all the air is knocked out of his lungs. Hizashi looks just as shocked – really shocked this time – and neither of them dares to move even just a quarter of an inch.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean—” Shouta begins saying at the same time as Hizashi utters, “Oh no it’s okay—” and then they both become silent once again.

Without realizing it, Shouta had switched from calling Yamada by his last name to Hizashi. It makes sense, with him being surrounded all day long by people who constantly call him that way, that Shouta would eventually pick up on it. That, and the fact he had dropped formalities just a few days ago.

Right when Shouta goes to apologize again, he and Hizashi speak at the same time. Again.

“Sorry I didn’t mean—”

“It doesn’t bother me—”

Their mouths clamp shut again, and for a moment they can only stare at each other. Hizashi is the first to break into a small laugh.

“It’s alright, everyone calls me that,” he tells him. “Plus, I think it sounds nice when you say it.” Hizashi’s face heats up as he stumbles over his words. “Well, not my name, I mean yes, that, but you know, it’s—”

“Shouta,” the dark-haired man interrupts. Hizashi’s brow furrow at this, and Shouta clears his throat. “You can call me that. Shouta, I mean. So that way it’s fair,”

His heart skips a beat as Hizashi smiles, the other man’s face relaxing around the eyes. “Shouta it is, then,” and indeed it is, because Shouta never wants to go back to having him say Aizawa instead of his first name.

It’s been so long time since he’s had someone call him that. Becoming aware of this fact unsettles him a bit. This uncomfortable feeling forms a pit at the bottom of his stomach, effectively removing all the fluttery butterflies that had been there just a moment before.

There is this question of whether he has crossed a line with this. If he has completely lost all of his professionalism by doing this one seemingly harmless action.

But Hizashi speaks again before Shouta has the time to descend into another tempest of thoughts.

“I think you’ve got yourself a few admirers,” he says. The children have gathered into a small crowd and keep sending glances their way, giggling, and laughing, running around a bit. Usagiyama is there with them too, standing with her arms crossed, and though she tries to put a serious face on, she too, can’t help but smile. “They must’ve been really impressed by your quirk,”

From her spot, Usagiyama jerks her chin towards the lady who runs the place and keeps giving them odd looks. The rabbit-eared woman calls out, “The hell you’re looking at?!” which makes the other lady turn her head around in discomfort. Shouta should feel bad, but he doesn’t.

He hums. “By the way, why do you call them quirks?” Shouta clasps his hands together to warm them up, bringing his arms closer to himself as well.

Hizashi doesn’t seem bothered by the question, to Shouta’s relief. The man had feared it might be another mystery he wouldn’t get an answer to, or worse, a sensitive matter.

“Force of habit, I suppose,” Hizashi explains. “I’ve always preferred it to ‘Meta Abilities’, and I find it a good term for the children to make peace with theirs. Instead of being a burden they have to carry, I try to show them it’s a part of them, something they should love and cherish, you know? Their individuality, their quirk.”

“You’ve come up with this?” Shouta questions. He had never thought of it that way, but he thinks it would make sense that those children might come to face other problems than just their lack of control over their abilities. Like, say, their dislike for them. It would make sense, Shouta thinks, since they’ve all been brought here because of their abilities. Should it not be the sole thing to blame?

And, deeply, Shouta understands. He understands them so very well, especially for this.

“No, no…” The blond waves his hand in front of him dismissively before bringing it back to wrap around his arms again. “It’s an older term – not so old, really – but there aren’t a lot of people using it, not here at least. I think it’s a woman who came up with it when her son began being discriminated against. ‘The Mother of Quirks’. Quite fitting, isn’t it?”

Shouta agrees. Now he kind of wishes they would always use this instead of Meta Abilities. Yet, he doesn’t know if it’s already popular back in the city. He doesn’t see enough people to know, doesn’t read much about what’s going on. When he gets cases, he’s always the first to bring the term up. “I think it’s a lot better – than ‘Meta Abilities’, I mean. I think it’s good.”

Hizashi smiles again, crinkles forming around his emerald eyes. “I do my best with what I have. Though, I’ll admit I wish we could do more for them sometimes. I wish… I could do more.”

There’s a part of Shouta that wants to say, isn’t it like that for everyone? But something tells him there’s more to what Hizashi just said, that it holds more weight than he’s letting on.

“I think there’s always a limit to what we can do, and so, from my perspective, what really matters is doing everything we can do.” He lightly nudges the man’s side with his elbow. “You’ve done a lot for them, so don’t beat yourself up too much. Really, you’re their true hero. Both you and Usagiyama are,”

The children are all rounded up around a pile of pumpkins they’ve built themselves. That seems to be their hint to go and help pick them up, and pay however much it will cost.

“Rumi a lot more than me,” Hizashi replies. “I think if the world had been a little kinder, she’d have made a great hero.” His voice seems distant, but then he blinks, and it’s gone in a moment, so quickly Shouta wonders if it’s his eyes playing tricks on him. “Do your eyes feel better?” The blond asks, as if on cue.

“A bit dry,” Shouta answers honestly. “But I’ll be fine. I forgot for a minute why I never use my Meta Ability anymore,” He’d meant it to come off more as a joke, but instead it makes Hizashi frown.

“Anymore?” he questions, but they’ve already made their way to the energetic group of kids, and now they’re swarmed by questions of whether they can keep all the pumpkins they've found, if it’s alright to bring them back at the house, and a bunch of other phrases overlapping one another.

Thankfully, Usagiyama manages to silence them, and then makes a deal that each can bring back the pumpkins they manage to carry back to the trailer in one go, to which they immediately agree. She gives both men a sideway look, and Shouta isn’t sure if she means ‘get it together’ or ‘is that alright with you two?’, but he’s got a feeling it’s the former.

Mina and Eijirou are set to carry their same huge pumpkin which Mina had dropped earlier, though now she holds it with more confidence. Ochako offers them to use her ability on the pumpkin, to which they both agree, while she settles on a relatively small, yellow-ish one. When Shouta later asks her why she didn’t go with something bigger, she tells him it reminded her of a big Mochi.

Little Izuku carries a medium-sized pumpkin in his arms that seems to be half his weight, the colour a vivid orange. Next to him, Katsuki carries a forest green one about the same size, though he doesn’t seem to struggle nearly as much as the smaller boy.

Each of them have got their own pumpkins, all different in some way. Jirou walks next to Momo when they are stopped along with Shouto by the lady who owns the place. Shouta notices it first and makes his way over to them.

He asks whether there’s a problem, but the lady simply smiles. It seems genuine, this time, and it catches him off guard. She explains to him that she was telling the children how these are the island’s special pumpkins, with their blackened peels. “They’ve got good taste,” she laughs.

It only takes five or ten minutes for all the children to have brought back the pumpkins to the trailer, and it’s Shouta who turns back to the lady to ask for the cost. It was his idea, after all, to promise anything to Katsuki. Plus, he has nothing to do with the money he makes. So why not use it now, he thinks.

Hizashi arrives and tells him there’s no need, that he wouldn’t want Shouta spending his money on this. They quietly bicker about it but are quickly interrupted.

The woman in her green apron waves her hands in front of her. “Take them. I was very rude when you arrived, so take it as my way of saying sorry. You’ll be welcomed here better if you decide to come again next year.”

It’s a generous offer, one they both take gladly. It’s one simple act, but it’s also one person less that holds harmful prejudices against the children, so Shouta is grateful for it.

After everyone is settled in the trailer, with Hizashi holding two thumbs up, Shouta finally enters Usagiyama’s car, in which the seats are a great deal more comfortable than haystacks.

The silver-haired woman gives him a sideway glance, a funny look on her face, as if trying to contain a smile.

“What is it?” Shouta asks when he notices it.

She looks at him once again, and then grins. She presses her back against her seat and changes her voice to a deeper one. “You can call me Shouta, so that way it’s fair,” and then she bursts out laughing.

“You were listening?!” Shouta replies in horror, “And I do not sound like that,”

Usagiyama hums, still with a hint of laughter in her voice. “Sure you do,”

Damn this woman with her rabbit ears, she’d probably heard their entire conversation. Faintly, Shouta wonders if Hizashi knew, or if he forgot while they were talking, too.

Yet, Shouta isn’t mad. He’s not angry. He’d like to be, but the small smile forming on his lips is stronger.

They arrive back at the house in less than twenty minutes. The children place their pumpkins on the side of the staircase gently, and then the rest of the day continues as it normally would.

Eventually, the time to go back to sleep finally comes. The silence settles in Shouta’s room, but with silence always comes something to balance it out. Shouta plays back the last bits of his conversation with Hizashi in his mind, and the way the blond had asked, ‘Anymore?’

This one single word plays over and over in his head, rendering him deaf to the world around him.

Anymore, anymore, anymore, anymore, anymore…

Why don’t you use your ability, anymore?

“It wasn’t always this way,” Shouta mumbles softly before sleep engulfs him entirely.

Kayama’s heels click on the dark marble-tiled floors as she walks the corridors of the highest floor in the building. She thinks back to the faces of the people who’d seen her press the button to the twelfth floor. A woman had stepped back a bit to give her space, and another man had coughed. Most of them had just stared, except one man in a trench coat.

The memory is enough for her to keep her head up high, even though there’s no one watching her now. Really, she’s panicking, but if she lets her emotions get the best of her, it’ll make everything worse.

This place really is just one long corridor, dimly lit and with floors so clean she could probably do her makeup looking at her reflection in them.

It takes enough time to even arrive somewhere with something else other than just walls, floors, and a ceiling that Kayama starts to doubt whether she’s in the right place. She knows – everyone knows – that the Upper Management Council lies on the twelfth floor, and as she rereads over the letter she’d been handed the day before, the number is written there; twelve.

After a bit, she finally arrives in front of a double door. She takes a deep breath and reaches for the golden handles, but there’s a buzzing sound that opens them automatically before her fingers do so much as grazing the metal. Finally, she sees someone. She feels relieved at first, but then her expression falters when she notices she’s seen this woman before.

A tight bun, a too-young-looking face, this same dark blazer, and a matching pencil skirt. It’s the woman who she’d been bold enough to flirt with, and then say she was too young – all in a desperate act to figure out what Aizawa had been sent to do.

There’s a desk placed perpendicularly to another set of wide doors. Her eyes are fixated on her computers, and she only looks up when Kayama stops in front of her awkwardly. The woman blinks when she sees her, her expression turning into one of surprise before her brows furrow.

“What are you doing here?” the lady – secretary? Upper worker? Kayama isn’t quite sure what she actually does – asks, reaching for a clipboard hidden under a pile of files and paperwork.

Now it’s Kayama’s turn to be confused. “I have… an appointment? A meeting—with the Upper Management Council,” it comes out more as a question than a statement. Saying it out loud, she begins to wonder if she’s read the information correctly, and then neither woman is convinced by her words.

Kayama pulls out the paper from the envelope, rereading it quickly and then handing it to the blond. “There, I was given this – just yesterday,”

But this only makes the lady’s frown deepen. “Well, the council isn’t there. I don’t know who gave you this, but it was either a mistake or a bad joke. Plus, I wasn’t informed of anyone—”

Her rambling is interrupted by the dual doors opening, this time unaccompanied by a buzzing or any kind of noise. Instead, an old-looking man holds it open and nods to the secretary-upper-worker-lady.

“It’s fine, Omura, I summoned her here,” he says, and the lady – Omura, as it turns out – looks back and forth between Kayama and the man before sighing and handing back the envelope. The man then nods to Kayama, and she follows behind.

Beyond the other set of doors is another corridor, much shorter than the last. At the end is a vast room emptied of life, with only a long U-shaped desk she supposes is meant for meetings. Well, meetings different than the one Kayama is supposedly attending.

The man rounds the very desk, but Kayama stays in the space between where the corridor ends and the room begins. “I’m guessing you have a lot of questions,” the man stops in front of the back wall entirely made of windows, his back facing her. “Ask away, I’ll do my best to answer them,”

At the very least, he has got that right: Kayama has a hundred questions with no answer to any of them, and yet she knows the man’s offer is not so generous as to spend an entire day answering them all. She does not bother wondering why he is willing to answer her questions, or how he knows. She is too afraid that this might be her only chance, and that it might slip away from her if she is not quick enough to catch it.

“Why was I called here?” She questions sharply. “And who are you? The letter…” She’s still a bit on edge, fearing the man might turn back down on his offer. He doesn’t, thankfully, and keeps quiet for a moment as he tilts his head to the right, deep in thought.

A sly smile spreads on the man’s thin lips, “I suppose that would be a good place to start,” he takes his time turning around and reaching for the seat closest to him, as if there was only that in life: time to waste. Kayama wonders if perhaps she’d been wrong and that the man might indeed take an entire day to answer each and every one of her questions.

Then she realizes that he’s not dawdling, not lingering. He is, as all people do with time, getting old. The man’s hair is thinning, though she doesn’t think he’ll be bald until at least another decade. He moves around and sits slowly as if his back hurt. She guesses by the crinkles around his eyes that he is only a little older than her.

“Let’s start with the simpler things.” he proposes. “My name is Kaya Hisao, and I am a member of the Upper Management Council,” he pauses and joins both his hands together in front of him. “As for the reason you’re here, I think you might already have an idea in mind, but this might help refresh your memory a bit,”

Kayama opens her mouth to say something, she’s not sure what, her eyebrows pressing down against her eyes in a frown, but not a sound comes out. She cannot bring herself to utter a single word, her face draining of all blood, as she hears a voice to her left.

It’s her, right there on a screen that could’ve been mistaken for a wall, white against white. Now it’s been lit up, or perhaps it had been there since she’d walked in and had simply failed to notice it.

None of it matters, though, as she watches herself back in this odd archive room after her work hours had already ended. This same clinking of keys, the small muttering she had thought no one other than herself would hear, “I guess there’s only one way to do this.”

“Sir, I—” Kayama swallows. Suddenly, she does not feel so brave. She regrets having held her head high after her discovery of those unusual cases – the same ones Aizawa had been assigned to – and she thinks for the first time, that she might’ve been better off keeping her head down. “I didn’t mean—I didn’t see—”

The man holds his hand up in the air, noticing Kayama’s struggle. For the life of her, she could not manage to make up a lie, a simple excuse in her head. And even if she did, would it even work?

“You don’t need to deny anything, I’m already aware you’ve read the files.”

“Just one, sir,” Kayama can’t explain it, doesn’t know why she doesn’t keep her lips pressed tight. It’s so out of the blue.

One moment, she’d been trying to come up with a convincing lie, and the next she starts blurting out everything she’s had to keep her mouth shut about for the past few days, during all those sleepless nights. She feels this irrepressible need to come clean about everything she knows but shouldn’t.

“You see,” she says, “My friend, his name is Aizawa, he’s been sent on this mission and—” Maybe Kayama is trying to justify her actions, or to find an excuse. Less for the man in front of her, with eyes so blue he might look blind on a sunny day, and more for herself.

Shockingly, turning on a company one has worked under for over two decades is not proving to be so easy.

When she finishes, Kayama holds her breath, waiting for the inevitable. The man doesn’t say a thing. She thinks, maybe, that he might’ve stopped listening halfway through. But after a minute of silence, of deep, heavy breaths, in and out, the man lays his hand flat against the table gently.

“Mrs. Nemuri,” he begins. “You currently have many accusations against you, all of which I have proof of. Among them, theft of confidential documents, fraud, the breaking and entering of an authorized place whilst using keys that did not belong to you… And there is more I’m not naming.”

There is nothing Kayama can say to defend herself, then. All the evidence is there, laid out in front of her. Or well, on a screen to her left.

There is something wrong with this conversation, though. A hole, something missing. A flaw.

“Are you going to fire me, then?” Kayama asks. “Or get me arrested?”

“Neither.” The man replies curtly. “If I’d wanted you fired, you would have been days ago, and we wouldn’t be here having this conversation,”

Kayama doesn’t get it. It’s always them, the commission, spitting words that mean nothing, and lead nowhere, but the speeches are so odd and plain that people start to think they must’ve been the ones not listening well enough. Words, words, words, all tossed out in sentences. But in the end, no one ever says what they really mean, and Kayama still understands nothing.

“Then what about the accusations? Wouldn’t the council—”

“The council,” the aging man cuts, “has not been made aware of this meeting. I believe it would be best if we kept things that way,” he throws a sharp look her way. “As for the accusations, they are from me only, but I won’t do anything about them unless I am left with no other choice.”

This should have been enough to relieve Kayama, at least enough for her to let go of the breath she’d been holding. It should have been enough, yet both adults keep staring at each other in deep, uneasy silence, with Kayama clenching her fist behind of back.

“Why?” Kayama utters. It’s so far from her usual loud and harsh voice,  she feels as though she were a child. The man cannot be so much older than her, but something about him, his eyes or the crinkles on his forehead, tells her he has seen much, too much, in his life.

“I’ve read your file. You have children, don’t you?” he says. “We have this in common, so I understand how it is. What would happen if you were suddenly fired, if you’d get arrested, if you’d simply disappear, leaving no trace behind?”

Kayama’s throat goes very dry at those last few words. It does not feel so out of place, she thinks, for the commission to take the necessary lengths to make sure people never speak of the things they never should have seen to begin with.

Still, she finds it in her to swallow. “What does this have to do with anything?

“Mrs. Nemuri,” the man begins, seemingly uncertain how to turn his thoughts into a coherent sentence. He licks his lips twice before he continues. “The reason I have called you here today is to offer you a chance,”

“A chance?” She repeats, her frown deepening.

“Yes, a chance,” he replies, perhaps confusing her puzzlement for curiosity. “This meeting, as well as all the events of the previous days, will remain between the two of us. Forgotten, as if they’d never happened in the first place. All I ask from you in return is that you do the same.” He looks at her long with his pale blue eyes. “Forget what you’ve seen, speak of it to no one, and stop looking into things that do not concern you.” And then, softly. “Please, it is not worth it.”

He sounds genuine, and his face is pleading. Kayama offers him a quiet smile, then nods. “Of course,”

The man mimics her expression and slides his hand inside his coat, taking out an envelope. “I have received this letter for you. The content does not worry me – forgive me, I’ve already opened it, a simple precaution, I’m sure you understand – but I trust you to never send anything to this address again,”

“Of course,” Kayama says again, her smile slipping one moment before she catches it again the next. She extends her hand and wraps her hand around it, waiting for the man to let go of the envelope.

Her feet have led her halfway to the doorframe when the Higher-Up speaks again.

“Oh and, Mrs. Nemuri?” he says, standing up. “Take your day off, I hear it’s your birthday today,” he offers, glancing at the letter in her hands.

Kayama’s mouth hangs open, then, and it takes her two, three seconds to get her mouth to move again. “Thank you, sir,” she nods politely and heads off her way.

There is no name on the envelope, no need for one, only the return address, and Kayama knows exactly who sent it. The woman is in her forties, but she still celebrates her birthday every year.

And she already has. That is, six months ago.

Chapter Text

“We have to cut them open?!” Shrieks a horrified Ochako.

“That’ll totally kill them,” adds Denki with a sombre expression on his face, making everyone’s eyes widen a fraction more.

To Shouta’s defence, he had not known suggesting doing something with the pumpkins – ‘We could carve them,’ he had said, foolishly – would cause such panic. It had definitely been the wrong thing to do. These children are, after all, exactly this. Children.

Yaoyorozu raises her hand shyly, though this is an open conversation. “I—I don’t think you can kill pumpkins..” she mumbles, and Shouta is grateful for it, but it doesn’t seem to do much to appease the others.

“But if we leave them there, they’ll end up rotting anyways,” Hitoshi remarks.

Twelve pairs of eyes turn to him in sync, waiting for an answer. Will they die? Will they rot? Shouta doesn’t actually know, to their disappointment. He had never even carved a pumpkin before. Though, he remembers hearing people talk about it when he was younger. It had sounded fun then, and a little less now, but he had thought it might have been enjoyable for the kids.

How wrong he’d been.

Shouta stands up from the couch and announces he’s going back to sleep. “But Mr. Aizawa, it’s only 8:00,” Tsuyu says. The girl doesn’t look shy, not like Yaoyorozu. Nor introverted, like Shouto. She seems only to never be bothered much by whatever happens around her. “In the morning,” she adds, pointing out the window to the sun still rising.

