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There was a tiny songbird nesting in the tree in front of Shouta’s house.
It looked plain, absolutely not outstanding with its plumage of white, black, gray, and reddish-brown. But its song was bewitching, lovely, and mild. In the mornings, it gently lured his consciousness back to the surface, guiding him the way as he slipped out of slumber and dreams.
Shouta loved it all the more for it.
Whenever he woke up to the bird’s song, Shouta was thrilled . It meant spring had come – the time for fresh greenery to bud after a long, cold winter.
“It’s a bluebird,” his mother told him when he asked her one day about the little guy sitting outside his window, curiously peeking in while he did his homework.
“Blue bird? Why? Is it blue?”
His mother blinked at him a few times, confused at first but then in dawning understanding.
“I guess you will see when you meet your soulmate.”
Shouta didn’t know what to think of that.
*
People always fussed about school, stressing how important it was. First elementary, then middle school. Shouta found nothing too exciting about either.
High school, however, was a different matter.
Finally, he could start working on his dream of becoming a hero seriously. He was excited about going to school for the first time in his life. He could see all his favorite heroes in person. More than that, he’d be taught by them! He’d see so many new, strong quirks…
And Hizashi would be with him the entire way.
Shouta was excited, to say the least. But as with everything, things never quite went as he expected them to.
Their first day at high school was surely… something . Overwhelming. Intimidating.
Amongst these renowned heroes, the countless students with their fabulous quirks, and the sheer endless, winding hallways of this prestigious school… Shouta felt horribly misplaced.
However, it wasn’t the heroes who changed his view on the world; neither was it the flood of colorful quirks that made him hold his breath, nor was it Hizashi, who had opened his eyes to the most vibrant colors and who held his hand every day to bear with their brightness.
It was the little bluebird on his windowsill, singing like it sang every morning, gently waking Shouta with its song.
When Shouta woke up on his second day of high school, his little bird looked like the sky had dropped a splash of color over its head, dying its head and wings in the most brilliant color he had ever seen.
It was blue!
And so were the sky, his sheets, and some of his books.
Shouta was able to see the color blue now.
Just like he was able to see the color yellow after meeting Hizashi.
Which meant… Shouta had met his soulmate!
Another soulmate?!
*
“It happens,” his mother told him later when he told her about his new findings. “It’s rare, but… Sometimes people have more than one soulmate. You’re lucky!”
How lucky he was, Shouta recognized later. Much later.
When it was too late.
When Shouta met Oboro on that second day, he felt like waking up in spring after a long winter's sleep, drawn to the world by the song of his little bluebird. As if the sun had melted all the ice, tearing away the veil of cold bleakness, the world bloomed in the freshest colors when Shouta opened his eyes to it.
Oboro's hair wasn't just white, as if it had been snowed on. It was tinted blue, like the sky reflecting from the clouds. His smile was just like the sun, warm and bright, gently heralding the beginning of spring.
More than that, Oboro was the color blue in person. Bright like the sky, always with a smile on his lips so dazzling, Shouta thought he’d go blind if he looked at it for too long. He was full of dreams and hopes and life. Oboro was buzzing with energy and yearning for everything the future held in store for them. Where Hizashi held his hand to bear the brightness, Oboro pulled him in to experience it. Thanks to Oboro, Shouta could look up at the vast, endless sky, marveling at its color and the clouds, rather than worrying about what it’d look like tomorrow.
It was… a lot . But never too much. Somehow Oboro always knew what to say for Shouta not to retreat back into his shell, when to give him breaks and how to coax him into investing just a little bit more . And little by little, Shouta was starting to look forward – to tomorrow. And the next day, and all the following days, he’d meet with both of them. His soulmates.
Life was full back then.
Shouta only knew the measure of his happiness when he lost it.
*
The day Oboro died, it rained. Heavily. The sky was dark and crowded with clouds, thick and gray, washing the color out of everything with its rain.
No, Shouta didn’t even realize how much color they drained away at first. Even if it hadn’t rained for days, Shouta didn’t question the bland look of everything, all clouded and dim.
