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Tsushima didn't know what the argument had originally been about, but by the time he'd started paying close attention his uncle had already tried to hit the woman. She fought back, and it was at that point the altercation escalated into a full quirk-powered confrontation. Tsushima's novel, still open on the page he'd bookmarked, had been abandoned in his lap. His hands still held the pages open but his attention had been drawn towards the commotion in the hallway.
His uncle was losing the fight. Tsushima watched the stranger in the hallway catch his fist midair and counter, punching him directly in the face with a blast of ice. A laugh almost bubbled up from within his throat, but Tsushima caught himself. It was best not to draw attention right now. He continued to watch in silence, praying the humor he found in the situation wouldn't show on his face.
His fascination with watching his uncle suffer at the hands of the unknown woman was sharply interrupted by a shout from a household servant. "Why are you just staring? Stop her, you stupid child!"
A large hand roughly slammed Tsushima forward off the couch, scraping his knees as he was knocked to the ground. The force of the impact knocked the wind out of him, and with it went the desire to laugh.
He picked himself up off the floor after a moment of struggling to catch his breath. Tsushima remembered the book — a cursory glance to where it had fallen told him the pages weren't too damaged, but his bookmark had fallen out. Lucky.
So much for not drawing attention. He looked up again, watching the ice user with mild interest in her power, but Tsushima didn't want to get involved. He was perfectly content to watch as the scorned woman beat up his uncle… but it was too late. Aunt Kiye had already noticed him.
“Shuuji! Go on then, stop her!” The woman scowled and lifted him up by the collar, pushing him forward. He’d been too slow to pick himself up, and now his aunt was forcefully dragging him towards the hallway. Tsushima considered attempting to trip his aunt or grabbing onto a piece of furniture to loosen her grip on him, but the punishment he’d receive in response wouldn’t be worth it. He might as well try to get this over with; if he complied she’d be more likely to keep her menacing hands off of him.
His first attempt was far-fetched, a desperate cry to avoid involvement in the confrontation. Tsushima's aunt let him go as he started walking towards the two on his own. “Please stop fighting,” he pleaded, stepping forward while avoiding the range of his uncle’s fists. He spoke too quietly to be heard, and neither of the two adults paid him any attention.
Louder, he tried again, but his fear stopped him from stepping too close. “Please stop fighting!” The woman with the ice cold fists faltered and turned towards him, distracting her long enough for his uncle to land a punch that knocked her back. Tsushima stood frozen as the woman regained her footing and punched a blast of cold air towards his uncle again. He was out of range of the woman’s swing, but he still felt a chill that melted away as quickly as it had appeared.
“Oh, come on now! Just touch her already!” Aunt Kiye stepped towards the young boy again, and he recoiled instinctively as she clamped a hand around his wrist with an iron grip. She yanked his arm towards the woman. As soon as Tsushima's skin came into contact with hers, the ice blinked out of existence and his uncle took the opportunity to tackle her to the ground, kicking and hitting her repeatedly as she writhed in pain on the floor. No one else seemed to pay any attention to her as she dripped blood on the tatami mat. Aunt Kiye forced Tsushima to keep his hand on her arm despite his attempts to wriggle away.
His ears were ringing, emotion threatening to spill over and force a scream out of his mouth as Tsushima tried his hardest to pull away from the unknown woman and his aunt's hold. "Let me go!" he pleaded frantically, pulling at Kiye's fingers to pry them off his wrist.
Tsushima looked at the ice user blankly as his uncle stepped away, shouting for servants. Two appeared from another room, bowing their heads. “Get this bitch out of my sight,” he barked in their direction, spitting blood at the woman, then turned and marched off to another part of the house.
Aunt Kiye finally freed the young boy's arm and he darted off, barely noticing the servants as they dragged the defeated woman towards the door and threw her out of the house.
“Really,” he heard a voice complain while in the hallway, “if he’d just stepped in earlier we could’ve gotten that vile woman out of the house without issue. We can’t force Shouta to use his quirk, but all Shuuji has to do is touch someone! Why doesn’t he ever protect his family? That boy has no respect for his elders.”
The voice of his uncle Masamori drilled through the walls, the judgment of his words terrifying Tsushima. "Did he take his medication today? He's usually not so resistant."
Every sound that touched his ears brought a stabbing pain through his skull as he ran. The eight year old shut the door as soon as he reached the relative safety of his room and immediately burrowed into bed to cry. Tsushima wrapped the comforter around his ears to block out the sounds of whatever inevitable argument or conversation would ensue; he didn’t want to hear any more of it. The comforter couldn't mute everything, but it was the most he could manage to stop the sound.
Why doesn’t he ever protect his family? The line stuck in his mind. The sentiment irritated Tsushima, and resentment grew within him the longer he dwelled on the phrase as it repeated in his mind. Why should he put himself in harm’s way to protect people who had never protected him?
Tsushima had been thrown in the middle of fights for as long as he could remember.