“What are you lot talking about?” Hizashi asks, a smile on his face, unwavering as he scans the room. He only seems amused by everyone’s mixed emotions.

“The pumpkins,” Shouta sighs, hoping it explains everything.

“The pumpkins?” Hizashi repeats, the beginning of a frown starting to form on his forehead.

The boy with the glasses and the blue hair – Tenya, Shouta’s mind supplies – grabs the back of the couch he’s on, up on his knees. “Hizashi, is it truly necessary for us to decapitate these vegetables?”

“They’re fruits,” Katsuki corrects, scrunching up his nose, and all the eight-year-olds glance at one another, shrugging. Soon enough, Hizashi speaks again and catches their attention (to Shouta’s misery) back onto the main subject.

The blond man clasps his hands together. “Oh carving you mean?” and then he notices the horror on their faces at the mention of the deadly word. “What? What’s wrong with carving?”

“It’s just—It’ll totally ruin them,” Denki explains, and a few nods rise around him.

Hizashi then asks if any of them know what carving pumpkin actually means. Katsuki goes to open his mouth again but clamps it back close as he scrunches up his eyebrows together.

“Basically, it’s kind of like…decorating them – making them even prettier, more unique.” This is how Hizashi attempts to describe the whole thing. “You can make silly shapes inside, or drawings, or just a face, so that it looks like a head. After we’re all done, we can put candles in them,”

“Like a lantern?” Izuku asks quietly, though everyone holds their breaths at the rare sound of his voice that it echoes throughout the room. The green-haired boy is the only one who seems not to notice.

“Yes, like a lantern,” Hizashi answers, a soft smile on his lips, and the crinkles around his eyes softening ever so slightly. Shouta, too, feels his muscles relax a fraction.

The idea doesn’t sound nearly as frightening to the kids as it might have been ten minutes ago. Shouta can’t go to sleep now, it had been his idea, after all. Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything, he thinks, but then he sees how their eyes have changed from anxious to excited, and he can’t bring himself to believe this was wholly a bad thing.

Usagiyama is more than happy to help when it comes to emptying out the pumpkins. She’s much better at this than she is at cooking, Yaoyorozu later tells him, and Shouta agrees.

It’s a frightening sight to watch a dozen children wave knives in the air, held tight between their tiny fingers. Shouta is the only one who seems worried about this, though, and the other adults assure him there is no danger.

At one point, he tries to help Denki, who is – or seems – to be struggling. He stabs his yellowed pumpkin in a rather violent manner, but Shouta has seen the boy before, he has seen him play and laugh and he doesn’t think Denki is a violent child. No, this is only frustration taken out on a poor pumpkin.

“Here, let me—” Shouta goes to grab the knife’s handle – the wrong decision, as it turns out – and as much as he’s been trying to be gentle, the boy startles.

His palm barely makes contact with the object, and it only grazes Denki’s skin, but the shock is so spontaneous, so rapid, his body feels the burn before his mind realizes what’s going on.

Metal conducts electricity, a mocking voice in his head supplies. Shouta draws his hand back quickly, a hiss slipping past his teeth. Denki’s head turns around with eyes wide and apologetic. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t—”

“Don’t,” Shouta doesn’t mean to make his reply come out so harsh, his hand still wrapped in a fuzzy, fizzling blanket of electricity. “It’s—I wasn’t careful, don’t apologize.”

The boy looks as if he wants to say more, and apologize again maybe, but he stays quiet instead. A few ears have strained to hear better, and eyes have turned their way. Shouta sees it – he feels it – and he knows Denki does too because the child keeps changing the way he sits.

He stares down at the knife in his hand, his hold on it loosening a bit. The fun Shouta had seen on all the children’s faces at the mention of pumpkin lanterns flickers away slowly, replaced by guilt.

Around them, on the long rectangular table draped by a navy blue cloth, smiles, and giggles. Here, next to Shouta, Denki’s own bubble grows, and it is a sad sight that only he seems to be witnessing.

Flexing the muscles in his right hand, the one who’d suffered the shock, Shouta looks at the small, reddened spot on his skin, and does his best to ignore it. Then, he crouches down next to Denki and holds his hand out again.

“It’s alright,” he says, “we all make mistakes sometimes, don’t let yourself be defeated by them.” Denki stares at him, eyes big and round. He nods. Shouta offers to help him out, to which the boy agrees.

When Shouta asks what Denki had in mind, the boy tells him; “The cat, Maple. Hitoshi likes her a lot, so I thought…” The man nods. An attempt to befriend Hitoshi, then. “But she keeps moving around and I can’t get the shape right.”

Well, truthfully, Shouta is the farthest thing from an artist – or anything to do with creativity – but he’s not going to tell Denki that. So he tries his best to align Denki on the right path, or if not the right one, at least a better one. One that doesn’t include stabbing.

The night is cold outside, and it’s only been a few hours since the children have finished carving their pumpkins. Shouta is by the sink in the kitchen, washing his hands under cool water again to help with the burn on his palm. He’s experienced a few spasms in his hand all afternoon, but it’s starting to happen less frequently.

Hizashi walks into the kitchen and opens the cabinets near Shouta to grab a cup. The blond must have caught a glimpse of Shouta’s hand because he inhales sharply in compassion. “How’d you get that?”

“Electricity,” Shouta says. “And metal,” he turns the faucets off and dries his hands on the nearest towel.

“Not a good combination, indeed,” Shouta moves out of the way to let Hizashi fill his glass of water, going to sit at the small island counter with the three stools. On his first day here, Shouta could’ve never guessed something like this would grow to feel so normal. “By the way, this came in for you earlier today,”

A letter. An answer, Shouta knows, to his previous report. Hizashi places it on the counter and Shouta can only stare at it, the bold letters glaring back at him. Slowly, he moves his hand to take it. He drags his thumb under the flap that’s keeping the envelope closed and rips it in a very not-so-neat matter. He could not care less.

Hero Public Safety Commission, Upper Management Council

 

After reading your last report, the council has begun questioning whether you neglect your work and duty. Your report was considerably short, half the length of your average reports.

Must we remind you that this is an incredibly important case? We have put our trust in your hands and have deemed your judgement best for this peculiar assignment. We expect longer and more detailed information in your next report, with your usual unbiased and rational trail of thought.

Do not deceive us, or else you should find yourself released of your duties.

 

Upper Management Council

Shouta let out an exasperated sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. He had known, even whilst writing it, even as he was posting it with Usagiyama, that it was not enough.

But he’d had little Shouto on his mind, and he’d been so preoccupied about not writing some bits of information that he’d ended up not writing enough, and thus coming off just as suspicious.

No, not suspicious. He doesn’t think the Commission finds him suspicious; there is nothing to prove this, not yet, but they are getting impatient. He knows, now, with their threat of releasing him of his duties.

“Bad news?” Hizashi asks, placing a glass of water in front of Shouta.

“No, just some annoying ones,” Shouta replies, thanking Hizashi for the water. He puts the paper back into the envelope, making a mental note to throw it away when he gets the chance.

The hanging lights overhead flicker once, but neither men notice, or if they do, they don’t show it. The faint sound of raindrops hitting the windowsills fills the place and gives them something to focus on instead of loud, late-night thoughts. But this might just be Shouta.

“Thank you, by the way,” Hizashi tells him after a bit of sitting there. “I know I’ve told you already, but I think… The children, they’ve been really surprised – no, not surprised.” He waits, thinking with his eyes scrutinizing the tiny crevices in the counter’s marble as if they might give him an answer. “Relieved, I think, since what happened at the pumpkin patch,”

Shouta swallows his sip of water. “Don’t mention it,” Truly, this must be possibly one of the last things he wants to talk about right now. It had been fine the other day, when the events were still fresh, but now his eyes are dryer than ever and he doesn’t want to think about it.

“Really, they were impressed,” Hizashi’s smile is audible through his voice, and Shouta doesn’t need to see it – still staring down at the envelope sitting in front of him – to know that it’s there. “I think they might start to like you more than me,”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Shouta takes another sip of water.

“No, really, you’re kind of their hero now—”

“Stop,” Shouta places the glass of water down, a clink echoing as the glass hits the marble. “Stop, just,” he takes in a sharp breath. “I’m tired, I should go already,”

Shouta gets up first, getting off his stool and turning to head towards the door. Right behind him, Hizashi does too.

The blond opens his mouth to say something, and it’s as if his mind had been quicker than his mouth, and he hadn’t really planned anything to say. Shouta feels him searching for words behind him, until he finally settles on a small, “Sorry,” and then, “I didn’t mean—I don’t…” he trails off.

“It’s not you, I…” Shouta turns around and sees Hizashi standing there, uncertain whether he should sit down or stay up. “It’s the commission, I just need to sleep it off. It’ll be better after I get some rest,” the lie slips so easily past his tongue, Shouta almost believes it.

Hizashi’s scrunched-up expression softens at that, and he nods. “Goodnight, then.”

“Goodnight,” and off Shouta is, to his room and squeaky – yet incredibly soft – bed, where he knows he will not get a wink of sleep.

It is a Tuesday. Wonderful, raining, middle-of-the-week-ish kind of day, and Kayama is free to do whatever she wants.

‘Take your day off’ and do what? Her wife is at school, teaching, and her two little ones are at school, too, learning. As for Kayama, she is on her way down, standing still in the emptied elevator. It feels rather odd to be alone here at this time, so early in the morning.

She steps off into the lobby, with the dark pillars holding the ceiling and made of the same material as the floor tiled with dark marble. It’s a grand entrance, but it’s empty for the most part – except for a man sitting on one of the green couches, and the few receptionists.

The doors are heavy and tall. Kayama has to put all her weight into them to push them open. She’s barely out the door when someone calls after her.

“Excuse me—Ma’am?” It’s a man, much out of breath even though he’s barely had to run ten steps to get to her. When Kayama turns around, she feels she’s already seen him somewhere, but she can’t quite put her finger on it.

As she keeps trying to remember where she might’ve seen him before, she doesn’t notice the man – probably around her age – is handing a piece of paper to her.

“I think you dropped this,” It’s the envelope, the one with the wing already ripped open because of the Upper Management Council’s distrust of her.

Kayama’s eyes flicker to the envelope and then back to the guy. She reaches for the paper, but the man doesn’t let go.

“The elevator,” she mumbles.

“Sorry?” The guy responds, offering an awkward smile.

“And then in the lobby, on the green couch,” she continues, a bit louder this time. “I’ve seen you here today. Twice. You don’t work here, do you?” and then a thought strikes her, and her eyes widen a fraction. “Oh my God, are you following me? Did they send you to spy on me because of this?!”

She must sound hysterical, she knows, judging from the way the man’s smile has fallen from his lips, replaced by a confused look. A few people walking by have started looking their way, all holding their umbrellas close in case it starts raining again. It always does.

“For fucks sake, calm down, I wasn’t spying—and who is ‘them’?” he motions his hand in front of him to tell her to lower her volume. He lets out an annoyed sigh, a click of a tongue, and then turns back to her. “Listen, you’re right, I—”

“So you were spying,” Kayama cuts in

“Listen. Yes, I was”—he continues quickly, in a whisper, before she can interrupt him again— “But it’s not what you think,” she raises an eyebrow at that, and he sighs once more. “Look, I think we can help each other out,”

Kayama rips the envelope from his hands and gives him a sharp look. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but I’m not getting myself into more trouble than I already have. I’m done.” And with this, she turns back to walk to where she parked her car.

But, of course, the irritating man follows after her, once again getting out of breath. “I don’t believe that—or else, why would you keep this?” he glances at the envelope in her hands.

Kayama stuffs the letter inside her coat pocket. “It’s a fucking birthday card,” It’s not, but she remembers the man wishing her happy birthday because of Aizawa’s letter, so she guesses something in there must have something to do with it.

“It’s your birthday?” he asks, frowning.

“Yes,” she answers.

“You lie badly,”

Kayama turns around swiftly. “And you, are starting to get on my fucking nerves,” she snaps. She doesn’t like raising her tone, but she will not hesitate to do so when angered. “So tell me what you want now or fuck off,”

“Information—I need information,” the man blurts out. The woman gives him a deadpan look. He swallows. “About the commission, but I can’t tell you more than that if I’m not sure I can trust you,”

She scoffs. “I’m not the one who needs your help,”  

“Actually, I think you do,” he holds her gaze, and Kayama doesn’t reply. “You doubt the commission, don’t you? There’s something off, and you’ve noticed. That’s why they’ve got their eyes on you,”

Taken aback, Kayama can only gape for a moment. Is that it? Is this man a spy working for the commission, trying to figure out whether or not she should be fired, or worse.

Yet, she can’t quite bring herself to believe that. He seems too genuine, too invested, just like she is, to be acting. “How do you—”

“My name is Tsukauchi Naomasa,” he cuts in, his eyes softening a fraction. “I work for the police, and I’ve been investigating on the commission for… over a year now, but I can’t do much more by myself,”

This… Is a lot bigger than Kayama had imagined. The police? What the hell did she get herself into? And even so, as fear and a pang of panic strikes her, she feels no desire to back down, to be done with all of it. It finally feels, somehow, like all those years working at her desk might show useful for something bigger.

Something that matters.

“Okay, okay.” Kayama takes a deep breath, looking around. It feels as though everyone might be listening in on their conversation, eavesdropping where they shouldn’t, even though no one is even looking their way, their eyes either glued to their phones or the clouds above getting darker, heavier. “I’ll tell you everything I know, and you tell me everything you know.”

“Not here,” he says, mimicking Kayama and looking around. She has a feeling he’s used to being on edge like that, to always looking around, searching for something, or someone. “I know a place,”

And so Kayama accepts to take them there with her car, because like this she’ll know if the place turns out to be a sketchy one. He gives her direction, and from time to time, she catches a glance of his face.

He looks so tired, with bags under his eyes that makes her wince in sympathy. She guesses she doesn’t look so much better, having had her sleep ruined the past few days. Though she’s glad that Fuyumi was able to rest, seeing as she probably hasn’t been having it easy since the news about her brother…

In a few days, she’d gone from a got-it-all-together woman to an on-the-verge-of-being-unemployed-or-worse woman. But it feels right, somehow, and she’s worked on enough cases to know when something needs justice. Now, sitting with the guy – Tsukauchi? – it feels like she can truly bring change.

Looking at him, he reminds her of Aizawa. Maybe that’s why she feels she can trust him.

Chapter Text

HERO PUBLIC SAFETY COMMISSION
Report #3 Orphanage Yawarageru, Nabu Island

Aizawa Shouta

===

 

I do solemnly, sincerely, and truly declare and affirm that the content of this report shall be the truth. I understand any falsehood will bring unwanted consequences and could result in my dismissal.

After having been here for three weeks, I believe I may finally be able to give a deeper description of the children and their current state. To this, I add that I have yet to see or notice anything that would require the closing of the orphanage.

Shouta lifts his pen from the paper, slumping back into his chair. His eyes land on the last note the Commission sent him a few days ago, and the twelve files piled up on one another. He knows what he needs to write, what the Upper Management Council wants, but it feels so personal now, somehow. It shouldn’t, but it does anyways.

‘Do not deceive us, or else you should find yourself released of your duties.’ He reads over the sentence twice and then picks up his pen again.

Midoriya Izuku, as I have stated in previous reports, is incredibly quiet. He does not speak unless spoken to, and even then he passes on the message to his friend, Katsuki. His introversion seems to be caused by a fear of interaction, especially when he is required to speak out loud. There are times when I have noticed him break out of this habit, but they are unpredictable. My theory is that this might have something to do with his father being a highly dangerous villain. But other than this, he lives well and has begun participating more in group activities.

Bakugou Katsuki, a bright child. He has a loud personality, and difficulty expressing what he feels. I would have guessed that the loss of both his parents at such a young age would have pushed him to isolate himself, but instead, he leads the group, and the time he has left, he spends with Izuku. They share a room – I forgot to mention this in my last report. I was able to visit it, and all seemed to be in order. Yamada informed me that they had been the ones to request this adjustment and that a room remains empty for them to go back to if they ever changed their mind. In addition to this, he does incredibly well with the schoolwork he is given. As for his Meta Ability, I have yet to see him use it.

Ashido Mina is an energetic girl, full of passion that fuels her peers with more positive energy. I have noticed that, when the children play games, she can quickly solve problems and avoid conflict, whether she does it consciously or not. Just a few days ago, an incident happened where she lost control of her Meta Ability, Acid. The chemical component seems to burn her skin and leak at times when it accumulates in quantities too grand (she is still a child), a default where her body did not properly adjust to her ability. Of course, all ended well, but it is incidents like these that make me think better tools could be used to help children like her.

Yaoyorozu Momo is intelligent and keeps mostly to herself. Lately, I have seen her open up more around others – such as Kyouka – and I believe this will do her good. I admit that I have yet to truly grasp how her Meta Ability works since I have never seen it for myself. When I asked her about it, she didn’t quite seem to know how to explain it. Early in the mornings, she likes to make herself tea and sometimes make some for others. We have had a few discussions during those moments, and I believe this trust she has is a good sign that she is adapting well to the events she has gone through when she was younger. ‘Meta Ability Trafficking’ is a recent term that is only starting to get recognized, but she is undoubtedly a victim of it.

Jirou Kyouka is truly talented and shows great creativity, but her self-consciousness holds her back. I believe this is directly linked to the major accident related to her Meta Ability, and the reason why she does not use it. A week before, I believe, she played to me on her guitar a song that she had written herself. A clumsy, yet beautiful piece. I had not thought much more of it until recently when I heard her play again – not a rare thing since I usually hear her play quite often – but this time there were other people with her. In the beginning, I only saw her speak to Yaoyorozu a handful of times, but now the two seem to have gotten closer, and Kaminari Denki often spends time with her as well.

Kaminari Denki is quite energetic. I see him move around a lot, talking to pretty much everyone. He struggles with his schoolwork, but Yamada is doing what he can to help him. His Meta Ability seems to be linked with his feelings or emotions. When he gets surprised, a few shocks might zap around him, putting static in the air, but he always uses it unintentionally. He experiences panic attacks often, Yamada told me, and it gets hard to calm him because he unconsciously puts up a sort of ‘field’ around him, shocking everyone who gets too near.

Asui Tsuyu. Frankly, I am not sure if she is asocial, or simply uninterested in friendships. I believe it might be a mix of both, but it is hard to tell because of how little I have seen her interact with others or have interacted with myself. She does not hesitate to say what is on her mind, but I think her Meta Ability being a mutation of a frog might be the reason why she has a hard time fitting in. She is one of the only children here with a mutant-type ability along with Tenya, and although the others have never made a comment on it, she might still feel left out.

Shinsou Hitoshi is a complex case. He is very hard to read and prefers to spend his time alone, and he has yet to open up to me. He spends most of the day with a cat, as I’ve learned he enjoys its company quite a lot. I do wonder if he gets enough sleep, but it is hard to know as all the children go to bed at the same, reasonable hour. I have not seen him use his Meta Ability since my first day here, but it did not seem to require him any visible effort, or none that I have noticed. I believe more human interaction would help him get more comfortable around others.

Iida Tenya has surprised me quite a lot with his very mature attitude. He is a good leader, often able to get everyone in order, and shows great intelligence. I see him most frequently with Ochako, and although they seemed to be an odd match at first, their personalities complete each other. I have never seen him use his Meta Ability, but the engines do cause him some trouble when it comes to finding clothes that fit. He usually opts for shorts, but winter might be an issue.

Kirishima Eijirou fits right into the crowd and is, quite honestly, easy to miss. Although, once I’d started taking notice of him, I saw him everywhere, jumping from group to group, and most of all, following Mina. I think he respects her quite a lot, maybe for her easiness around other people, but the feeling is mutual. Yamada has told me that during most of Mina’s episodes where she would lose control of her acid, he would use his Meta Ability and harden his skin to let her grip his hands for comfort. He has a big heart, and with Mina’s help, I think he will be able to overcome his shyness with time.

Uraraka Ochako, compared to the other children, has had no trouble opening up to me. When I first arrived, she used her ‘Float’ ability to help carry my suitcase, although she looked rather pale afterward. I have not seen her use it since. She loves mochi, I’ve learned later, but more than that she prefers sharing them. She talks a lot and never runs out of energy, but she also holds deep empathy and compassion for others. I do wonder if the incident that caused her parents' death might not have been ‘blocked’ in her mind: if she has forgotten it or if she simply deals with it well.