Why would anything look bright when Oboro was… not with them?
It wasn’t until the next spring that the realization hit him like a brick.
When the bluebird nesting outside his window raised its voice for the first time that year, inviting spring along with its mate, Shouta realized that he couldn’t see the color blue anymore.
His little bird was white and black and reddish-brown… and gray.
As if the rain had washed off all its pretty colors.
Shouta watched the bird for a while, listening to its song. It was still a pretty song – not too shrill or loud, hence pleasant to listen to. Persistently, the tiny bird trilled and warbled away, telling everyone who would lend it an ear that ‘ I am here .’
After a while, Shouta nodded in acknowledgment that – yes – the bird was still there, and it was still a bluebird. Even if – no – its song did not ring within him anymore; as if the rain had washed away that feeling too…
That little thrill of hopefulness he used to feel when he heard the bluebird’s song. That sense of direction and security. It was all… gone .
He sighed and felt empty.
But… It didn’t matter. Shouta knew where he was going and what he had to do to get there.
So he did that.
And that was all there was to it.
*
Humans adapt to changes fairly quickly. It’s a necessary skill to survive.
Just like Shouta had adapted to being able to see blue, he adapted to being unable to see it again. He knew now what blue was and what it looked like. On some days, the lack of the color irked him… Or rather, the knowledge that something was lacking. That he was lacking something. That he was missing something .
He could make do without the color. Just like he could make do without that little thrill he used to feel when the bluebird nesting in front of his childhood room’s windows sang.
When he visited his parents in the spring, he found the bird still nesting and singing there. But its song was still lacking whatever had made him feel so thrilled back then. Rationally, he knew it couldn’t be that same bird from his school days anymore but most likely its offspring. Wasn’t it only logical that it had a different song since it was a different bird? He could hardly blame an animal for something that was simply… natural .
Yet, the lack–– knowing about the lack irked Shouta. Unreasonably much.
However, he wasn’t too disappointed when he was too busy to visit his parents during springtime in the following years. In spring, not only nature and people thrived, but also crimes.
As a pro hero, he had to adapt to that, too.
*
Some things are easier to adapt to, and others take some time to adapt to.
“I don’t think they will manage to retrieve Shirakumo,” Shouta stated calmly, taking a sip from the beer in front of him.
Next to him, he could still hear Hizashi sigh, despite the liveliness of the bar. It had been a while since they came here, but today called for drinks. They could have been celebratory – after all, the doctors told them there was a way to reverse the noumufication of their friend to a degree and that there was a chance they could bring their friend back.
Still, neither of them felt like celebrating. Their drinks felt more like giant digestifs to stomach the news they had gotten.
“I mean, we’ve seen him. Shirakumo is still in there,” Hizashi argued regardless.
“His corpse is in there,” Shouta countered sharply. “You’ve heard the doctor. Kurogiri was made out of Shirakumo’s corpse. Shirakumo is dead .”
“But that old bastard revived him first!”
“And brainwashed him.”
“But he still has memories from before the noumification!”
That was hard to deny. Shirakumo had told them about the hospital…
“And there is a conscience that needed to be suppressed for AFO to use him as Kurogiri! Isn’t that proof enough that Shirakumo still liv––”
“ Hizashi ,” Shouta hissed, cutting him off.
It had taken some time for Shouta to adapt to the death of his soulmate high school friend. He still hadn’t adapted to the idea of Shirakumo being alive. He wasn’t even sure if he ever could. It seemed impossible. Resurrecting the dead? Reviving a corpse? Reversing the noumification? Retrieving their friend? That sounded like some surrealistic shounen manga plotline. Fantastic stuff irrational daydreamers came up with. It was illogical.
“But…”
Again, Shouta interrupted Hizashi.
“If Shirakumo were indeed still alive in there, shouldn't we see the color blue?”
Hizashi didn’t say anything to that.
*
As expected, the doctors’ progress with retrieving Shirakumo from Kurogiri and reversing the noumification was slow.
Shouta hadn’t expected anything else. Truth be told, he hadn’t expected anything at all.
And he didn’t get his expectations up either when the doctors requested Shouta’s help.