As young as two, he could remember being pushed into situations where his ability to null quirks was used to de-escalate. A single touch from Tsushima at the source of power would null any quirk, save for physical differences that were more mutation than ability. His family would hold his hand up to another and force contact, then use the opportunity to either harm or talk down the offending quirk user. It was always to save themselves; never was Tsushima given the opportunity to opt out of use as a convenient quirk nullifier whenever his family so desired.
Over time he grew to despise them for this. Shuuji would be forced into situations where he was expected to fend off grown adults determined to fight one another, and his small body ended up with frequent injuries as a result. It was much easier to permanently scar a child than to resolve disagreements nonviolently, so it seemed. Tsushima, therefore, took it upon himself to preemptively diffuse tension whenever he detected it; he’d pull a prank, crack jokes, make silly faces, do whatever he needed to do to make people laugh and prevent another fight he’d be dragged into.
But humans were violent by nature, at least in Tsushima's eyes. Sometimes his attempts at humor angered people further, and the ire of the adults arguing would be jointly directed at him. On other occasions, he’d be absent or focused on something else at the start of an argument and miss the window to calm down the parties involved.
As a result, Tsushima had to learn how to defend himself. He learned to watch people's movements and dodge as they swung in his direction through many black eyes and broken arms. He learned to lie like it was second nature, making up stories of uncommon illnesses and reckless horseplay to explain away his injuries on the rare occasion he encountered visitors who cared enough to ask. He hid away from the household members as often as he could get away with, understanding that if he stayed out of sight he’d be less likely to be punished.
For now, he’d hide. Shuuji knew he’d be reprimanded for it later; his relatives were clearly unhappy with his reluctance to stop the fight.
Unlike the most recent time he'd resisted, at least he hadn't started screaming or bitten someone. He knew he was still in trouble. It didn't matter to his father, he'd find something to criticize and some privilege to take away because of it.
Why am I even alive? I wish I'd never been born.
Tsushima felt so very alone.
As was common in times when he was alone, Tsushima's thoughts turned to Dazai Osamu.
Tsushima Shuuji didn’t think of himself as truly part of the Tsushima clan. He was so unlike his family that he felt no connection to anyone with whom he shared the Tsushima name. As a result of this isolation, he'd taken it upon himself to create a separate identity for himself: Dazai Osamu. Dazai was confident, self-assured, carefree, and unswayed by the thoughts and criticisms of others; he was everything Tsushima wished to be if not for his father's influence. Every aspect of himself that Tsushima was forced to bury to appease his family became another part of Dazai. Dazai held no burdens of family obligation or inheritance. Dazai was allowed to fight back and live free of consequence.
His family knew nothing of this, of course; Dazai Osamu was his and his alone. He would not share this identity with anyone. Only when Tsushima was alone would he become Dazai.
Dazai heard a knock at his door, and snapped out of character; he was Tsushima again, fearful and cowering. Who would bother to knock? They don't care how I feel.
"Shuuji? It's Shouta."
Oh. His cousin, the only person who respected him. The only person who understood .
"Are you awake? Can I come in?"
"....Yeah." Tsushima had forgotten to lock the door anyway.
His cousin closed the door behind him as he entered (Tsushima noticed , and he appreciated it; he hated when people left the door open), and Shuuji rolled over in his bed to make space for Shouta to sit.
"I heard what happened," his cousin said, sitting cross legged on the bed while Shuuji stuffed himself in the corner wrapped in layered blankets. "I've tried to get them to stop, but… you know how they are."
Tsushima nodded, eyes still glistening from tears he hadn't noticed earlier. "They make you do it too. Stopping their stupid fights."
"Yeah." Shouta sighed. "I can at least null quirks from a distance, but you…. they force you into fights at close range and it's not fair." He reached out as if to touch Tsushima, but stopped and pulled his hand back.
They sat there in silence for a few moments before Shouta spoke again. “Shuuji.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to Musutafu for high school next year.”
“You are?” Musutafu was in Shizuoka prefecture, a long way from Kanagi.
“Yeah. I got into UA.” Shouta’s eyes glimmered with a hint of pride, but his voice carried an exhaustion that Tsushima didn’t usually hear from his cousin. “The entrance exam was ridiculous, but it’s considered the best high school hero program in the country.”
Tsushima shifted to cling to Shouta’s arm through his blanket. “I don’t want you to leave,” he mumbled. Young as he was, he understood what that kind of distance meant. There’d be no one left who he could really talk to. Even though Shouta didn’t really get what he was saying sometimes, at least he was kind to Shuuji and didn’t treat him like he was a baby. Shouta was the only one who ever even tried to listen.
“I know… but people like our family, they don’t change,” Shouta told him. “The only way to stop them is by force. And… I’m not strong enough to do that yet.” Shuuji whimpered, and Shouta pulled him into a close hug. “I’m going to become a Hero. I’ll get stronger, strong enough to protect you, and I’ll come back for you.”
If he were Dazai, he wouldn’t need to be protected, but Tsushima Shuuji was not Dazai. Resigned, he nodded; Shouta was right. Shuuji wasn’t strong enough to physically resist on his own, and Shouta wasn’t strong enough to force them to stay away from Shuuji. There was nothing they could do without getting stronger.
Tsushima wondered why Shouta had so much faith in Heroes when Heroes never saved people like them.