Shouta’s pen hovers over the paper. He does not know how to begin this last part, does not know what to say – and what not to say, though he would never admit to omitting information – and does not think he knows enough to say anything at all. But he has to, and so, slowly he starts writing again.

Todoroki Shouto, lastly. He does not talk much, and he doesn’t seem to enjoy participating in group activities. One thing, he does not show his feelings much. I have never seen him with anything other than a blank face, but I know that this is a sign of something hidden deeper, like trauma. As for his Meta Ability, I have read that he has two, but unfortunately, I have never seen him use either of them.

This is all I have to say for now. I hope it will be to your satisfaction.

Best regards,

 

Aizawa Shouta

Kayama taps the tip of her shoes against her worn mat, closing the door behind her. She still doesn’t know why she trusts this odd ‘I work for the police’ man, and she’s starting to think maybe she had overestimated how great this investigation would be.

“So this ‘place’ you were talking about was really just… Your place?” Kayama looks around taking a few steps toward the cluttered room. There are papers scattered everywhere. A bunch of them are pinned on a pinboard, but then it spreads on the walls, entirely covering the one to her right. The man had probably lacked the space. Wool strings travel from picture to picture, to post-its, and documents. “My God, how do you live here?”

In front of her, Tsukauchi drops his coat on a small brown couch, and Kayama opts to keep it in her arms. He seems unphased by the sight of the place. Clearly, he’s the man behind this mess.

“I like to call it ‘organized disorder’,” he says proudly.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where the ‘organized’ part is. Everything seems to be so randomly placed. Kayama approaches one of the pictures on the wall while Tsukauchi roams around, looking for something. Yeah, she doesn’t think it’s all that organized after all.

Her fingers graze the picture, a blurry figure opening a door, their face turned slightly towards the camera. She squints, trying to get a better look.

“There it is!” Tsukauchi calls out, triumphant. Kayama turns around, suddenly feeling like she’s intruding, but the man doesn’t seem to mind. Or notice. He holds an open file in his hand, quickly flipping the pages. His face settles into a more serious one, and then he hands the folder to Kayama, keeping his thumb to hold it open on a specific page.

“All for One,” she mutters under her breath, frowning. She takes the file in her hand and reads the content of the page quickly.

A man, apparently, whose only picture is a low-quality, blurry picture in the top right corner of the file. Multiple quirks, stolen, somehow. Everything over the span of multiple decades. A dangerous villain that can’t seem to be stopped or caught.

“What is all of this?” Kayama grimaces. It sounds so – improbable. Impossible. But she knows also that a lot of things did a few days ago, like the thought of the commission hiding her wife’s younger brother – much, much younger.

“Turn the page,” Tsukauchi tells her, slumping into the couch. Kayama purses her lips, and then she takes the space next to the man on the couch.

She turns the page, and she is met with the sight of a child. She’s seen him before, she thinks, but she can’t quite remember where. Midoriya Izuku, it says. Pale face, freckles on his cheeks, and emerald-coloured eyes sunken with dark circles.

The villain’s son. She doesn’t believe it.

“I don’t understand,” Kayama says, rereading it to see if she missed something, and then finally looking up to Tsukauchi.

“I didn’t either, for a while.” Tsukauchi gets up and walks up to the center of the wall, where the pinboard is now buried under all the papers. “But this—” he taps his finger onto a picture, one she realizes is actually the Villain guy, All for One. “—this, is the center of everything,”

Kayama gives him a deadpan stare and lifts an eyebrow. “An overpowered guy?”

“Yes, and no,” he replies. He moves to a different board with more pictures than documents this time, and gestures towards it. Bright clothes, high-quality photos. Heroes. “All those so-called ‘heroes’ that have been popping up recently, don’t you think it’s weird? They’re not just vigilantes that the commission lets do as they please,”

“‘Hero Public Safety Commission’, it’s kind of the point,” Kayama retorts, wishing he would stop with his unclear explanation and finally say what he means. “The commission hires heroes to protect the public. I thought this was obvious enough,”

Tsukauchi snaps his finger and closes his hand into a fist as if catching her words in his palm. “But how?” he asks, and although the eyebags under his eyes look even darker in the unlit room, he does not look defeated.

Kayama frowns. Her gaze darts towards the board behind Tsukauchi, finally taking the time to really look at it, beyond just the pictures themselves. She gets up from the couch and makes her way beside the man, her eyes still glued to the wall.

The detective – she assumes that’s what he is, working for the police and having his place in such a state tells her enough – takes this as his cue to continue. “Have you ever asked yourself how and where these people have to go to become heroes? How come they’re so good, right away?”

“There’s got to be a floor for that,” out of twelve floors of the commission’s building, there must be enough space for it. There are buildings much higher, but theirs is wide.

“Wouldn’t you know?” Tsukauchi responds, a hint of humour in his voice. She’s not sure if he’s making fun of her, or if he’s just… Very enthusiastic about having someone to share his research with. The latter is more likely.

“I don’t know,” he says. “And I still don’t get it,”

And it’s true, Kayama doesn’t know. She feels embarrassed suddenly because for as long as she’s worked for the commission, in the same building, she’s never bothered to wonder what else could have been on the different floors. She’d always assumed it must have been something like the floor she works on, copies of it. Perhaps this had been her first mistake.

Tsukauchi takes a more serious tone.  

“The Commission wants us to believe that most of what’s happening is just random – accidents, disasters, opportunities… Everything.” 

Isn’t it what it is? She wants to ask. What Tsukauchi implies sounds absurd, even to her. It should be hard to believe, but a part of her already does. And she hates it, because then it means she’s wasted years of her life working inside a corrupted organization, and it’s killing her.

“So what? You think they planned all of this?” Kayama points to a picture of a building collapsing, a closeup of the rubble pinned next to it. Then to an incident, and a picture of a person she doesn’t know. She points out everything, filled up with sudden and inexplicable rage. “You think they caused all those incidents, that they’re sending out villains and bringing in heroes to fight each other?”

Tsukauchi shakes his head, putting his hand on the board, as if blocking it from her view, unsuccessfully. He doesn’t seem bothered by her wave of anger, but instead understanding.

“I think they’re getting scared,” he says.

Of all the things Kayama had expected him to say, this was not one of them. One unwritten rule, a certainty that no one ever questions, is that the Commission is never scared.

“They haven’t caught this guy,” Tsukauchi tilts his chin to the single picture of All for One. “And they can’t, they don’t have the resources to do it. If the public were to know about that, it would only be a matter of time before they started to doubt the Commission.” He goes back to the spot with multiple pictures of heroes. “So the Commission uses heroes to give this sense of security to the citizens, but the truth is, the commission is starting to get overwhelmed, and they’re trying to hide it.”

Kayama’s eyes follow intently the man’s gestures, and all the subtle pictures he points to, the post-its blending in. Maybe it is organized after all. Only a little though.

Sitting at her desk all day, she had never questioned or wondered much about how the commission dealt with the high crime rate. It’s a universal phenomenon, no country is immune to it. But lately, when watching TV with Fuyumi, she had noticed there had been more incidents and attacks happening than before.

Tsukauchi finally lets his hand slip from the board and looks at Kayama. “By the time the older heroes have become reasonably strong, the newer generations already surpass them, and so do the criminals. The crime rate keeps increasing, and people are getting more powerful, more unstable. But the commission can’t keep waiting. So, they try to fight fire with fire, with powers even stronger and unmatched,”

Realization hits her. “Children,” Kayama whispers under her breath. She stares at the boy’s picture – Izuku, his name is – and his sad eyes. “They’re using children,” She can’t seem to tear her eyes away now. “How—”

“Think about it. What’s the one thing the commission has complete control over?”

“The orphanages,” the words fall easily from her tongue, leaving a bitter taste in her mouth. It seems so obvious now. How had she missed it before? She turns to Tsukauchi, as if asking for an answer, but he has already told her everything.

Scanning the board now and taking a step back to fully take everything in, Kayama wonders who could have had such a horrifying idea. The thought of her own children having no one left and then maybe being picked up by the commission and turned into some sort of… weapon – it could be anyone.

 “Why are you telling me all this?” Kayama mumbles. Her mind is so full and so empty at the same time. She has too many thoughts in her head, each overlapping one another until it’s all blurry. Why is she here? Why can’t she go back to how easy it all was before? Why—

“Because the commission is slipping,” he glances at the envelope sticking out of Kayama’s pocket, “and we might have found just the thing to prove our case.”

The first rays of the sun will not show until another hour, but Shouta’s mind cannot be put back to sleep. He sits hunched over the report he’d just written, rereading it. He’d been looking for grammar mistakes at first, but then he’d noticed something.

It is so strange, because Shouta is the one who has written those words, and yet he is only seeing this pattern now.

…As for his Meta Ability, I have yet to see him use it…

…an incident … lost control of her Meta Ability…

…have yet to truly grasp how her Meta Ability works…

Shouta rises from his seat slowly, his eyes boring into the words. He looks at them so long, reads them over so many times, that he begins to wonder whether this is his handwriting, or a stranger’s.

But he remembers sitting here and drawing each character out, remembers thinking about what to say about each child. He walks to the door, his eyes still glued on the sheets in his hands. They’ll get all crumpled like this, but this is the last of his worries.

…major accident related to her Meta Ability … does not use it…

… always uses it unintentionally…

…Meta Ability being a mutation … hard time fitting in…

The stairs creak as he walks them down quickly. For once, Shouta knows exactly what he needs to verify. He doesn’t need to find or look for a path to follow – he already has, and it’s been under his nose this entire time.

Meta Abilities, and children. With each new generation, people seem to complain about how much of an issue they’re going to be, but no one ever does anything. The thing is, there is nothing to do. People can only learn to adapt.

Shouta had thought the children had been avoiding using their Abilities because of their pasts, and all the terrible things that had happened to them. But that can’t be true, not anymore. He thinks back on his first day here. It seems so far in his mind.

Hitoshi had been the first, asking Momo a question and then using his Ability. He hadn’t been doubtful, no one had seemed to find it strange to see him use it. “Point to where she is,” The boy holding Maple says, and so she does.

Then it had been Kyouka. He had not seen her, but she had surely plugged her earphones to listen more closely. “I knew they were coming; I should’ve told you.”

And again with Ochako carrying Shouta’s suitcase.

“You shouldn’t—You shouldn’t do that,” he tells her, pulling his suitcase upward. She frowns. “Your meta ability,”

She seems confused by what he’s telling her – or trying to – which confuses him in return.

He had thought the confusion had come from the term, Meta Ability. But maybe that hadn’t been the case. Right from the beginning, he had got everything wrong.

Because surely they had understood. But something had changed, so slight he had not noticed it until now. His eyes dart back to his report, flipping the pages and reading quickly, taking in multiple words at a time. They had been comfortable using their Meta Abilities before, but what changed?

…never seen him use his Meta Ability…

…I first arrived, she used … ability to help … not seen her use it since…

…have not seen him use his Meta Ability since my first day here…

It’s Shouta. He’s what changed. He hadn’t been there before, and so when the children first met him they had thought nothing of it. They went on with their lives as they normally would’ve, using their Meta Abilities because they always had. But something must’ve happened in between that first day and the next – when they stopped using them altogether.

At least, the times they did use them afterwards had all been unintentional. He remembers Denki, just a few days ago, and how his Ability had accidentally burnt his skin.

But then, if they had in fact intentionally stopped using their Meta Abilities because of his presence, why?

“I just don’t like you much. Or well, people like you.” Usagiyama had said.

“People like me?” he’d asked, curious.

“The Commission’s people,”

Shouta opens the door leading outside the house and into the front yard, where the flowers once thrived. It’s early still, enough that the first rays of the sun are only starting to rise. The sky does not announce a sunny day, as most of the others had been. It is cloudy and grayish above instead of the usual serene blue.

Yet, Hizashi stands there all the same, watching over the sea surrounding the island. He looks peaceful, and Shouta might feel bad about disturbing him if he wasn’t so…Upset? Angry?

Hurt?

He stops, still so much space between the two men, but Hizashi has noticed him. Shouta is sure of it.

“I know you told them not to use their Meta Abilities,” Shouta calls out, ragged breath coming out of his mouth.

Hizashi turns around, a frown forming between his brows. “What?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know what I mean,” Shouta snaps. For some reason, he feels so betrayed. All this trust, gone in an instant. He walks closer to the Hizashi. “When I arrived here, you told them not to let me see their Abilities,”

It is a statement, not a question, and so Hizashi does not answer it. The frown doesn’t go away on his face, but Shouta wishes it would.

He wishes Hizashi would get mad at him too. He wishes they could finally stop lying to each other.

“It’s not like that,” Hizashi says, softly. His eyes look sorry, as if he regrets this conversation, regrets Shouta ever bringing it up. Even now, even if the blond feels sorry, Shouta knows he never would’ve said a word of it.

“So you’re not denying anything,” Shouta whispers. What had he been expecting? Would he have preferred that Hizashi lied to him again? Would it have made him feel better?

This should feel good, like he’s finally getting somewhere. Instead, it simply feels as though the whole puzzle just got immensely bigger, and a knot forms in Shouta’s chest just thinking about it.

“It’s more complicated than you think,” Hizashi retorts, the small wobble in his voice betraying how calm he looks. 

“I don’t know what to think!” Shouta shoots back. “And I’m tired of hearing you say everything is just ‘complicated’, so tell me, just fucking explain it to me,”

His chest, his lungs, his head, they all feel so full of rage. Shouta is angry – at Hizashi, at the Commission, at the World – but still, there is something about looking directly into Hizashi’s eyes that makes his heart clench.

“You’re right,” Hizashi says to Shouta’s surprise. “I’m sorry, I—” his shoulders slump. “I wanted to tell you, I really did— I just…” the clouds above groan, the storm growing and getting closer. “We should go inside to talk.”

“No, right here is fine,” Shouta snarls. It feels like his heart might jump right out of his chest. His heartbeat is so loud in his ears, blocking all the smallest noises except for the wind picking up all around them.

Shouta’s patience has run out, making him reckless. He decides that he won’t wait any longer than he already has. He wants answers, and he’ll get them one way or another.

Chapter Text

“Fine,” Hizashi says, turning around to face Shouta fully. “Let’s talk here.” His voice is calm, and the silence stretches between them, loud and unbearable.

The wind keeps growing stronger and colder, whirling in his shirt. It bites at Shouta’s exposed skin, who had not taken the time to put anything on. He curls his fingers in his palm and digs his nails into his hand, finally grounding his thoughts.

“I know you asked the children not to use their Meta Abilities,” Shouta repeats this sentence he so carefully practiced and memorized in his head, but with less anger in his voice this time, replaced by urgency. “I want to know why.”

There is a finality to Shouta’s tone that leaves no room for anything else. Hizashi must answer, there is no avoiding confrontation now.

Still, Hizashi finds it in himself to smile. “I’m surprised you haven’t figured it out by now,” he does not seem amused. Neither of them does. “The children are dangerous. They’ve all killed people before.” He walks closer to Shouta until they’re close enough that if he were to extend his arm, his fingers would graze his clothes. “And with danger comes fear, but it also brings power.”

“They’re children,” Shouta says, the words feeling childish and irrelevant now that he’s the one saying them. “They’re not dangerous—”

“Because you haven’t seen what they’re capable of.” Hizashi’s voice becomes louder, and his words bolder, colder. “I made sure of that.”

“Then you’ve lied,” Shouta bites back, pain slipping into his tone. “This whole time—you knew what you were doing. What else are you hiding from me?”

“There’s nothing else,” Hizashi frowns, as though Shouta’s accusation had upset him.

“How am I supposed to trust you?” Every breath feels so cold, the frost eating away a fraction of the air, and it seems like there isn’t enough left of it. His heart beats so fast, and Shouta wishes the ground would open up and swallow him whole.

A small laugh escapes the blond’s throat, delirious, tired. “As if you were the one who needed to trust me,”

Slowly, and without realizing it, Shouta’s anger had started being eaten away by something else, something lonelier. His words no longer hold their burning rage, instead turning to ash in his mouth, leaving his heart aching. “I’m only trying to help,”

“And yet you’re blind to what this really is!”  Hizashi snaps, gesturing to the building behind them, this house which looks too cheery to fit under such gloomy weather, in such a lonely place. “Why do you think they sent you?”

Shouta clenches his jaw.

The other man scoffs when he doesn’t answer, Hizashi’s voice lowering until it’s just a whisper. “You have no idea. You’ve been here for weeks, and you still don’t know,”

“They wouldn’t tell me,” Shouta retorts. “They didn’t want to tell me anything,” When he’d first asked what it was about, even before he’d been handed the files, the Commission had simply told him that he was to do as he usually would; inspect the place. But even then, he’d chosen to ignore the lingering doubt at the back of his mind that something was truly, fundamentally wrong with this case.

Then he’d sent a report, asking for more information, and they’d denied his request. This should have been enough. This should have confirmed his doubts, but again, he’d turned a blind eye to it. Now he’s only trying to justify himself.

“The children are dangerous, and it scares people.” Hizashi says, twice now. Shouta goes to interrupt him, but the blond continues. “The crime rates increase, and people are getting more powerful. We’re lucky because the people here are old and there’s barely any criminal activity. There’s a lot of prejudice and judgement targeted toward the children, but it doesn’t matter. None of it matters,”

“Get to the point,” Shouta is barely able to get the words out, his mouth feeling so dry. Hizashi doesn’t notice, and if he does, he stays quiet.

“This is no orphanage,” Hizashi says, his voice on the verge of cracking. “There are no days open for visits, no one to adopt them. The Commission made it that way.” His eyes are glassy now.

“Then what’s the point of this place?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it? I don’t even know. Why would they put a dozen orphaned children with deadly quirks in the same secluded spot?” Hizashi asks, his voice becoming lighter.

He doesn’t look at Shouta anymore. Instead, his face is turned toward the ocean’s raving waves. A droplet of water falls on Shouta’s cheek, and then one in Hizashi’s glasses, until it starts pouring. Neither of them moves.

“They’re weapons,” Hizashi mutters. “And the Commission wants to use them. They’re willing to do anything to make themselves look good.”

“I don’t understand,” Shouta says. He simply cannot wrap his head around the idea and isn’t sure what Hizashi implies, or what he means by ‘weapons’. And more than ever, he does not understand how he got here. “Why would they send me here?”

“They want to see if they’re ready to become heroes.” Hizashi’s voice doesn’t waver, completely unphased. But Shouta knows it bothers Hizashi just as much as it horrifies him. Shouta feels all the blood drain from his face,

Shouta had only put on a pair of slippers before walking outside, and now they were completely soaked. Although, his eyes are so intently focused on Hizashi’s that he does not notice how cold his feet are. Instead, he asks, softly, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

A hollow laugh escapes Hizashi’s mouth. “What, did you think we were going to welcome someone who works for the Commission with open arms?” Venom is laced in his voice, and a pang of hurt hits Shouta harder than he’d like to admit.

“I could’ve helped if you’d just told me,” he shoots back, his words bitter.

They are both angry, and they are both tired. Both men are – though left unsaid – terrified of losing what they have grown to care about.

“And how was I supposed to know whether or not I should trust you? Even now, I don’t know if—”

Hizashi cuts himself off, and Shouta holds his breath.

It is at this exact moment that the realization hits him. To Hizashi, Shouta has only been someone who works for the Commission.

Foolishly, he had made himself believe they’d grown to become friends.

“If you can trust me? If I’ll tell on you, and shut this place down?” Shouta asks, suddenly much more aware of his surroundings, of his drenched clothes and hair, of his hands so cold they burn. Lightning flashes above them. “If I’ll send them all to their deaths?”

Hizashi takes a step in his direction, but Shouta takes one step back. “I didn’t mean it like that,” 

Shouta shakes his head. “No, it doesn’t matter,” he tries to brush it off, but he’s doing a terrible job at it.

“Yes it does,” Hizashi lifts his hand as if to bring it towards Shouta and comfort him, but decides against it, leaving it hanging in the air awkwardly. “I’m sorry, I..”

In his haze, Shouta hadn’t fully been able to process Hizashi’s explanations of this place. Now the words ring loudly in his head, ‘They want to see if they’re ready to become heroes.’

Shouta thinks he might be sick.

He brings a hand to his mouth and excuses himself, rushing back to the house. He doesn’t turn back when Hizashi calls his name, nor when he thinks he hears Momo greet him from the living room. He darts straight to the bathroom and locks the door behind him, barely making it in time to empty his stomach’s content.

Shouta knows how terrible heroism truly is – how cruel it can be. He never wants to see one of those children’s faces plastered on an ad board near his apartment window, or the news, bruised and hurt. 

A long time ago, he had loved heroes, had wanted to be one. But he’d learned the hard way that things don’t always go according to plan, and that when disasters happen, they do so quickly. Not like they show them in the movies – with slow motions effect, and dramatic speeches.

There is never enough time, barely enough to blink and realize everything has crumbled to pieces.

“Come on Shouta, open up,” Hizashi’s voice is muffled through the door, and he hears the doorknob rattle a few times before going still. He rests his forehead on his arms, static invading his hearing.

“Come on Shouta, open up,” he hears again, a different voice, but he knows it’s not real.

There’s a window in the bathroom, divided into neat squares. If only he could stand and reach its handles, he could open it, just like he did so many times before – years ago. It still feels so fresh in his mind.

Kayama stands in Tsukauchi’s living room, analyzing, and scrutinizing the board to deepen her understanding of this whole messed up case. The detective has a year-long head start on her, but she wants to help, and for that, she needs to understand the key parts of, well, everything.

The thing is, everything looks important. A day off, she’d been given, and instead, here she is, spending it doing whatever this is.

Something that matters, a voice in her head tells her.

Pulling out the letter from Aizawa she and Tsukauchi had read at least a dozen times today, she tries to look for something they might’ve missed, anything at all.

First Letter in a long time

 

Happy birthday!

Even though you’re getting old, you shouldn’t worry. Rest assured; you still look as young as the day we first met. Only, your hair is a little grayer now.

Perhaps this letter will reach you a few days after your birthday. Read this whilst keeping in mind that the post office has been very slow lately. Obviously, we’re a bit to blame for all the letters we’ve been sending out. Getting that off the way, I’m looking forward to seeing you again. Right when I’ll be back, we should grab some coffee. And maybe something else to go with it, I don’t know yet. Mornings here without coffee have me miss it badly.

stay safe,

 

your friend.

Kayama reads it once, and then twice. The thing is, Aizawa doesn’t talk like that – and it’s long past her birthday, and the post hasn’t been any slower than usual, and her hair hasn’t started graying yet. Between the moment she blinks and the next, her eyes settle on the title of the letter – which is odd, because who titles their letters?

 First Letter in a long time.

And then she sees it.

Happy birthday…Even though…Rest assured…Only…

H E R O

How did Tsukauchi and her not notice it before? How did the higher management council guy miss it, too? (Did he?) A scoff escapes her lips. She continues to look for the words at the beginning of each sentence, the First Letter of each sentence.

Perhaps…Read this…Obviously…

Getting that…Right when…And…

Mornings…

P R O G R A M

Kayama already knows about this – but it doesn’t erase the smile on her face. She wonders if Aizawa has known from the beginning, back when she had given him a ride back to his apartment.

What is the purpose of this coded letter, though? Even if he tells her about the Hero Program, why? Is he asking her to look into it? Or is there something else to the letter she’s also missed?

But the more she looks, the more she understands he’d really just been trying to tell her about them – not asking anything or offering any explanation. They both know the danger – he more than her, especially when he’d decided to code this and make it as short and unsuspecting as possible.

Tsukauchi had hoped this could help them prove this entire thing, but doubt creeps in her chest uncomfortably. Perhaps, this has no value at all.

Against all odds, her gaze lands on a picture hidden in the mass pinned on the wall, taken in a dark light – probably late at night – of a man staring right back at her. There are dates written at the back of each picture, and when Kayama checks when this one has been taken, it goes a few months back.

“Aizawa fucking Shouta,” the name escapes her lips, and as it does, a crease forms between her brows. “What the hell did you do?” 

Shouta’s head feels fuzzy, empty of thoughts and bombarded with memories at the same time. He thinks Hizashi might still be there, calling out his name, but it feels so far.

He stands and flushes the toilet, stumbling to the sink. He turns on the faucets and watches the water run, putting the tip of his fingers underneath and waiting until it gets cold.

The mirror hanging on the wall just above the sink towers over him, going up until it almost touches the ceiling. The bathroom barely has enough space to walk in, and yet he feels so small.

Looking into the mirror, a younger version of himself with eyebags much less prominent, puffier hair, and a smaller build.

Shouta had always pushed away the memories of what had happened all those years ago, had always blocked the intrusive thoughts. He’d never forgotten, but he’d never quite made himself remember, either.

So why now, is it all rushing back?

Kayama doesn’t startle when she hears Tsukauchi enter the apartment again. He’d left for a bit to go grab coffee. She should tell him she figured out the letter – but it seems so irrelevant now.

“Do you know this guy?” Kayama asks instead, turning around to face the detective. She had thought about the possibility of him actually being a spy for the Commission – and then going out to get the police and arrest her or something. But then she’d looked back at the board and her doubts had crumbled.

Tsukauchi walks up to her, squinting to get a better look at the picture she unpinned from the wall. He leaves a cup of coffee on the nearest side table and takes the picture in his now free hand.

“I remember when I was trying to find information on him,” he says, turning it around and glancing at the date written behind it. “Why’re you asking?”

He hands the photograph back to her, and she takes it. She only stares at it for a moment, as though looking at it for long enough might give her an answer.

“He’s a friend,”

Shouta was still young back then, still in high school. His parents were always so busy working to make ends meet, and when they weren’t doing that, they’d be worrying about something else. Anything but Shouta.

From what he could remember about his childhood, he’d always felt like a ghost in his own home. He never felt the need to have it any differently at school.

But then, for the first time in his life, someone noticed him.

Shouta had been walking home back to his parent’s apartment (he never felt it was quite right to call the place his), but something had gone wrong. Crime rates are bad today, but they’d been worse then. The area he lived in wasn’t the safest; the cheapest places never were.

The events are blurry when he thinks about them, but he remembers the big picture. Someone threatening a teenager with their Meta Ability, just at the entrance of a sketchy alley. Shouta had almost walked past it – not because he hadn’t noticed it, but because he didn’t want to get involved.

Maybe he shouldn’t have done anything. Maybe it would have fixed everything if he’d just walked away, and ignored everything.

But he hadn’t known then, and so he’d used Erasure on the man, scaring him enough that he left. Shouta was about to leave, too, but the teen stopped him before he could. To thank him, and rant about how cool his Ability was, and how he’d definitely make a good hero.

There were so few heroes then, most of them Vigilantes, breaking the law to combat ‘evil’.

This should have been the end of it. But the next day at school, he saw the boy again – and turns out they were in the same class. Shouta had simply never bothered to look around.

“Shirakumo Oboro,” the boy said his name was. He wanted to be a hero, and so did Shouta.

“Come on Shouta, open the door, please,” he hears Hizashi through the door, again. He wonders what he’s still doing there, what they’d been talking about.

“Shouta, come on, open the window!” Oboro and he had started sneaking out at night. ‘Training’, they’d called it. ‘For later.’

“I probably have a file left somewhere for him – there’s something for everyone here,” Tsukauchi tells Kayama half-jokingly.

She hums, giving him Aizawa’s full name. “Why were you…” — Watching? Following? Investigating? — “you know, looking for information about him, anyways?”

He’s got his back turned to her, looking through a random pile of files hidden between gray and brown boxes. “It’s been a while, but I think it’s the commission that was watching him. I was just curious,” he lifts a document, opens it up and then closes it again before handing it to Kayama. “Didn’t find much, though.”

Most of the time, he and Oboro would deal with small-time villains, the ones that were all bark and no bite, and other times, they’d get into actual fights.

“Oboro, let's stay out of this one,” Shouta had urged him one day. It wasn’t night yet, and there was a crowd of people gathered on side streets, trying to catch a glance of what was happening just a bit farther away.

But where Shouta would rather hide and fit through the crowd, Oboro stood out anywhere he went.

“This is our chance,” Oboro had countered, and Shouta had reluctantly agreed to at least help.

Maybe it’d been the adrenaline of the crumbling buildings around them – or all the eyes pinned on them (he knows most were looking at Oboro, he was too.)

It went well – they won. Except maybe for a broken bone in Shouta’s leg and matching gashes and scratches that never seemed to stop bleeding.

That night, they’d fought for the first time.

“You could’ve gotten us both killed,” Shouta had hissed through his teeth, wrapping bandages around his leg sloppily. Oboro’s hands hovered in the air, unsure whether he should help, but Shouta’s stiff posture and glare told him it was better not to.

“We made it out of there fine, didn’t we?” His tone didn’t seem so confident anymore. Just as the words left his mouth, they heard a police siren outside, riding quickly right past the apartment building. They both held their breath – they always did lately, always on edge that something might happen, something might go wrong – but nothing happened.

“We?” Shouta snapped “Maybe you, but my leg’s broken.”

“It could’ve been worse—”

“Yeah, next time I might break two legs instead – or lose one, maybe an eye too. Maybe I’ll hit my head and die—”

“Stop. You’re right, I’m sorry. We—I’ll be more careful next time.”

Next time. Shouta had not understood it at the time, but Oboro had never truly felt any remorse. He had never planned on stopping to fight the bigger bad guys now that he’d gone and done it once.

“So he’s basically a vigilante?” Kayama asks, unsure whether to laugh or cry. Maybe both.

“Was,” Tsukauchi corrects. “That thing’s at least two decades old, twenty-five-ish years I’d say?” It comes out more like a question than an actual statement.

“God,” Kayama mutters under her breath.

She tries to picture it in her head. Bland, tired and workaholic Aizawa, whom she’s only ever seen sitting at a desk, and when he isn't, he's away to inspect certain places – this Aizawa, young and with eyes still fatigued (she cannot imagine him without his eyebags), but with a desire to save people and become a hero.

It doesn’t seem so out of place.

Shouta and Oboro went from sneaking out at night twice a week, to four times a week, until Oboro came knocking on Shouta’s window nearly every night. Shouta’s parents never noticed.

It’s a mystery as to how Oboro was still able to be so energetic during the day. Shouta had no issue keeping his grades up – they’d always been average at best – but more and more the bags under his eyes got darker, deeper.

After half a year of this, Shouta started catching himself staring at his friend – his bright blue eyes, and his hair lifting in the air. “We match!” Oboro had said once, and Shouta had looked away, a blush creeping up his face.

Despite how exhausted Shouta felt, he could not get himself to care. For the longest time, he’d been stuck in this same corner. Alone. And now that he had someone, he never wanted to feel that way anymore. Lonely.

Oboro never hesitated when going into danger, and Shouta admired him for it. His friend never second-guessed his action if it meant saving people. But Shouta also resented him for this, for making him worry all the time.

“You won’t save anyone if you’re dead,”

“You worry too much. Plus, I’ve got you, don’t I?” was what Oboro always said in response. He thought Shouta was stiff, and maybe ‘too rational for his own good’. But where Shouta lacked something, Oboro had it, and vice versa. They completed each other. “I’ll be fine.”

“What made him stop?” Kayama asks Tsukauchi, who’s now back to sitting on the couch, coffee in hand.

“An accident, I think?” Just as he says it, the woman turns the page of the file to a news article, neatly cut out and placed inside a sheet protector.

Her eyebrows twitch, and her expression settles into one of pity. Kayama has lived in this city her entire life, and she knows she must have read about this at some point. But between now and two decades ago, there have been so many villain attacks and deaths that this one is just another one in the pile.

“Shouta, Shouta!” The usual knocking at his window came later than usual. It’d been a long day and Shouta was already starting to doze off. He opened the window nonetheless to his friend on his floating cloud. “Hurry, I think something’s happening.”

Police sirens loudly hailed a few streets away, and heavier noises from ever farther. Shouta peeked his head out of the windowsill to see what all the commotion was about, but his window faced a brick wall, and when he looked through the crack of the alley, he could not see anything.

“I don’t know, maybe we should skip this one,” he had a bad feeling in his chest. He always did, but this time felt different.

“You don’t have to come, but I’m going either way,” Oboro told him. Shouta’s heart ached at the statement. Oboro would always be fine without him – but Shouta would not, and he couldn’t bear to be left behind.

“Give me a minute,”

“Give me a minute,”

“I’ll get you some water,” Hizashi answers through the door while Shouta still grips the edges of the sink, his knuckles as white as snow. He ignores the fact the faucet is still running right before him – ignores that Hizashi knows this.

“—zawa?..what’s...—” he can barely hear what the person behind the door is saying, static filling his ears again. A child, he thinks, but it’s getting hard to tell.

“I really don’t think this is a good idea,” Shouta tried to reason with Oboro, but he kept walking beside him at a fast pace anyway.

“If we back down when it actually matters then we’ll never be heroes,” the boy had countered. And what was Shouta supposed to answer to that?

Everything happened so fast. One moment they’d still been walking – and then running, and then there were people ushering them away, telling them to go back home. They pushed passed the civilians, who were all too preoccupied to care much anyways about what two teens were doing venturing into danger like that.

The villain was – giant, to say the least. Almost as enormous as a ten-story tall building. The police tried their best but ultimately their weapons proved to be ineffective. Shouta froze, panic overtaking him, and before he could say anything, he saw Oboro jump right into the action.

He lost sight of his friend through the mass of dust clouds. He tried to use his Meta Abilities, but he didn’t even know where to look – and he stood there, eyes blazing. Dust stung his eyes, but he didn’t blink.

Shouta did not blink. He did not know how long he stayed like this at the time, a minute or an hour felt just as probable. He did not blink until a paramedic came and put a hand on his shoulder, startling him.

It had only been then that it had dawned on him that the dust had cleared for the most part. There was no noise anymore, an eerie silence, despite the ambulances and all the reds and blues flaring up around him.

And that the Villain had been defeated. But then, Oboro should have been there, dragging him by the arm and telling him, “Let’s get out of here,”

Yet, Oboro did not show. Breaking out of his thoughts, his legs finally started moving, and he ran. He ran and slipped and tripped until his pants were torn and his knees were bleeding. There was fallen debris everywhere, but he did not care. He ran.

He did not stop until he found Oboro, but before he could reach his friend – stuck under a heavy rock, he could see a portion of his face still – someone grabbed him and took him away. Any training or self-defence technique he might’ve learned up until this point, simply vanished. He tried to break from the person’s hold, but his chest heaved, and he had no energy left in him.

They told him afterwards that he’d stood there with his eyes open for nearly forty minutes – even after the fight had died out.

Shouta still wonders what he could have done differently to prevent it from happening. Anything, anything at all, he thinks. If he’d taken a minute longer to get ready, it could have been enough – if he’d stood his ground better when he’d told him they shouldn’t go. If he hadn’t frozen in place.

If he’d never helped Oboro the night they met.

“That’s pretty much everything I could find,” Tsukauchi tells her, taking back the light folder, almost empty of content.

“Then what did the commission want to do with him?” Kayama asks, turning back to the wall, watching the empty spot where the picture of Aizawa should be.

“I’m not sure,” the detective breathes out. “But I don’t think it did anything,”

“No,” Kayama mumbles, half in thought.

“No?” Tsukauchi questions, scoffing lightly.

“No, I mean—It did do something,” Kayama turns around. She takes out the letter – the one with the code so simple, they’d missed it. “They sent him to that orphanage, for the hero program thing. He’s the one who wrote that letter.”

She shows it to him again, pointing out the first character of each sentence and how it spells out ‘Hero Program’.

Kayama fumbles with her words. “And—like you said, nothing the Commission does is ever—”

“—Random,” Tsukauchi finishes.

The police ended up taking him back home. They’d knocked on his door, waking his overworked parents up at half past three in the morning. He was a minor, so he was able to get away with a simple warning. That, or the police had taken pity on him.

The talk between his parents and the officers had passed by in a blur. Shouta doesn’t remember what was said for the most part, only snippets of memories with no words to go with them.

His parents sent him to school the next day.

Shouta never dared try to make any friends after that. He figured it would be safer if he stayed alone.

Any likelihood and hope he’d ever had at becoming a hero – his best friend, his inspiration; his Meta Ability, the only thing that ever made him special – evaporated in the short span of a single night.

Although his heart and mind never recovered, neither did his Meta Ability. His eyes burned for days, only seeming to get worse. He’d used it for too long, hadn’t blinked (couldn’t blink) and it had caused him irreparable damage.

Eventually, his parents had to take him to the hospital. The only thing the doctor could offer him were eyedrops to ease the pain – but it never went away completely.

Shouta never used his Ability after that, but the burn remained imprinted in his eyes forever – as if to make sure he’d never forget what he’d failed to even see. Some kind of messed-up memento.

He went to the funerals alone, walked there because his parents had said they’d go too – they hadn’t known he even had a friend, or said friend’s name – but had gotten too caught up in their work again to remember.

They never brought up his vigilantism, or the fact he’d sneaked out many times. They never asked what had happened that night. They never felt the need to, and Shouta didn’t feel like explaining, either.

On his eighteenth birthday, barely two years later, his parents gave him a suitcase. It was their way of telling him they didn’t want to pay for his things anymore, although he never asked for anything, and never complained about what he had.

He did what he could from there, moving to a better place in the city even if it meant working nightshifts whilst being a full-time student. Right when he got out of school, he did the next best thing after becoming a hero and applied to work for the Hero Public Safety Commission.

They gave him cases, and he did each and every one of them rationally, with logic. With care. It’s what he should have done from the beginning, because being rational had always been the sensible thing to do.

Then he’d been asked to meet the Upper Management Council, although he’d never done anything to stand out, to bring attention to himself. And then they assigned him a mission.

It’d turned out to be a terrible, horrifying one, and now Shouta stands here, in a bathroom, having retched his heart out, blinking out the unshed tears in his eyes. His eyes burn.

He hears a light knock on the door, too low and too soft to be Hizashi. “Mr. Aizawa?”

It’s Izuku. His head is strangely clear now, but he still feels…He doesn’t know how to describe it. Like he’s floating, like he’s wide awake but also on the verge of falling asleep. He runs a hand through his damp hair and takes a deep breath. He opens the door.

“Mr. Aizawa,” the hand that had been knocking joins the one gripping his kitted sweater, and Izuku fiddles with his fingers, looking up at him. “Uhm—” he doesn’t seem sure what to say, a frown forming on his face as he tries to find the right words. “Are you—Are you okay?” it’s not a whisper, exactly, but barely just above it.

The question startles him. How can he explain something like this to a child—to anyone? He cannot even begin to understand it for himself. But then he looks into those big round eyes, with their vibrant green irises, and he thinks back to that time in the woods, when the boy had been crying and lost in his head.

Shouta realizes that, if anyone can understand, it’s Izuku.

Slowly, he moves his hand up on top of Izuku’s head, ruffling his hair lightly. He crouches down to the boy’s level.

“I’ll be fine.”

Chapter Text

The last week goes by in a flash. Shouta spends most of his time sitting down and watching the children play, occasionally joining them. His eyes still burn, and his small eyedrop bottle is getting lighter by the day.

Shouta and Hizashi don’t bring up what happened during their last conversation, but they also don’t go out of their way to ignore each other.

They go on like this for three days – sharing the same space and waving their wands when passing one another in a hallway – until Hizashi finally makes the first move.

It’s late, and the clock in the living room indicates half past eight, but Shouta knows by now that it’s always seven minutes later than it actually is. So 8:23 p.m., to be more precise. He thinks how, usually when working at his desk back at the Commission, he’d still be deep in work at this hour, his hand aching from writing and typing all day. Then, he’d keep at it for another hour or two.

But not today, not here. In this house, he gets to do other things, tasks more mundane and much less heavy for the mind. Like right now, cleaning up the low coffee table and its surroundings from all the board games the children had taken out that day. It’d been too cold to go outside, so this had been the next best thing.

“Monopoly was a good idea,” Hizashi speaks up, suddenly, making Shouta drop the pawns he’d been picking up.

“What?” Shouta croaks out, a cough stuck in his throat.

“Monopoly? Uhm—I think the kids liked it. It seemed so old fashion that I didn’t think they’d like it, so I never brought it up to them,” Hizashi rambles, his tone even, but when Shouta turns to look at him, his back is half turned to him and fumbles with the fake money he’d been sorting out.

“Oh,” Shouta breathes out. “Thank you?” he’s frankly not quite sure what to respond to that, or what to say at all. “I mean, it’s all fun and game until Ochako comes out of nowhere and destroys everyone,” he jokes.

“Everyone?” Hizashi asks playfully.

Shouta turns around, putting his now retrieved pawns into a small plastic bag. “Hey, I wasn’t the only one, you were just as bad as me,” and when he looks up, Hizashi has a smile on his face. They both look away, breathing out a soft laugh and falling back into a comfortable silence.

“You know,” Hizashi says after a while. “I uhm, I wanted to apologize for the other day, but I wasn’t sure…” he trails off.

“You don’t have to,” Shouta says, looking around for any piece they might’ve missed. When he doesn’t find any, he pulls up to the lid of the box and puts it back on. It’s not that he doesn’t want an apology, it’s just that he doesn’t think it’d do anything.

Hizashi walks up to him right when Shouta stands up from his crouched position.

“No, I do,” Hizashi insists. His face seems redder than usual, and Shouta wonders if it’s simply the lights playing tricks on his eyes. “You were right to be angry at me, and I’ll understand if you still are. I should’ve told you before, it’s just…”

“I work for the Commission,” Shouta finishes

Hizashi purses his lips together. “They only told us a day in advance that you’d be coming, and they didn’t specify for what reasons. Rumi was mad but… I was just—weary, and, I don’t know, I didn’t know what to expect…” he explains. “But then you showed up,”

Shouta gives him a sideway glance, “What’s that supposed to mean?” he scoffs under his breath, trying to act indifferent. But his heart beats so fast inside his ribcage, so loudly he worries Hizashi might hear it.

“I was glad,” Hizashi admits. Of all the things Shouta had thought to imagine, this was not one of them. “I mean—I thought you might treat the children… Differently. But the first thing you did was play a game of hide and seek with them,” a soft laugh escapes his lips, and Shouta thinks about how he wants to hear it again a thousand times over and more. Quickly, he shakes the thought away.

“They’d tricked me, though,” Shouta adds.

“But it worked, didn’t it?”

It’s only then that Shouta notices how close they really are. “Yeah,” he whispers. “I guess it did.”

The last day comes around so fast – too fast. Shouta has barely any time to prepare himself, barely enough time to enjoy everything about this place and say goodbye to all of them.

But it’s not there yet, Shouta reminds himself. His train ticket is only for tomorrow, and it won’t be until noon. So he does have time. Just not enough of it.

It happens right after dinner when he’s helping wash the dishes along with Hizashi and Usagiyama. Katsuki bursts into the kitchen, his chest all puffed up. All three adults turn their heads to look at him, and slightly, almost unnoticeably, his chest softens a bit.

“We want to go outside,” the boy declares sternly.

Shouta watches as Hizashi and Usagiyama exchange looks. A moment later, she puts down the plate she’d been scrubbing.

“I’ll go,” she says, looking for something to dry her hands with. Shouta hands her the closest rag he can find, and she nods.

“No,” Katsuki replies, a surprised look on his face at his own protest. He glances back, and Shouta realizes there must be a few other kids behind him, waiting. He coughs. “I mean, not you.”

“Do you want Hizashi to go, then?” she asks, unbothered by the child’s statement. She looks more confused than anything else.

“They want it to be Mr. Aizawa,” he grumbles out, looking away.

Shouta looks between Hizashi and Usagiyama, unsure how to react. “Are you sure?” he blurts out.

Katsuki clenches his hands into tiny fists and then gritting his teeth, manages to utter a small “Yes,” his face flushed red.

“Um,” Shouta looks again between the two adults, who simply shrug in answer. “Sure,” he says to Katsuki, and then turning to Hizashi, “Will you be alright finishing…”

“It’s just the dishes, we’ll handle it. Go with them.” Usagiyama reassures him. “I’m sure they’ll be happy,”

“Right,” he says. He trades his plate with Usagiyama’s rag and then heads out the door from which Katsuki had come in.

Outside the kitchen, just as he’d expected, stand the twelve children. Shouta doesn’t really get why they would want him of all people to go with them outside. If anything – he’ll get them lost.

The small crowd is putting on their shoes and coats, wrapping scarves around their necks and putting gloves over their hands. Ochako notices him standing there, unmoving.

“Come on, Mr. Aizawa!” the girl urges him. Her cheeks already tinted pink despite not having gone outside yet.

The breeze is cold against his skin, but it’s also comforting. Grounding. Shouta assumes Katsuki is the one at the front, leading them who knows where, but Shouta has long since stopped doubting the boy.

Maple grazes his leg as she walks past him, and then he notices Hitoshi walking next to him. Momo is standing on his left, and Kyouka trails closely after her. There’s some chatter going around, in hushed voices and bursts of laughter.

They head toward the forest, into a small, hidden, and clustered path next to the feeble swinging bench Shouta had seen Izuku and Katsuki sit on a few times.

It’s dark out, if not for moonlight bathing the island in a small silver glow, but the woods look menacing at this hour, and surely Shouta cannot be the only one… Unsure about going in.

“Isn’t it a bit too dark for this?” he asks, slowing his steps. He doesn’t want anyone to get hurt, or anything bad to happen on his last night here.

“Are you scared, old man?” Katsuki asks, turning around with a smile on his face that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“No—”

“Good,” the boy cuts him off dryly.

No one seems to be bothered by the woods half as much as they are by Shouta’s concern about going in. They quiet, but they keep walking, throwing glances his way every few moments.

He’s about to ask where they’re going when he feels a small hand reach for his own. Momo’s palm can barely wrap around three of his fingers, but she holds his hand anyway, offering him a reassuring smile.

Katsuki stops barely a few feet into the forest path, and everyone stops. “Did you find one yet?” Denki squeaks, getting a glare in return.

“Find what?” Shouta asks, frowning.

No one answers, all trying to get a closer look – a look at something that everyone knows is there except for Shouta, apparently.

A gentle voice is heard at the front of the group, “Kacchan,” Izuku whispers, his words audible over the ruffling of dried leaves, as though even the wind had quieted for the boy.

Both friends nod to each other, a silent discussion passing between them. None of the others seem to share it, but they do seem excited – for they quiet and strain their ears to listen.

“It happens once a year,” Katsuki begins, lowering his head and keeping his hands a bit higher, as if containing an unseen force to the ground. “When the stars sleeping in the night sky come down to the ground of the earth, and make every honest wish come true.”

Shouta has no clue what’s happening, but he listens carefully anyway. Katsuki has a way with words, and with getting people to listen to him. Follow him.

“But the stars are weary and careful,” the boy continues. “They will only answer to the worthiest of hearts,” A silence settles, breaths being held. “And thus, with the consensus of the Council, it has been decided that Mr. Aizawa should initiate it,”

It? Wait, Aizawa? Him?

“Me?” Shouta questions, frowning, and a few giggles erupt around him.

“Yes, you, since you are closest to death.” Katsuki deadpans, earning a light shove from Izuku who now stands right beside him. “And other reasons.”

Momo’s hand is still holding his, and he can feel Maple sitting close to his right leg. They all look at him expectantly, and he just stands there, trying to figure out what he has to do. Fortunately, he doesn’t have to, because quickly enough, Izuku is walking up to him with a flimsy-looking branch about half a meter in length.

Izuku hands it up to him, and Momo lets his hand go, his cue that he has to take the stick. “Um, thank you,” he says, and then follows the green-haired boy to the spot he’d been crouched just a few moments ago, right next to Katsuki. “But what do I…”

“You just poke it,” Katsuki whispers, glancing at something on the ground. Shouta follows the boy’s gaze and his eyes land on a crinkled, dying mushroom.

Still, even in this state, he’s able to recognize them for the ones he’d seen on his first day here – the ones Izuku had been avoiding stepping on, and then later, when they’d gone stargazing, and the fungi had lit up their path in a neon blue glow.

Shouta approaches the fungus, and Izuku retreats to go stand next to Katsuki. The freckled child whispers something in his friend’s ear, and right after, Katsuki says, “Maybe don’t get too close to it,”

Well, if that isn’t reassuring.

He can’t reach the mushroom with the stick unless he’s crouched in an awkward position, but he does so anyway, because the children don’t care about this, they only care that he does the thing.

Shouta pokes the dying midnight-blue mushroom, and almost immediately after, a sparkling, lavender-coloured mist rushes into the air. It spreads quickly at first, carried by the breeze, and then it slows and hangs in the air. It dazzles so brightly that some spots in it do look like stars.

The children erupt in laughter and then rush over to the entrance of the forest, finding their own mushrooms to poke, either with their feet or sticks they’d picked up from the ground.

Shouta watches through it all as the once threatening forest brightens in shades of purples and pinks and cyan blues, a layer of cloud-like substance hovering over their heads.

It’s brilliant and beautiful, and he even manages to catch a smile on Todoroki’s face. For a brief moment, he is reminded of everything he will have to face tomorrow, and the fact that he has no idea what he’ll even do, exactly.

But then Ochako is shaking his arm, urging him to go deeper into the woods and find more decaying mushrooms before they all inevitably crumble back to the soil.

There is no telling why they asked him to come. Why Katsuki said they’d chosen him to start this odd and magistral… Ceremony. Or why they’re all jumping around and calling his name, even though it’s getting late and some of them yawn through their smiles.

There is no answer to any of this, and maybe it’s alright if it stays this way. Maybe for once, Shouta can feel comfortable with the lack of explanation, and simply enjoy it. So he does.

Rays of lights filter through the window, sunlight pooling over his bed in elongated strings of warm oranges.

Soft footsteps are echoing downstairs, most of the children having already woken up. Shouta has slept better than he has in months. Perhaps, it had something to do with the mist produced by the dying fungi.  

Flashes of the previous night flood his mind, and Shouta smiles a small, sad smile, while inattentively folding another gray shirt into his suitcase. He could simply throw all of his clothes haphazardly; he’ll need to wash everything once he gets back anyway.

But he wants to linger a little longer, look around the room and the curious floral wallpaper he’s grown to like, the wooden desk much too small for him set right in front of the window.

His body goes on autopilot mode, and before he knows it, his suitcase – small and cheap, one he hates so much but also the only one he owns – is full and all closed up.

It’s quick. Everything is unfolding too quickly, like water slipping between his fingers.

His train leaves at noon, but he needs to leave even before that so that Usagiyama can give him a ride there. Probably in less than an hour, then. He’d always known this moment would come, even before he’d arrived. So why does it feel like hundreds of small knots are forming and twisting inside his stomach?

There’s a knock at his door, and Maple jumps off the desk to walk up to it. Surprisingly, it’s Hitoshi. Well, not so surprising, seeing as the first thing he does is pat the cat’s head.

The boy looks up at him and mutters, “Uh, is it okay if I…” he gestures at Maple, “say goodbye to her?” he asks, grimacing as the words leave his mouth.

“Of course,” Shouta answers right away. He feels bad, but there’s not much else he can do. “You can take her downstairs if you want, I’ll be there in a minute.” He adds, and Hitoshi nods.

Shouta takes a moment to observe his suitcase, watching and noticing every scratch from the most prominent ones, down to the smallest, most unnoticeable ones. And then, once his head is empty, he pulls it off his bed and walks out of the room, closing the door before he can change his mind.

There’s a cluster of people downstairs in the living room, children mostly. He avoids bringing attention to himself as he quietly places his suitcase down in the cramped entryway. Multiple pairs of shoes are still scattered all over the place from last night when it’d been too late to care to clean up.

Shouta turns around and a few pairs of eyes are glued on him. Some of the children were probably waiting, surely they’d heard him come downstairs. They stay in the living room’s doorframe, as if unsure whether they should approach.

But then Ochako steps up front, her hands hidden behind her back and her eyes now watching the cracks between the wooden board intently.

“I wanted to give you something,” she says, shifting her gaze from the floor to her hands now cupped in front of her. “I’m not sure if—If it’ll be as good, but… It should be.” Lifting her head to look at him, he notices a thin line of water forming in her eyes.

Ochako hands him a small, wrapped gift, so tiny it doesn’t even fill the palm of his hands. He crouches down to take it.

He asks if he can open it, but she shakes her head, rubbing her eyes in one swift motion.

“For later,” she tells him, and Shouta puts the small gift in his pocket.

Before he can stand up though, she puts her arms around him. For an instant, Shouta doesn’t know what to do, but then his arms come to wrap around the girl too, and then the next thing he knows, it’s over.

Shouta looks over in the living room, Ochako having gone back to her friend Tenya and Tsuyu. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to say goodbye to all of them like this – with hugs and teary eyes. His heart aches at the thought.

“Is it true you’re leaving, Mr. Aizawa?” Momo breaks the silence, the tension so heavy in the air it could be cut with a knife. Then, in a smaller voice, she adds, “For good?”

Shouta’s breath catches in his throat. He doesn’t understand – that’s all he’s been doing here, failing to understand everything about anything. He doesn’t get why they all look so disappointed right now if they’d all been so willing to hide their Meta Abilities from him before.

Shouta doesn’t understand what changed.

“I…” his mouth feels terribly dry, and swallowing requires a huge effort. How does he explain something like this to such young minds? Leaving was supposed to be easy – like every other case. But this was never like any other case, was it? “I was always planning to,”

A pang of hurt crosses multiple faces, others remaining unphased. Maple rushes over to him as if she could feel his need to walk away fast – however cowardly this may be.

“Well then,” Shouta breathes out.

“Wait,” a small voice rings out. It’s Izuku again, and there’s an unreadable look plastered on his face.

The boy seems to realize all the heads have turned his way, and he flushes. He takes a step back and goes to whisper something in Katsuki’s ear, but the blond gives him a small and subtle shake of the head. Izuku reconsiders his options, looking around until he looks back at Shouta.

“You’d said…” Izuku mumbles, blinking rapidly and fiddling with his sweater. Then he holds his hand tightly together and straightens up. “On the first day, um… That you’d give us a favour if we asked. Each.” He points to Katsuki, and then locks eyes with Shouta. “So—You have to stay for a bit longer, because I still haven’t found anything yet,”

“But surely, to keep a job for so long, you must care for those children you visit.”

Shouta frowns. “Of course.  Caring  is part of my job, and I must add that it is a necessity. Doing otherwise would be irrational.”

Shouta had thought he’d cared before – and he had, but never like this, never this much. Too much. And now his heart hurts at this… This month he’d taken for granted.

He walks over to Izuku and crouches down in front of him, “Izuku, I would if I could, I promise, but I can’t stay,”

“Of course you can!” Katsuki exclaims from behind Izuku, rushing to his friend’s side.

“He’s right, Hizashi wouldn’t mind!” Mina adds, and a few others throw words of agreement all on top of each other.

“We’ll give you more room if you want,” Momo says, as if out of breath.

“And I won’t play as loud anymore so you can sleep more,” Kyouka proposes, swirling her earphones around her fingers and tugging at them gently.

“I love to hear you play though,” Shouta answers, frowning.

“Then I’ll play louder,” she says her voice cracking.

“I won’t ask for Mochi anymore,” Ochako offers.

“And I’ll stop causing trouble when we go out,” Hitoshi whispers.

It is a terrible, and sad sight to watch. Seeing them all like this – coming together for the wrong reasons, thinking they’re the reason he’s leaving.

“I’m sorry,” he sighs, his heart twisting uncomfortably. “But I have to go, there are things I have to do. Important ones,”

And so, he stands up. They look so small compared to him, and he knows now the one thing he’d forgotten about whilst being here for so long.

That they’d all been or had felt abandoned at some point in their lives, to an extent so deep that it had scarred them for the rest of their lives. Just like with Oboro, and now he’s doing it to them.

Shouta takes a big inhale. “Take care of each other, will you?” he says, and no one replies. Only a few heads nod in answer.

He turns around, each step so heavy. He wants to get it over with as quickly as possible, but he also wants to enjoy every moment he can just being here while he still can.

“So what, you’re just gonna leave?” Katsuki calls out loudly. Shouta stops, one hand on the doorframe. “And then what? You’re gonna go and find another house like this and spend another month there?”

The boy is standing at the front of the group of children now, just in front of the couch. He stares at Shouta with ruby irises so full of rage and hatred, and yet his tone softens, trembling.

“And then you’ll leave again. Because it’s what people like you do.” His fists are clenched, but Shouta can hear small crackling sounds emitting from them. Katsuki’s voice becomes louder and louder, until it resonates in the room. “They come and they don’t help, even though they say they will, and nothing changes, and we’re still stuck here,”

“Katsuki, that’s enough,” Usagiyama walks past Shouta, gripping the boy’s hands and making him look at her.

“It’s true! You know it is!” Katsuki’s voice cracks. “You said it too!”

“Katsuki,” Usagiyama’s voice is soft, gentle. The boy breaks free from her grasp, although she’d never been holding him with much force.

“Just leave me alone!” he shouts, walking past Shouta and heading for the staircase. He stops for a second and turns back to look at Shouta. “No one will say it, but you’re just like the rest of them.”

And then he’s gone, a door slamming a few seconds later.

Usagiyama says she’ll be back in a minute, going after Katsuki. When Shouta looks back at the living room, no one looks his way.

Shouta sits on the front porch, his suitcase beside him. He thinks he might burn it when he gets back. He didn’t want to wait outside anymore once a minute had turned into three, and then into five. So he contemplates the view while he still has the time.

Someone steps out of the house behind him. He expects it to be Usagiyama, but instead, it’s Hizashi. The man closes the door and sits right next to Shouta.

“I heard what happened,” Hizashi says. “I’m sorry. I think they’re just sad to see you leave.”

Shouta sighs. “It’s alright, they’ll get over it with time.”

They’re still young, and it was one month out of so many more to come, so surely they would forget him at some point. Maybe by the time next year comes around – or next week.

Hizashi hums. “They were right about one thing, though,”

All of the air leaves Shouta’s lungs. ‘And then you’ll leave again. Because it’s what people like you do.’ He tries to think of something to say, an excuse or an explanation, because he doesn’t think he can bear to hear Hizashi say something like this to him –

“I don’t—” Hizashi starts, and then turns around to face Shouta, who braces himself in turn. “I wouldn’t mind if you stayed,”

It takes a moment for his brain to process what the man had just said to him. “What?”

“It’s just—You’ve got this… thing, and I don’t know what it is, but it makes me want to spend all my time with you,” Shouta’s heart skips a beat, and he thinks this might just be the thing that kills him. “And I really like talking with you, or even just doing the dishes.”

“But it’s only been a month,” Shouta replies bluntly, mentally facepalming himself.

Hizashi lets out a small laugh. “Yeah, it has. I… I think I’d like it if—If I could spend more time with you, though.” And then adding, “If you want to,”

Maybe, in another time, Shouta would have been there next spring to see the flowers bloom in all their beauty. He would’ve seen a hundred more night skies through the telescope lenses until he got sick of them. He would’ve tasted every Mochi flavour there was, and poked thousands of weird mushrooms in autumn.

He would’ve heard Kyouka play dozens of songs she’d written herself and hear her play in a grand auditorium. Maybe Momo would have finally convinced him to read a book she thought he might enjoy.

He would’ve heard Izuku laugh at the top of his lungs along with Katsuki, and he would’ve helped with Mina’s control loss of her Meta Abilities as many times as it’d take until she could finally control it.

He would’ve gotten around to watching this documentary with Eijirou about Crimson Riot, and gone with Tenya on a run because, according to him, Shouta needed to exercise more.

He would’ve helped Hitoshi get Maple out of a tree again, and they’d fall but then laugh about it later on. He would’ve seen him grow closer to Denki and watch them become greater friends. He would’ve gone swimming with Tsuyu in the summer because he’d heard her say she liked it.

But this fantasy, this ideal world, was simply out of reach.

“You know I can’t,” Shouta breathes out. He looks back to the field in front of them, now all dried up, waiting to be swallowed by the earth so they can grow again next year. “I can’t just—leave everything behind me. Plus, there’s the hero program I have to take care of, and it’s too important for me to just – ignore it,”

Hizashi places a hand on his arm, and Shouta lets him.

“It’s the most important thing, yes, but there are other important things that you have to think about, too.”

What else is important? Shouta wants to ask, but he keeps his mouth shut. Shouta’s not important, he’s just there, and every day he has to find another excuse as to why he’s still here.

“It’s not so simple,” he says instead.

“I never said it was,” Hizashi’s tone is gentle and patient. “But you have to think about yourself in all of this,”

“I am—”

“I don’t think you are,”

“Well, think what you will, but I believe those children’s fate is more important than whatever I choose to do with my time,” Shouta answers firmly, and he feels Hizashi’s hand slide off his arm.

There has never been a time in his life when Shouta has felt he was important, and thus he figured maybe it’s because he simply isn’t. Not when his parents acted as if he didn’t exist, not when Oboro was still around, and certainly not now, when there are children whose lives are at stake.

“And what happens if you manage to do it?” Hizashi blurts out suddenly, breaking the silence. “What then?” he asks, turning to face Shouta again, and forcing him to look him in the eyes. “Will you finally be happy?”

Shouta lets out a frustrated sigh and averts his gaze elsewhere – to the trees, and the dead branches lying on the ground. “It doesn’t matter—”

“Of course it does!” Hizashi retorts, almost offended by Shouta’s words. He seizes Shouta’s shoulder, worry and confusion painting his features. “Why would you think—”

“I never am!” Shouta snaps, louder than he had intended. “I’m not happy, alright? There, I said it.” He gets to his feet, and Hizashi does the same a moment later. “I’ll never be happy no matter what I do, so just… Drop it,”

Hizashi opens his mouth to say something else, but then the door opens. Neither of them dares break eye contact to look.

“Am I interrupting something?” Usagiyama asks. “I’ll just come back in a minute,”

“No, it’s fine,” Shouta says, blinking and glancing at his hand gripping his suitcase’s handle. “I’m ready to go,” Or else I’ll never do it.

“Alright, then,” the woman replies. She heads for the truck parked at the end of the field, but Shouta lingers behind.

“I’m sorry,” Hizashi says, almost startling Shouta. “I’m sorry that you feel this way. But know that the only person standing in your way right now is yourself,” he takes a step toward Shouta. “So if you refuse to see it, there’s nothing more I can do to help you.”

Shouta pulls the handle of his suitcase and holds his chin up high. “Then I guess this is it,”

For an instant, a flash of hurt passes across Hizashi’s expression, but it’s gone so quickly, Shouta wonders if he has only imagined it.

“I suppose it is.”

“Will you be alright?” Usagiyama asks him as he unloads his suitcase and Maple’s mandatory cage from the rabbit-eared woman’s car.

“Are you worried?” he replies sarcastically, which earns him a shove in return. “That’s more like you,”

“Seriously, though,” Usagiyama says. “Be careful, and keep me updated,”

“I will,” he reassures her. “And tell me how they’re doing, too.” He doesn’t need to clarify who he’s talking about for the woman to understand.

And to his surprise, she hugs him. An awkward one, though, where she ends up patting him on the back.

Shouta enters the train, almost empty except for an old man asleep in one of the front seats. Despite this, Shouta chooses to sit farther back anyways, where he places Maple on the spot right next to him and takes the seat closest to the window for himself.

Sitting down, he remembers the gift Ochako had given him earlier. He reaches for it in his pocket, carefully unfolding the fabric, and sits back in his seat. It’s a Mochi, wrapped up in plastic and still cold to the touch after being refrigerated.

Chances are he’ll forget about it if he keeps it for later, so he unwraps the paper and bites down on the chewy green snack.

It tastes the same – or well, almost. The texture is still perfect, and the flavour is rich. But right now, sitting inside an almost-empty train, alone, it feels different. Shouta had thought it would taste the same, but Ochako had told him before.

“Love letters are kinda like Mochi, but instead of words, it’s  food .” She’d said. “And you only have them with the people you like, or else it doesn’t make sense.”

Shouta doesn’t get back to his apartment until it’s dark outside. Well, it would be dark if not for the streetlights lighting up the clouds above. It had been pouring hard in the streets, and Shouta hadn’t thought of bringing an umbrella, so he’d put his coat on Maple’s small carrying cage and hurried to find a bus.

Now he’s drenched from head to toe, fumbling with his keys and trying to find the right one to unlock his apartment door. When he enters, there is only the window from the balcony door on the opposite end of the room lighting up the place.

Tapping the wall in search of the switch, he turns on the light above his small dining table farther away. It flickers for a few seconds before finally settling into a dim white glow. Shouta lets Maple escape her prison, and she runs off into the apartment.

It might have been peaceful, if not for the couple above him still fighting about who knows what this time.

Everything is in place, exactly as it should be. And yet, it feels off. Everything feels wrong.

Shouta leaves his suitcase in the cramped entryway and heads for the balcony, where his wooden stool still stands.

Shouta sits, and then he waits.

He waits, until his fingers have gone so cold he barely feels them.

He waits, until his eyes begin to sting, burning and fiery, and then they flood.

The tears will not stop, they will not wait anymore. Shouta has not cried in years, so why now?  But thinking about all that he has lost, all of the what-ifs, he already knows why.

Maybe it explains why it hurts so much – why his chest feels as though a bird was flapping its wings inside his ribcage, trying desperately to get out. His entire body shakes with long racking sobs, clasping his hands tightly together and bringing his forehead to rest on them.

Perhaps, Shouta never had anything to go back to in the first place.

Chapter Text

Shouta waits quietly in the elevator of the Commission’s building, watching the numbers go up. It feels so normal, although he’s not sure what he had expected. At least, a small tingling in his head that would make everything feel wrong, or even some form of ‘nostalgia’ at seeing the place again, but there’s none of that.

Even pushing the twelfth button up, with people stepping away from him slightly and throwing glances his way, doesn’t feel special.

That’s the thing – he’d simply never felt anything before. This work he does had long since become plain. Back at the orphanage, with Hizashi and the children and Usagiyama, had been pleasant, but now it’s over, and he needs to make peace with the hole growing in his chest.

The elevator empties, little by little until at last, it dings– the number in the top corner of the elevator indicating 12. The doors open, and he walks down the long corridor.

He notices the receptionist from the last time he’d been there, and she sits up brusquely from her chair at the sight of him.

“Mr. Aizawa,” she says, collecting herself, brushing inexistent dust from her blazer. “The council is ready to see you,”

Shouta nods, and then another set of doors opens in front of him. He lifts his chin and walks in.

He has to walk again, but he doesn’t mind. Nothing matters, anyways, except for the children’s sake. He doesn’t know what he’ll say, but he’ll find something. He’ll find a way to save the kids, one way or another.

A program for training children to become weapons. What were they thinking? Perhaps, the emptiness in his chest has never been a hole, but instead, a weight so heavy that it had crushed his heart.

The stupid meeting table enters his field of vision again, and, sitting around it, the same old people. The woman in the center – the president of the Commission – stands up from her seat.

“Mr. Aizawa,” she greets him, if only because she needs to. “We have not received your last report,” she eyes him wearily, sitting down again and joining her fingertips together. “We expect that you have a good reason for this,”

Shouta nods and reaches for this pocket. “I have it right here,” he says, pulling out a piece of paper. “I thought it would be faster to give it by hand,” he offers her a tight smile while handing it to her, and she mimics his expression.

He watches as the woman unfolds the paper. The man on her right leans back in his chair to catch a glance at the content and frowns.

The head of the council looks back up at him, opening her mouth but not saying anything, just watching him and looking for her words through her confusion.

“Mr. Aizawa,” she says, lifting the paper in the air. She offers him an insincere smile, not quite reaching her eyes, and deepens the crease between her brows. “This is an empty sheet,”

“That would be correct,” Shouta answers simply.

The woman sits back in her chair, and a few members whisper among themselves. “Would you care to elaborate, then?”

Shouta looks her dead in the eyes and says, “There was nothing more for me to say. This is my final report.”

To his surprise, and many of the other members present apparently, the woman scoffs, and then breaks into a peal of soft laughter. She folds the paper back and then places her palms flat against the table.

“I don’t know what kind of game you think you’re playing, Mr. Aizawa, but it’s a dangerous one,” she warns. A game, Shouta thinks. If anything, they’re the ones who put him up to it – when they called him up here for the first time and thought he’d just do the job without asking any questions.

“I know the real reason why you sent me to check on this orphanage,” Shouta says firmly, watching as the most important people at the Commission – and possibly in Japan – exchange worried looks. “It was never about making sure those children were safe, was it?”

“Well, it was part of the reason.” The woman answers. She seems to be the only one willing to hold this conversation with him – or perhaps the others simply do not want to interrupt. “Do you think they were?”

“Think they were what?” Shouta questions, irritation slipping into his voice.

“Do you think they were safe?” The woman clarifies. “Do you think the people there are capable and competent enough to protect those children?”

“Of course,” Shouta answers immediately. “There has never been any sign of threat directed toward them, nor have they ever been in imminent danger.”

“What about themselves?” she asks, her voice echoing in the silent room. “Have you not said something about a girl losing control of her Meta Ability? What would have happened had you not been there to stop it?”

“They would have found a way,” he says, but it’s too desperate and not convincing enough.

The woman smiles. “But you’re not sure, and even you question it yourself, don’t you?”

Shouta purses his lips. The way she speaks, and the tone she uses – calm and collected – make anxiety prickle at the back of his head. He had been the one supposed to lead the conversation, but there he is, and still, she remains unphased.

He hates it – hates that she makes doubt linger and cripple in his head. How many times had Hizashi confided in him, telling him how he was scared he couldn’t quite meet the children’s needs. How going out in the city was so difficult he’d had to intervene twice.

The silence stretches on for an eternity until Shouta can’t bear it anymore. “I know about the Hero Program,” he says boldly, the air in the room stilling. “And I know you’re planning on using those very children at the orphanage I just visited – and maybe even others that I don’t know about – to become weapons for you to use.”

“You misunderstand the situation, Mr. Aizawa.” The woman responds calmly, and it makes Shouta want to storm out of the room. Somehow, he manages to still his feet in place. “We are not ‘villains’ for you to defeat.”

Shouta wants to laugh. How is there anything to misunderstand about this situation? There are children – traumatized and orphaned children – whose powers interest the Commission. And nothing could ever justify taking advantage of this. Still, he listens to what the woman has to say.

“Japan’s crime rate has increased considerably over the past few decades, and there is no indication that it will stop anytime soon. We cannot afford to wait for some superhero to save the country for us. These things simply do not happen.”

“So you’re betting on children to save you,” Shouta replies. Not asking; stating. Because that’s exactly what it is.

“It is the best option we have,” the guy on the woman’s right says, though his voice is quiet.

“If you cared so much about civilians,” Shouta replies, “you would have realized that these children are part of your public to protect long ago. They’re people, for fuck’s sake,”

“This is not a question of ethics, and we are more than willing to do what it takes to protect the country.” The woman replies, ignoring everything he’d just said, and holds her hands in front of her. “The children will be trained to be professionals. They will be prepared,”

“And how will you do it?” He finally snaps. “They can barely control their Meta Abilities. How will you train them? Risk even more people’s lives to do that, maybe?”

The Upper Management Council members glance at each other and then nod in silent agreement.

“Well, we have already considered this,” A man on one of the ends of the table speaks. Shouta raises his eyebrow slightly but remains silent.

“Mr. Aizawa,” The woman repeats his name for the hundredth time. “You have worked for us for quite a long time, and in the same field of work too; cases for children in orphanages,”

Suspicion creeps its way into Shouta’s chest. He had prepared himself for the worst, or at least he thought he had. But there are no threats of him being fired or even propositions to make sure he’d keep his mouth shut. He has no clue what they’re getting at, and somehow it feels much worse than anything he might’ve anticipated.

When Shouta doesn’t reply or interrupts her, the woman continues.

“You’ve said it yourself, Mr. Aizawa. These children could potentially threaten other people’s lives if trained in unsupervised spaces. And we don’t want that now, do we?”

She smiles at him, the same way someone might when greeting someone they recognize on a walk. But there’s also something sinister hidden behind it, because the Upper Management Council is made of deceptive people, hiding in this dim-lit room and plotting terrible things behind the world’s back.

“What are you trying to say?” Shouta asks, a hint of impatience starting to leak in his tone, but he doesn’t have it in himself to care about the way they perceive him anymore.

“A proposition,” a man says from another corner of the table. He looks younger than the others, but not by much. Shouta remembers him from the last time he was here – the bored man is what he’d called him. And in truth, he still looks incredibly indifferent about this exchange.

“A proposition?” Shouta echoes. It might have sounded nice a month ago, but now he knows better than to hope for something good.

“A proposition, yes.” The woman repeats. “See it as some form of promotion, if you will. You see, Mr. Aizawa, there is little technology to this day able to handle Meta Abilities, and those that do exist are extremely limited. Each Ability requires a specific device to counter it, to stop it. But there are too many disadvantages to building and experimenting with tools to better control Abilities, and simply not enough time.”

Shouta’s heart drops in his stomach, and then it dawns on him – this entire thing. The very reason they think he’s so special.

“He’ll do perfectly.” He remembers the bored man saying when they’d first met him here.

“You want me to erase Meta Abilities?” his voice is calm and even, but there is a restlessness coursing through his entire body.

He understands everything now. They had sent him to the orphanage in hope that he would see the same potential in these kids as they had. He had grown to care about them, just like they had thought he would, and now they offered him a twisted opportunity to protect these children from themselves.

“It would simply be a precaution,” one of the members says, with thinning gray hair. “You would attend their training sessions and supervise alongside other people, and everything would happen in a safe and controlled environment.”

Until you send them to their deaths to fight in your place the threats you fear most. Shouta clenches his jaw. Suddenly, he blinks, remembering something.

 A threat.

“But the children I met did not all have Meta Abilities,” he says, and slowly he watches the confusion creep back up in their faces. Surely, they had not been expecting him to say this in answer to their so-called ‘proposition’.

But they do not say anything, and then he understands they’re waiting for him to continue.

“The boy, Midoriya Izuku,” he says, trying to explain what he means.

Except, in the file they had sent him, there had been so little information about the child himself, he doubts any of them remember his face, even less his name. If anything, they do not remember any of the children they send to these orphanages and then take back a few years later to train into killing machines. But surely, they would remember something that scares them.

“All for One’s son,” he says through gritted teeth. The look in their eyes as they finally get who he means – or well, they can imagine it now at least - makes anger bubble in his throat.

“Ah, yes.” The woman clears her throat. “The boy. Well, he is not to be trained to become a hero, of course. His place in the orphanage was more of a… Precaution than anything else,”

Surrounding the threat’s child with other children much more powerful than Izuku himself will ever be. What a low blow, even for the Commission.

There has happened too much, and he has seen too much. Maybe Shouta will never be able to stop the Hero Program, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t at least try, and even more if he takes part in it.

“I can’t,” Shouta says. He cannot – will not, help in any way the Commission in this. “Not like this, when you know nothing of the children you are ready to risk the lives of.”

The head of the Commission, the lady with silver hair slicked back and an icy stare, for once, is starting to look annoyed. “If you refuse, you will put these children’s lives at risk,”

“No,” Shouta scoffs slightly. “No, and you and I both know what the real danger is.”

Silence settles in the room. Strained and tense, but Shouta revels in it.

“The offer still stands, if you ever change your mind,” they say casually, but he knows they desperately need him. As far as Shouta knows, they don’t have many options to go with in order to control the children’s powers other than him.

Shouta turns to walk away, but then he stops himself. Slowly, he turns his head to the right and says, “That Hero Program, it would be quite terrible if words of it got out, wouldn’t it?”

No one answers, but he can practically feel them looking at each other uncomfortably, eager for him to leave. The unmistakable silence that comes with the realization of the terrible mistake they committed when choosing him as their best option.

“We trust you will make the right decision,” The woman replies.

He hums. “I will.”

Despite how prepared Shouta had been for the meeting with the Upper Management Council, he hadn’t planned what he would do after it was over. He’s in the elevator, alone. No one arrives or leaves at this time. He could go back to his apartment with Maple and then decide what to do from there.

His finger hovers over the Lobby button, but at the last minute, he presses his floor. He doesn’t know what pushes him to do it, and he doesn’t realize that he has done it until the doors open with a cheery ding.

Some people walk in the corridor, all too busy to notice him. Most of them have papers in their hands and places to go. He’s just another person to walk by.

Shouta makes it to the door where his desk is – so small, barely any bigger than a school desk – and pushes it open. A few heads turn his way, and the typing of keyboard caps quiets, but only for a moment before it picks up again. Nemuri isn’t there, surprisingly.

He walks through the rows of desks and makes it to his own. It hasn’t changed or moved the tiniest bit – if not for the dust that has started accumulating on top of it. Shouta pulls his chair and sits down, finding comfort in how it reminds him of the one in his room back at the Orphanage.

Dusting the top of his computer and keyboard, he presses the button to turn the device on. It takes a moment, but then he is met with the sight of a starry night sky.

When he’d chosen this picture as his wallpaper a while back, he’d thought it to be the prettiest thing. But now, after stargazing and looking through the telescope with Hizashi, and popping odd mystical mushrooms with the children that produced star-studded mist, it looks rather plain.

The guy beside him taps him on the shoulder, startling him out of his thoughts.

“They gave me your files when you were gone,” he gestures awkwardly at a pile of papers on the corner of his desk. “Could you…” take them back, get me rid of them?

But Shouta understands what he’s trying to say, and he can’t actually say no. So he simply nods instead.

There it is again, this feeling of normalcy. Well, maybe that’s not quite the right word, because although it does feel normal, Shouta is not sure he’s the same person he’d been a month ago. He is back in the same setting, with the same old desk, in the same room, and with the same work hours.

But looking around, he sees all those people, all probably thinking they’re doing important work. Just like he had. But they don’t know – no one knows what he knows. They don’t question the system or the Upper Management Council. They don’t question their work because it’s so much easier that way.

Abruptly, he stands up. “This is so wrong,” he mumbles, staring down at the newly placed files on his wooden desk grayed by dust. People send glances his way, and surprise slowly turns to irritation by being disturbed.

“Does no one else see this?” Shouta asks, a bit louder this time.

He scrutinizes each face, and every time his gaze meets another pair of eyes, they look away. “Does no one question this work? What it really does?” he asks into the silence. “Do you even know what they do with the cases once you’re done with them?”

But no one says anything. No one will. He knows this because the Him of last month wouldn’t have listened or stood up either. But now, Shouta cannot sit back down in his chair and act like everything is alright like his world hasn’t toppled over and shattered into a million little shards.

Shouta gathers his things, leaving the files on his desk. In truth, there isn’t much to pack. He has three pens that he likes tucked away in his drawer, but nothing else is important.

And with this, Shouta leaves the office. He does not look back, but this time not because he’s scared he’ll succumb to the desire of staying, the invisible and tempting pull – it does not exist – but because he feels no need to.

Fuck this shithole, he thinks, and then leaves without an ounce of regret.

It doesn’t rain today – a miracle, truly. Shouta ends up taking the bus home, enjoying the peacefulness of the much less crowded place. The radio is faint in the background, and as always, it plays awful music he’s heard a hundred times before and with hosts he’ll never learn the names of speaking in between each song.

He makes it to his apartment, and to his surprise, someone is waiting for him. Nemuri is there, talking to someone – an old woman who seems confused by her words. Nemuri points her hair and traces the spot underneath her eyes, and then puts a hand up in the air, indicating height.

She’s talking about him, he realizes. The old lady seems more scared than anything by Nemuri’s desperate attempts at describing Shouta, and she shakes her head a couple of times in apology before entering the building.

The navy-haired woman sighs and slumps against the wall. Her head perks up at the sound of his approaching footsteps. “You’re scaring people,” he says bluntly.

“Aizawa!” a crazed laugh escapes her throat, almost delirious. Well, she does look tired. “Oh my fucking God, you have no idea how long I waited for you to show up,” she tells him, shaking his shoulders.

It couldn’t have been more than an hour and a half, maybe two at most, because that’s when he’d left for work, and he hadn’t seen her there on his way out. He goes to ask how she knows where he lives, but then remembers she gave him a ride here right before he left.

“Why exactly are you here?” he asks whilst prying her fingers off of him.

“The Higher-Ups told me you’d be back today but that you probably wouldn’t come to the office, so I waited here and tried to get people to tell me in which apartment you live – or if you were even there,” she says, and then sighs dramatically, “I suppose they simply couldn’t handle my charm,”

“Don’t you have work, though?” he questions.

“I took a sick day,”

“You’re sick? What are you doing here, you should go back to your place and rest or something—”

“I’m not actually sick, I just said I took a sick day. It’s different,” she explains, as though it made perfect sense. She pulls on the locked door of the apartment building while staring at Shouta. “Now, will you let me in? I’ve been freezing my ass here all morning. There’s a lot we need to talk about,”

Shouta would probably have been offended or at least annoyed by her terrible language before, but after having spent enough time with Usagiyama, he is now completely unphased by it. Nemuri reminds him a bit of the rabbit-eared woman, now that he thinks about it.

He unlocks the main door and Nemuri brings her arms closer to herself, fully appreciating the heating in the room. They walk up to the sixth floor, because the elevator is still out of service, and then make it to his apartment.

“Be my guest,” he says, letting her walk in first. Maple surges out of literally nowhere and approaches Nemuri.

The woman coos and pats the cat’s head, taking a high-pitched voice and saying things like ‘Oh my god aren’t you the cutest thing ever?’ And ‘How can a sweetie like you live with such a grumpy man?’

“There’s something you wanted to talk to me about?” Shouta asks, hanging his coat on the wall. He wants to get to the point as soon as possible.

“Lots of things, actually,” she says. They make their way to Shouta’s round table, the light above their heads flickering faintly. Nemuri pulls out a piece of crumpled paper and unfolds it. She smooths it as best as she can on the table, although it doesn’t do much, and then turns it around for Shouta to see. “The letter you wrote,”

Shouta reads it quickly with a frown and hums under his breath. “Yeah, I mean, no. It was me who sent it, but I didn’t write it.” He tells her, receiving a puzzled expression in return. “Usagiyama—A woman there wrote it, but I didn’t read it. She said you’d probably understand?”

Nemuri stays quiet for a bit, her face turning pale. She leans forward in her chair and her eyes flicker back and forth between the letter and him.

“Well—Do you…” she fumbles over her words. “Do you know about the Hero Program?” she asks this with a sort of doubt laced in her voice.

Shouta frowns. “How…I mean yes, but how did you…” and then he picks up the letter again. Maybe he misread or skipped a paragraph or something. But he doesn’t see anything mentioning the Hero Program. “I didn’t know about it until after I sent it out,”

“It’s coded,” Nemuri says. She points out the first letters of each sentence, and how all put together it makes HERO PROGRAM. “Just how much do you know?”

Shouta should be the one asking this. He’s the one who spent an entire month in the actual orphanage. He’s the one who had the resources and people he could ask questions to, and have answers get handed over to him, if only he’d done a better job at it.

All the while, Nemuri had been here doing her own investigation, apparently. Unless…She’d known this whole time.

No, she couldn’t have. Right before he left, she’d bombarded him with questions, seemingly just as confused as he’d been. If she’d known and had chosen to keep her mouth shut, she would’ve been more discreet about it. She wouldn’t have waited two hours here freezing outside his apartment building.

“Pretty much everything,” Shouta answers. “They even offered me a ‘promotion’,” he says mockingly, “to help with the program.”

“Help?” she asks, confused.

“My Meta Ability,” he tells her, as if it explained everything. She understands, though. Somehow.

“That… Makes sense.” She mumbles. Her gaze falls back to her hands, and she slumps in her chair, fiddling with her nails. “What’d you say?”

Shouta sighs. “I turned them down, of course.” It’s such a casual conversation, or at least it feels that way, even though they’re discussing a program for transforming children into weapons.

“Really?” Nemuri blurts out. A small smile slowly tugs at her lips. “Didn’t think you had it in you, Aizawa.” She adds, as if amused, or maybe just impressed. “What’s your plan now?”

“Well—” Shouta looks around his small apartment, like his blank walls or worn furniture might take pity on him and give him an answer. “I don’t really know, but I want to do something,”

Nemuri nods. “Had a feeling you’d say this,” she stands up. “Luckily for you, I’ve been working with someone, and we’re this close to finally being able to take down the Commission,”

“Take them down?”

“Down to hell!”

“Be gay, do crimes? More like be gay, do justice!” Nemuri laughs, tightening her hold on the steering wheel.

She’d managed to convince him to go meet the person she’d been working with to fully finalize their plan, and so they had lost no time heading there.

“Stop that, I’m begging you,” Shouta says, rubbing his temples. It had sounded like a good idea, and it truly is the best chance he has against the Commission. But Nemuri is giving him a headache, and her obvious lack of sleep renders her even more filterless.

Shouta turns to look outside the window. He rests his cheek in his palm and lets his mind wander back to the orphanage. He wonders if Katsuki is still mad at him. They probably all are.

Even more, he thinks about Hizashi, and wonders how he might be feeling right now, what he’s doing.

“Oh my Goodness,” Nemuri exclaims, glancing his way for a moment before putting her eyes back on the road. “I know that face,”

“What?” he replies, confused.

“Who did it?”

“What?!”

“Who broke your heart?” Nemuri questions, as though ready to commit murder. She’s probably just messing with him, he thinks, there’s no way she… Nothing even happened, anyways. He doesn’t know why he’s making such a big deal out of this.

“No one,” he tells her blankly, making his voice firm and hoping she’ll drop it.

“Don’t lie to me!” She calls back, offended.

“It’s true! I’m the one who..” Shouta breaks off and breathes out a heavy sigh. He racks his hand through his hair. “I’m the one who messed up. It doesn’t matter, so just… drop it,”

“What? No,” Nemuri stops at a red light and turns to look at him. “I can’t just drop this,” she exclaims. “Aizawa, I’ve known you for years and this is the first time something like this happens,”

Something like this could mean a hundred different things. Something that matters to him? Something that screws over all the hard work he put into becoming the most logical self he can be?

“You don’t know that.” He replies, and Nemuri raises an eyebrow. Shouta clicks his tongue. “It’s over now, and there’s nothing I can do to change things.” He mumbles that last part, and then, desperate to get the attention away from him, he asks, rather harshly, “What does it matter to you, anyway?”

The traffic lights have turned green now, and a few cars behind them are beginning to honk, but Nemuri doesn’t seem to hear it, or she simply doesn’t care. The latter seems more likely.

Over the commotion outside, her voice is calm.

“Is it really so hard to believe that I’ve only ever wanted to be your friend and that I care for you?” Nemuri stares at him, but he’s too busy looking out the window. They both fall silent, and then he hears the woman murmur, “Fuck this,”

Before he knows it, Shouta is gripping the edge of his seat in search of balance as Nemuri presses hard on the pedal and does a full J-turn.

“What are you doing!?” Shouta yells.

“I’m saving your ass, dumbass! You’ll thank me later,” she tells him, to which Shouta scoffs. “You’re gonna go find that man and set things right.”

Chapter Text

“Stop the car,” Shouta’s tone is firm, but the tremble in his voice betrays him.

Nemuri ignores him, heading somewhere – he doesn’t even know, he can’t focus on the names of the road they’re passing or the shops’ signs.

“Nemuri—”

“You worry too much,” she answers, “trust me, you’ll be fine,”

“It’s not a good idea, I’m telling you—” he snaps for what seems like the hundredth time in the past five minutes., leaning forward in his seat, trying to get her to look at him.

“And I’m telling you that you’re trying to run away,” she retorts.

They’ve been going back and forth like this since Nemuri turned around from her detective-friend-ish-guy’s place and started driving who knows where.

“It’s not that—” Shouta says, though his words don’t bite as much as he’d wanted them to. No, it’s definitely not that. Shouta just knows it’s not a good idea, and it’s not because he’s scared. “I have a cat—and what am I even going to do? I don’t even know what to say – or how to apologize,”

“So if we went to your place and picked up your cat, you would go?” Nemuri asks, stopping at another red light. She’s slowed down by now, her focus split between Shouta’s arguing and her driving. Yet, she still manages to shut him up.

Shouta has run out of arguments a while ago, and he’s only been blurting out whatever had come to his mind. He purses his lips. Maybe this time it’s better if he doesn’t answer.

“I don’t want to go,” he tells her, softly. He sounds so childish, like a kid who doesn’t want to leave for school, or to an appointment with the dentist.

“I know,” Nemuri replies. Throughout the entire thing, she hasn’t said one unkind thing to him, even though her vocabulary is usually so vulgar. She’s just been replying to him, driving him to—

To the train station, he notices when he realizes they’ve been stopped for too long for it to be another red light.

“I know you don’t want to go,” she says again, finally looking at him. “But you do want to see him, don’t you?”

Shouta’s hand instinctively goes to grab the ends of the gray scarf hanging loosely around his neck – the one Hizashi had given him.

“Of course I do,” he replies, a tired laugh stuck in his throat. “But he definitely doesn’t,”

Nemuri reaches for his shoulder, “You messed up once, fine! We all mess up sometimes, and say fucked up things we don’t mean,” she says, and her more natural way of speaking manages to make Shouta snort lightly. “But don’t let this be the end of it,” She taps his chest with her finger, emphasizing each word.

“I’m sorry,” Hizashi says, almost startling Shouta. “I’m sorry that you feel this way. But know that the only person standing in your way right now is yourself,” he takes a step toward Shouta. “So if you refuse to see it, there’s nothing more I can do to help you.”

Shouta takes a shaky inhale, looking in front of him as the sky starts to get darker again. The concrete roads are still wet, and puddles of water fill up the spaces next to the sidewalks.

“Alright,” he says. Alright alright alright, he repeats in his head. He’s not sure what made him change his mind – maybe Kayama’s annoying determination, or the aching in his chest at the thought of Hizashi.

“Alright,” Nemuri replies, offering him a smile and pushing her glasses up on the bridge of her nose.

Somehow, Shouta manages to get out of the car. Every doubt he’d had before is taken away with the cool breeze, not forgotten but simply put away for now. He quickly closes the door of the car and heads for the entrance of the train station.

“Go get your man, Aizawa!” he hears Nemuri shout behind him through a rolled-down window. He turns back to look at her still smiling, and he dares, for once, return it.

It’s already late afternoon, and it’s far enough in the year that the sun keeps setting earlier each day. The sky is a soft teal when Shouta enters the train station – rushing past people, even pushing a few that are in his way. He utters small sorries left and right and is answered with curses and side looks.

He barely makes it in time to get the last ticket of the day for the train going to Nebu Island. The lady at the counter watches him arrive, just about to close her small window.

“Wait—” Shouta grabs the side of the corner, catching his breath. “It hasn’t left yet – the train. Has it?”

“Well, no, but…” she glances at the clock and purses her lips.

“Please,” he tells her. “It’s important,”

A strange silence settles all around them – drawing people’s attention, which turns from anger at his disturbance to curiosity at hearing him talk so franticly.

“I need to see someone,” he tries to explain, desperately now. The woman seems frozen in place, though. Torn between being unwilling to sell a ticket that might not get him anywhere and wanting to help him.

“Get this guy a ticket, for goodness’ sake!” Someone waiting in line at one of the counters next to him says. Mumbles of agreement surge from the small crowd in the room.

At last, this seems to bring the lady out of her thoughts, and quickly she glances back at the huge clock on the far wall behind Shouta.

“Alright, alright, but you have to be quick—take the stair on the right and then turn to the left,” she says quickly while printing his ticket, and taking his yens in exchange for it. “I’ll call them and ask that they hold on for a bit, but I can’t guarantee you anything.”

And just like that, Shouta is off again, running the corridors of the train station. He runs up the flight of stairs and hurries to find the train waiting for him. There’s a man whose head perks up when he sees him arrive and then hurries him inside the nearest train car.

Out of everything that has happened this day – too much, now that he thinks about it: with the commission trying to recruit him for training young children, and then Shouta deciding to be done with his job and running into Nemuri – waiting feels the worse.

There are different kinds of waiting. Waiting for the rain to stop, waiting for a better pay to arrive, waiting in a waiting room – a waiting room – for an appointment, or updates on someone we care about.

Waiting for the best of days, waiting for our doom. But Shouta had never experienced this kind of wait before – the kind where he is terrified and hopeful and about to burst into tears or laughter all at once. The kind that doesn’t really feel like waiting, because there’s already so much else going on in his mind that he can’t be bothered to ponder more about the waiting part.

It’s only been a few days really – it’s not like he and Hizashi hadn’t seen each other in months – and maybe that’s what terrifies Shouta the most. Having all the events of his departure fresh in his mind.

Maybe this was a mistake—but the train is just about to leave, and it would be embarrassing to go and ask the conductor to stop. He’s not even sure if he can get to the conductor anyways.

He feels alone. Lonely. Lonesome. He wished he’d brought Maple with him.

Perhaps, by some miracle of the universe, or some absurd luck, Maple – the Maple – runs into the doors of the train just before they close, the security guy just one second behind her, one second too late. The man plops his hand onto his knees in exhaustion and shakes his head before reaching for something else in his coat.

With her caramel-coloured fur, with some spots lighter than others resembling more the shade of autumn leaves reddening, Maple walks his way towards the farther alleys of the train, unbothered. All the while, Shouta watches her, too stunned to move.

“How’d you get here?” he asks, a small smile forming on his lips. He can’t get himself to be mad, he would be lying – and if there’s one thing Shouta has learnt this past month, is that for all the lies he tells, he is still awful at it.

So for once, he doesn’t. He doesn’t think about how maybe a cat – his cat – walking freely inside the train could get him in trouble, or how he would have rather suffered all his interior madness alone, without a friend.

He does none of this. Instead, he reaches to pick Maple up, and she lets him. He positions her comfortably on his legs and spends the rest of the ride patting her head and running his hand in her fur.

The train is fuller this time, but only because there are so many stops. He knows by the time he gets to Nabu Island, it’ll have emptied out. And yet, the people are silent or whispering, each busied with their own minds.

But even with all the time in the world, Shouta’s mind keeps going back to one specific memory.

“They were right about one thing, though,” he remembers Hizashi saying. “I wouldn’t mind if you stayed,”

And Shouta holds onto that thought with everything he has left, only sheer hope, and he waits.

Shouta isn’t asleep when they arrive, a woman walking down the aisle of the train to check on anyone that might be left. She looks about ready to say something when she sees Maple there, free of her cage, but decides against it. Perhaps, she’s too tired for this.

Truth be told, Shouta is buzzing with energy. Well, no, that’s not quite true. He’s exhausted, but the anxiety of everything makes his mind whirl, and he hasn’t been able to get an ounce of rest.

The thing is, though, Nebu Island is… Wide. There is so much land, and a long coast surrounding it. It isn’t like in the city, with people everywhere and buildings always hiding the sky: everything is spread out. And at the other end of it, another sister island hides behind it. And this is where Hizashi and the children are.

But the train doesn’t even get to the main island. Last time, Usagiyama had given him a ride there, and now she’s not here. So what is he even supposed to do? Just swim there or something?

No, of course not. Other people must take the train sometimes, so there’s no way the only person able to get him on the island is Usagiyama. There must be a boat at specific times of the day. Maybe.

Except, the sky is dark and blurry sparkly spots stain its navy blanket. After a few minutes of looking around, he does find out that there’s a boat coming tomorrow at around 6 a.m., so that’ll be his chance.

The wait, again, is insufferable.

But somehow, the clock eventually strikes six, and by the time Shouta steps into the vacant boat, his heart hammers in his chest so loudly that they manage to block out the noise of waves crashing against metal.

What if Hizashi changed his mind, and he hates Shouta by now? What if he never wants to see him again? What if it doesn’t work out, and he has to go back to the city to his plain apartment, without a job or purpose?

So many thoughts rummage through his head, and they overlap one another in a way that gives Shouta a headache. He rubs his eyes because they’re starting to burn again and due to his lack of sleep.

Whether it works out or not, he’ll still have one thing, though. The children, and this whole program that needs to face consequences and be destroyed. This is what his job will be, no matter the outcome.

Having remembered this, talking to Hizashi doesn’t seem so frightening anymore.

Shouta is almost there.

So close, so close.

An island and a bridge left to go, and then he’ll be there. He doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or not– hasn’t had the time to make up his mind yet.

Should he walk? His legs feel so tired, from not doing anything at all for too many hours in a row. But if he has to walk he will—

Too busy trying to figure out what to do (which proves to be harder with barely any sleep in his system), Shouta doesn’t notice the figure waving at him, attempting to get his attention.

“Hey—” the girl waves, a genuine smile on her face. He thinks he’s seen her somewhere before, but he can’t quite pint point where. He waves back anyways, just to be polite, in case the girl had just mistook him for someone else.

The pink-haired teen walks over to him, though, carrying large crates that would look heavy if not for the easiness with which the girl holds them.

“You’re that guy who came to the shop with Ochako the other day, right?” she asks, and then he remembers.

“The mochi shop,”

“Didn’t think you’d remember!” she laughs, and Shouta almost says ‘I didn’t’ before stopping himself. She lifts her knee to get a better hold of the crates in her arms. “Are you leaving already?”

“No, I—I left a few days ago, actually.” He answers. It’s not like he has anything better to do now anyways. He’ll have to walk or find something – though he doesn’t think the people here even have any kind of public transport. “I just got back,”

The girl peeks her head from above her pile of crates and her eyes open in surprise. “Oh, I see,” she looks back behind her for a second before turning back to him. “Say, do you need a ride to go somewhere?”

Shouta is about to shake his head because it’s embarrassing to receive help from a teen, especially for a ride – can she even drive? – but then stops himself. Seeing the hesitation on his face, the girl’s face lights up, for some reason.

“If you’ve got some time to spare to help us load the truck with the cargo, it would go a lot quicker. My Da’ and I could really use some help right now – my brother usually helps, but he broke his leg,” she admits. “Then we could give you a ride wherever you need,”

What is it today with those last-minute twists that come to play in his favour? Shouta glances down at Maple and then back up at the girl. “That would be great,” he tells her, and then he offers to take half the crates she’s carrying, which she gladly accepts.

“What are they, anyways?” he asks, about fifteen minutes later, when the cargo is almost all loaded up in the truck.

“New Mochi flavours – or at least, the ingredients,” she replies.

Shouta thinks of how happy Ochako would be to hear this, and how nice it’d be to go back and try all the flavours the shop has to offer.

If everything goes well, a voice in his head reminds him. And to it, he replies, when everything goes well.

He doesn’t remember half of the ride to get to the smaller twin island – he remembers the way his leg wouldn’t stop jumping up and down, how the sky had only just started to become bluer instead of pitch black.

So close, so close.

Somehow, someway, Shouta stands at the bottom of the hill, leading to the house straight out of a fantasy book, with dying vines climbing up its walls – no, not dying, sleeping, because Shouta knows, he simply knows they’ll have to come back to their vibrant green tint in a few months.

He’s learnt that, with being alive, things always end up going back to the things they tried to avoid.

The only way out is through. And Shouta has had enough of running in the opposite direction.

So, he walks slowly, with Maple following close behind, and sometimes ahead, jumping when the occasion presents itself. The path to go up the hill is so rarely used that weeds have started growing over it, making Shouta wonder if he’s truly walking in the right path, or making one up as he goes.

It must have rained recently because puddles of water fill the uneven soil, and droplets hang on for dear life onto the pointy tips of leaves.

There is only one way, and it is up, so it is the way Shouta takes. And eventually, he is there, on the sleeping flower field, walking on wet autumn leaves, the cold air biting his cheeks – and for once, Shouta is grateful to have a scarf to protect him from it.

Maple sprints ahead of him, and Shouta doesn’t have the reflex to stop her. He knows she’s not running away – in fact, he already has a good idea of where she might be going. So he doesn’t try to stop her, even as he sees her go around the house, and to a place only she knows.

Shouta will not run; he had promised himself this. But still, now that he is so close, his legs refuse to take him to the front porch. Even if they did, he doesn’t think he’d have the strength to lift his hand and knock on the door.

He decides he’ll take some more time, because this time, he is here, and there is no deadline. There will not be one, unless Hizashi and the children decide otherwise.

The front door flies open, and in the doorframe, a small shape appears. Both Shouta and the child freeze for a moment.

“You came back,” Momo says, so softly he can barely hear her over the wind. So he takes a step forward, trying his luck, and when she stays there, he takes another.

“I did,” he replies simply.

“I thought you’d left,” she says, closing the door behind her, perhaps in order not to wake the people who are still asleep, or to keep the cold from filling up the house. He wonders if she’s angry with him, the way Katsuki had been, but he remembers at this moment, that he has never seen Momo angry once. “You said you’d left for good,”

And the way her voice is high and small, Shouta is certain she is not angry. But he knows that he has done her wrong. Her, and everyone else. And although she might not be mad, she has every right in the world to feel hurt.

“I did,” he says again, softer this time. “I’m sorry. Even adults can be stupid sometimes, I know I was. But I’m back now,” he wants to say more to her, tell her he’d like to stay – that he’d always wanted to stay, and he’d just been a coward. Truthfully, he’s not sure if that’s changed.

He wants to tell her he won’t leave again if he can, and that he’ll make it up to her. But he doesn’t want to make a promise he’s not absolutely certain he’ll be able to keep.

Shouta has stopped walking now, but he’s close enough to see the tears start to well up in the girl’s eyes. Before he knows it, she’s sprinting towards him and colliding against his leg, holding him in a tight hug.

“Don’t say those things about yourself, Mr. Aizawa,” she tells him, her voice cracking. “You’re not stupid,”

Of all the things Shouta had thought she might say, this had not been one of them. Still, it manages to make him smile. Shouta crouches down to her level and takes her into a tight hug, for as long as it will take for Momo’s tears to stop falling.

“Alright, I won’t.” he agrees, because it is the only thing he can do.

After a bit, Momo pulls back, and Shouta wipes the tear escaping the corner of her eye. The door behind her opens again, this time with Hitoshi coming out of it, Maple following close behind. A second later, Kyouka and Denki are behind him as well.

“Guys, I heard—” Kyouka starts, quick and out of breath, but then she sees him outside, and trails off the rest of her sentence. “…Mr. Aizawa,”

“What are you doing here?” Hitoshi questions, his tone firm, and angrier than Momo’s. Shouta doesn’t mind it, though. He deserves it. “What, did you forget something?”

Kyouka lightly shoves him, a short and silent argument happening between them.

“Yes, actually,” Shouta replies, and all the heads snap back toward him. Even Momo looks up at him with a frown. “I forgot to apologize for leaving – for not staying here. I forgot that I liked it here a lot better than anywhere else,”

Denki pushes past Hitoshi, just until he’s one foot out of the doorframe. “So does that mean you’ll stay?” he asks, his voice hopeful.

“I don’t know,” he admits, and he watches as their optimistic expressions deflate. “I need to talk to Hizashi, first,” he tells them. “And apologize to everyone else.”

Their shoulders relax slightly at this. Honestly, Shouta isn’t sure what to do from here. Does he just wait, or… Well, that’s the thing, he doesn’t know what else to do other than waiting. Everything has been going so well up until now, and he’s terrified that it might change very soon.

He wouldn’t be surprised – this is the most luck he’s ever had in his life, all poured in a single day.

“Ah, but Hizashi is still sleeping—” Kyouka starts, but breaks herself off.

“It’s alright, I’m awake now,” Hizashi says, placing his hand on her shoulder. The children exchange looks, their gaze jumping back and forth between Shouta and Hizashi. “Say, why don’t you all wait inside for me, I’ll meet you there in a bit. You too, Momo,” the kids look as though they want to protest but decide against it.

The children hurry back inside and close the door behind them, but Shouta knows they must still be close by – he even catches some movement in one of the windows in the library giving into the field.

The wind quiets, the trees calm, and the leaves settle. Everything quiets. It’s always like this with Hizashi, Shouta realizes. Like everything fades into the background until there’s only the two of them left.

Shouta had been calm not too long ago – but now his heart beats so loudly at the sight of Hizashi, as though it would jump right out of his chest any moment now.

Before Hizashi can say anything, Shouta opens his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts out. Hizashi frowns slightly, but he’s far enough that Shouta isn’t sure if he’s only imagining things. “I know it doesn’t really do anything to fix things—but still, I wanted to tell you,”

He swallows the lump in his throat, and he searches Hizashi’s face for something, an indication that his words anger him, or that they don’t. That he’s not just standing there and spluttering nonsense, even though he’s not quite sure what he’s saying.

“I quit my job, you know.” He continues when Hizashi doesn’t say a thing. “It felt—wrong, going back there, after… After this, after everything,”

Hizashi’s features twist into a more surprised expression, if only slightly, before settling back into a calm one (and, if Shouta was more honest with himself, a sad one.)

“Why are you here, Shouta?”

The use of his first name makes hope flutter in his chest.

To apologize for leaving. To tell you I never wanted to leave. To tell you you were right all along.

“I wanted to see you,” he says, and the moment the words leave his mouth, all the fear and doubt and sorrow, suddenly stops.

It doesn’t go away. It’s still there, Shouta knows this, but just this once, it doesn’t take over.

“And maybe it’s selfish,” Shouta admits, a laugh escaping his mouth, perhaps from nervousness. “but you told me I had to think about myself in all this, and so I did. And I thought about what I wanted for myself, and I realized…”

Shouta hasn’t been able to look at Hizashi while saying all of this, only spared glances. Yet, he finds himself locking eyes with beautiful green ones, and he never wants to look away.

“I want to be here, with you, and with the children, and everything else that comes with this place. Because it’s the only place where I’m able to feel happy.” He breathes out, and stops for a moment, before finishing. “But only if… If you’ll have me,”

Shouta holds his breath, waiting. He doesn’t have to wait long, or maybe he’s just already been waiting his whole life. Maybe Hizashi knows this, and maybe he’s been waiting too.

The sun is just starting to rise, and a deep orange glow is cast over the top of the hill, barely reaching Shouta’s shoes.

Hizashi makes his way over to Shouta, “I thought you’d never ask,” he answers gently, cupping Shouta’s face and pulling him towards him.

Their lips meet softly, and it is everything, all at once. Shouta has no word for it—it is as bright as the night sky through a telescope lens; it is as gentle as the small bend of flowers when the breeze hits; it is a mountain, colliding and tearing in half.

When they pull back, they’re both smiling. Hizashi’s face is flushed, as if he’d just realized what he’d done. “Sorry—is this too much? I just—I really like you,” he laughs, and Shouta answers by kissing him again.

There is no doubt left, at least not for now – Shouta can worry later, but right now, there is only him and Hizashi, and nothing else.

They both end up going back inside, their faces flushed. From the cold, obviously.

The four kids had, in fact, been not so subtly spying on them, but Shouta and Hizashi pretend as though they didn’t have a clue. The children look at them, so still and quiet, holding their breaths.

Shouta looks at Hizashi standing next to him, and then back at the smaller figures.

“You’re stuck with me now,” he tells them, his heart fuller than ever. He feels Hizashi’s hand wrap around his own, and Shouta squeezes back.

Ochako is the next to wake, surprisingly. Usually, she likes to sleep in for as long as she can. But this time, she runs down the stairs quickly, stopping halfway to look through the rows holding the ramp.

“Mr. Aizawa!” she exclaims, not even asking any questions like, ‘Hadn’t you left?’ or ‘What are you doing here?’

Instead, she runs into him full force, knocking the breath right out of him and hugging him tightly. She doesn’t cry, and she doesn’t yell. She doesn’t doubt him at all. It’s as though she’d known he’d come back eventually.

Everyone awake is in the library-living-room-place, as Shouta calls it, sitting on the couch or the carpet, whispering and giggling, only half-playing the board game out on the coffee table.

Another pair of footsteps – no, two – are heard on the floor above, some knocking and some more whispering. And then.

“Did you say Mr. Aizawa??” Mina cries out, her voice still raw from having just woken up.

She rushes down the stairs with Kirishima following behind, though a bit slower. A yawn escapes the boy, and he offers a smile to Shouta when he arrives.

The commotion downstairs wakes more people up, all searching for what might be happening. Tsuyu is next, and she simply waves to Shouta. He’d been disappointed not to have gotten the chance to get to know her more, but now he gets another chance at it.

Then Iida comes down. He looks like he’s about to ask everyone to lower their voice – people are sleeping, still – and Shouta wouldn’t be surprised. The boy has a thing for having everything in order. But he stops himself at the sight of Shouta, and everyone else in the room.

“Iida, Iida!” Ochako rushes over to him and explains to him everything, and everyone else goes back to doing their own things. It all feels so…

Normal. Like he’d never left at all.

“Oh no, that bastard came back?”

Shouta turns around and sees Usagiyama leaning against the doorframe. She’s smiling, though, and somehow Shouta is glad to see her.

“Good morning to you too,” Shouta replies. The woman walks over to him and gives him a shove in his side, harder than she usually does. “What was that for?!”

“Leaving,” she says. “Happy you two finally talked, though. It was a fucking pain to watch, especially this guy,” she points to Hizashi.

“Rumi!” he turns around to face her and she holds her hand up in front of her surrender but laughs all the same.

Hizashi suggests that they all go into the kitchen for breakfast, to which the children are all much too happy to agree. Shouta and Hizashi follow behind, but then one of the steps in the staircase creaks, and a moment later, Izuku stands at the end of it, half-hidden behind the pillar of the ramp.

“I’ll join you in a minute,” Shouta whispers to the blond, and Hizashi nods.

To be fair, Shouta had known beforehand this would probably be one of the hardest parts. His mind had been so full of other worries, though, that he hadn’t thought about how to approach it.

“Hi, Izuku,” he starts, hoping that some casual conversation might help, but Izuku doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t move in the slightest.

Izuku is different, there is no denying that, but it doesn’t mean he should be treated any differently. He deserves the same apology Shouta has given to everyone else, and probably an even better one.

But there is a certain gentleness required to handle the situation, because Izuku has been hurt before, by his father All for One without a doubt, emotionally at the very least, and the commission, and then by Shouta.

“Is Katsuki still sleeping?” he tries. If there is one thing Izuku doesn’t mind discussing, it is Katsuki.

The boy shakes his head.

“Is he awake, then?” Shouta pushes. This is the best shot he’s got. He watches as Izuku loosens his hold on the ramp’s pillar, hiding one bit less behind it.

“Kacchan doesn’t want to come down yet,” Izuku whispers, fiddling with his fingers.

“That’s alright,” he replies to reassure the boy.

Neither of them says anything else after this for a bit. Shouta knows, by watching Izuku, that the boy is thinking, searching for words, and trying them out in his head. It is a slow, excruciating process, but he has time, and he is willing to wait however long it will take.

But it turns out to be quicker, to Shouta’s surprise. So maybe Izuku had already known what he’d wanted to say all along.

“Is it true, then?” he asks, his emerald irises glued to his shoes. Izuku takes one small step further away from the staircase and lifts his head to look at Shouta. “That you’re staying?”

“Yeah,” Shouta replies, in a whisper stuck in his throat. He swallows. “I’m staying,”

Izuku looks at him with wide, round eyes. He lingers in his spot for a moment longer and then gives Shouta a slight nod, which he returns.

It looks as though there’s more the boy wants to say, with his lips held tightly, but instead, he simply puts his hand back on the staircase’s ramp and says, “I’ll tell Kacchan,” before heading back upstairs, his footsteps quiet.

It will take time.

Time. After forty years of waiting, he finally has it.

Shouta cannot stay for too long – he has only brought Maple with him, and no suitcase or clothes or anything at all. He still has an apartment in the city, but the place has never felt much like home. At least, not like here.

Nemuri is back there as well, with the detective guy. All three of them are supposed to deal with the whole hero program and do everything in their power to put a stop to it. And hopefully, with the help of Hizashi and Usagiyama, too.

With everything going on, Shouta had completely forgotten Hizashi didn’t know about the Shouto kid – about the fact he still has a sister looking for him.

So, sometime during the day, he sits down with Usagiyama, and together they explain the entire thing to Hizashi – Shouto’s sister, the plan to take down the hero program – who takes the news with surprising calm.

“I think he told me about it,” Hizashi tells them. “About his sister. I thought he was just…You know, grieving,”

They take little Shouto aside before dinner to try to explain everything to him. It would be best to be extremely careful about the words they use, and how they approach him—

“I already know that.” Shouto replies after they’ve told him about his sister still being alive, somewhere. It’s a rather plain answer. They’d expected more… More. Well, turns out it was easier than they’d expected, so none of the adults complain.

“You’ll get to see her soon,” Shouta tells the boy with split-coloured hair. “I promise.”

And Shouta watches a faint sparkle dance in the child’s eyes, before he nods tightly, as if hoping vigorously, but not daring to show it.

There’s a train the very next morning, this time at a more reasonable hour. Shouta decides the sooner he gets everything in order, the better.

“Aren’t you staying?” Hitoshi asks, Maple trailing after him. Shouta has wondered before why Maple had chosen Hitoshi specifically. Maybe he gives her treats? Or maybe it’s because of how gently he carries her around. Shouta suspects it might be a mix of both.

“I should be back soon, I just need to get some of my things,” he reassures the boy. Hitoshi nods, but he doesn’t look like he quite believes his words. He understands simply saying ‘I’ll be back’ might not convince the children very much, so he tries something else. “Would you mind looking after Maple in the meantime?”

“Maple? But—” he asks, taken aback. “Won’t she… Miss you?”

“Well, it’s only for a few days.” Shouta reasons. “And you’ll be there with her, won’t you?”

And because the idea that Shouta leaves his cat here seems unthinkable for Hitoshi, it makes it this much more believable that Shouta not only will come back, but needs to.

“Okay,” Hitoshi breathes out.

Shouta will be late if he doesn’t leave soon, but luckily for him, Usagiyama has agreed to give him a ride all the way to the train station. After wrapping his scarf around his neck, Shouta goes to follow the rabbit-eared woman out the door, but the sound of stairs cracking behind him makes him stop.

Katsuki.

Shouta’s gaze immediately locks with those fierce, red eyes. Katsuki looks angry, to say the least. But he knows that, underneath all this rage, is probably a lot of fear, feelings of betrayal, and so much more he might never come to understand.

He turns back to Usagiyama for a moment, giving her this look of: ‘A bit more time?’ and she doesn’t even hesitate before giving him a quick nod, telling him to go to her car when he’s done.

For the entirety of yesterday, Katsuki had refused to come out of his room, and eat at the table with them. So Usagiyama brought him food and anything else he might need, whilst everyone stayed downstairs.

“And then you’ll leave again. Because it’s what people like you do.” His fists are clenched, but Shouta can hear small crackling sounds emitting from them. Katsuki’s voice becomes louder and louder, until it resonates in the room. “They come and they don’t help, even though they say they will, and nothing changes, and we’re still stuck here,”

Katsuki is the first to break the silence, startling Shouta out of his thoughts. “Deku said you were staying here,” he says in a judging tone. Shouta knows what he looks like right now – just another person by the door making promises. Ones he can’t hold.

“I am,” Shouta answers honestly. “I just need to gather my things, and talk to some people,”

Katsuki narrows his eyes. “You said you couldn’t stay last time,”

“You’re right. You were right when you said I could stay, too.” Shouta replies, closing the door slightly to not let the cold outside slip into the house. “I should have listened to you. I’m sorry, Katsuki. You don’t have to forgive me if you don’t want to, at least not now.”

It’s unclear what exactly manages to pierce through the child – maybe the mention of him being right about something twice, or Shouta admitting to being wrong, or him saying sorry. Everything, maybe.

Still, his eyes soften, but only for a moment. “So you’ll come back?” he asks, with an almost angry tone.

“Of course,” Shouta answers, lifting his hand and taking his pinky finger out. “I promise,”

Katsuki eyes him warily but walks over to him all the same. The child intertwines his pinky finger with Shouta’s and looks him dead in the eyes.

“If you don’t, I’ll track you down and murder you.”

Shouta smiles fondly. “I’d expect nothing less.”

Chapter Text

Three days.

It had taken them three days of searching through piles of papers and staying up late drinking coffee to find everything they would need. Three days of Shouta rubbing his eyes, of Kayama calling her wife every now and then to give her updates, and of the weird – but admittedly useful – guy explaining random files they’d come across in his apartment.

And on the third day, everything was in order. Well, most of the work had been done before Shouta got there, and ultimately, the centrepiece of evidence was a boy with heterochromatic eyes.

Nemuri had decided to come along to Nebu Island this time, and Tsukauchi too. But most of all, Fuyumi’s presence is most important.

There is a certain pride fluttering in Shouta’s chest with getting to show the house on the smaller island to these people. Winter is nearing, and small clouds form at their lips with every breath they take. Hizashi opens the door to let them in, even though they’re still a bit far.

Little Shouto runs past the blond man but stops right before the front porch stairs. Shouta sees Nemuri squeeze Fuyumi’s hand before letting it drop to her side.

Fuyumi takes one small step forward and says, with her eyes crinkling and her voice cracking, “Hi, Shouto. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

It happens so fast. The boy throws himself at her, and Fuyumi crouches down to envelop him in her arms. Her shoulders shake as she sobs silently, whispering comforting words while she strokes his hair.

--

It takes a while, but eventually, they manage to expose the Hero Public Safety Commission’s hero program. Shouto had been the Commission’s biggest mistake.

With the boy finally reunited with his sister, they could prove that the commission had indeed hidden his presence from her, even though she’d gone to them many times in the past asking for help.

The court trials are long and tedious, but they go through all of them. With Tsukauchi on their side, they have more resources than they could have ever dreamed of – with more people on their side than Shouta could have ever imagined.

In the end, Shouto decides to go back to living with Hizashi, and now Shouta too. A few of the orphanages linked with the Commission’s hero program dissolve, but most of them stay in place anyway.

A few months later, Shouta and Hizashi decide together that this place is not fit to be an orphanage anymore.

“We’re all too close,” Hizashi says, holding Shouta’s hand in his, “A family would be more fitting, wouldn’t it?” he’s smiling, but Shouta knows it makes him anxious, from the way the man is rubbing tiny circles on his hand with his thumb.

“It would,” Shouta agrees.

What a stressful thing it is to adopt twelve children all at once! But really, after filling out every last one of the paperwork, nothing feels much different. Those pieces of paper might make them an official family, but they’d already been one long before that.

A few months later

Spring eventually comes around after a very cold winter, with sprouts sticking out of the earth, and trees starting to grow back their leaves. He sees tulips of reds and yellows, and some small purple ones he doesn’t recognize.

Shouta loves to watch it happen – he’s no longer always busy with a hundred different things, getting started on new ones the moment he gets done with them.

There are still nights when he can’t fall asleep, and others where it is all he wants to do. Being here doesn’t fix that, but it does help.

“Hey, old man!” Shouta turns around at Katsuki’s voice. The boy had taken to calling him that and had never stopped.

“Kacchan, wait up!” Izuku whisper-shouts behind his friend’s back.

Katsuki drops something on Shouta’s legs. He’d been sitting at the front of the house waiting for Hizashi to come back after he’d offered to make them cups of coffee.

Shouta picks up the journal on his lap and reads the headline.

“I AM HERE”: ALL MIGHT SAVES THE DAY ONCE AGAIN!

“He’s so cool! He keeps appearing everywhere and he’s impossible to beat—” Izuku rambles quickly.

“He’s like the strongest,” Katsuki adds.

Shouta looks at the picture printed on the journal’s cover, at the guy with a ridiculously large smile and broad form, and then back up at the two boys.

Izuku shifts his weight to his right foot, and Katsuki clicks his tongue. “And also there’s an action figure—”

“I’ll think about it,” Shouta says, while already thinking about where he can get this action figure of the guy who calls himself ‘All Might’ (No, seriously, who calls themselves that?)

And then the two boys are off again, playing a game with everyone else outside now that the weather is warmer.

Shouta lazily scans the journal for anything that might be interesting, until a short article catches his eye and drains all the blood from his face.

Reports of Meta Abilities Disappearing – A Villain’s Work?

More and more civilians are reporting losing their Meta Abilities and being victims of memory loss. Scientists have found no explanations so far as to what could be the cause of—

“What are you reading?” Hizashi says, breaking him out of his thought. He sits back down next to Shouta and offers him a cup of coffee. Shouta closes the journal and places it next to him, taking the cup Hizashi hands to him.

“It doesn’t matter,” he smiles softly. It is true, it could be anything. Anyone. (But Shouta makes a mental note to look more into it later.)

Right now, sitting here with Hizashi and hearing the children laugh while running around, Shouta thinks about just how lucky he’s been. About how close he’d been to wasting his life doing a job he’s never really enjoyed, no matter how hard he’d tried to convince himself otherwise, and going back every night to a sad apartment where he’d have to listen to the neighbours above argue.

Hizashi looks at him and smiles. “What are you thinking about?”

And oh, he couldn’t have been any luckier than this.

“I love you,” Shouta answers. Hizashi scoffs softly, and then they both share a delicate kiss.

Yes, he thinks. I’m glad I get to be here.

Shouta breathes for what feels like the first time in his life.