He watched the process from a distance, paying regular visits to the hospital where they treated Kurogiri. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been around, so he doubted being involved in Kurogiri’s reversion therapy would make much of a difference.
Getting closer, however, Shouta noticed subtle changes in Kurogiri – like the little awkward chuckles whenever Kurogiri failed to remember something from Shirakumo’s past. They sounded too much like those huffs Shirakumo used to make when he felt embarrassed about something. They didn’t match Kurogiri’s usually calm and dry attitude.
Or the smile Kurogiri directed at him when Shouta sat down next to him. That smile grew bigger and broader with every visit, until it was toothy and bright – like Shirakumo’s smile used to be.
Or the way he was addressed whenever he visited the hospital. In the very beginning, the other man barely nodded at him, calling him “Eraserhead” when he had to refer to the hero in the room. But as time passed and smiles came easier to those dark-tinted lips, he started calling him “Shouta” again.
The first time it happened was one of those late-February days that were cold despite the sun shining. As usual, Shouta came to the hospital after classes and teacher duties ended for the day, attending Kurogiri’s therapy. The man was already sitting on the edge of the bed, about to get up as Shouta entered the room. When he saw Shouta, he smiled dazzlingly bright in a painfully familiar way, calling out for him as if he had never stopped doing so.
“Shouta!”
Shouta froze like he had done that first time he met Shirakumo Oboro.
The sound of it rang within him, conjuring something Shouta had thought lost for good – a feeling that bubbled inside of him like greenery budding in the still winter-cold earth.
He couldn’t help the small smile crossing his lips when his body finally unfroze.
Spring was around the corner, after all. Although, he wasn’t sure if he would adapt to it so easily.
*
Humans adapt to changes fairly quickly. Shouta, too, was a human. And he was still surprised how quickly he adapted to things he thought were hard.
It was easier with a warm hand guiding and showing you how to. That was a hero’s job, too, wasn’t it?
Yet, months and months into the therapy, Shouta found himself pulled along by his friend’s hand again. Even though it should have been him to pull, no? But then again, Oboro had always been more of a hero than any of them.
So it wasn’t really much of a surprise when the crisp spring sky looked bright and blue as Oboro stretched, pointing to the clouds passing by.
“Whoa, it’s been a while!”
Indeed, it was their first time leaving the hospital to revisit places from their past, helping Oboro’s recovery. Shouta followed the direction indicated with his eyes.
“I’m slowly learning to use my quirk again! But I still can’t summon clouds like these yet.”
Of course, Oboro wasn’t quite back to his old shape yet. Some things would never be the same again; there’d always be traces of Kurogiri left in him – like the violet, misty tinge to his cloudy hair, the golden color to his left eye, or the grim scar above it.
“You’ll get there,” Shouta reassured him, blinking in surprise when Oboro grinned at him, bright as always.
“I gotta, if I wanna join you as a hero again soon!”
Thankfully, some things never change.
Even if you lose sight of them for a while.
*
“Gosh, this brings up SO MANY memories!” Oboro gushed when they entered Shouta’s childhood room. “Man, we spent some harsh learning sessions here.”
Shouta scoffed and shook his head, looking around. It had been a while since he had been here. Nothing much had changed since his graduation. His mother kept the room clean and exactly like it used to be. He never quite understood his mother’s sentimentality, but right now, he was glad for it.
“Not that they helped much. There wasn’t much studying happening, after all.”
“We were called the three idiots for a reason, I guess!”
Oboro sat down on his bed, patting the sheets as he smiled at Shouta, inviting him to sit right next to him.
When he sat down, he smiled just because he saw Oboro smiling coyly. Shouta knew exactly what he was thinking about, because he was thinking the same.
Reenacting that high school memory, Oboro leaned in and kissed Shouta. It wasn’t as clumsy as the first time they kissed, but it still made his eyes fall shut, and his heart throb up in his throat.
A familiar feeling stirred in his chest. A thrill ––a small yet hopeful one.
When Shouta opened his eyes, he got aware of the trilling and warbling from outside the window. That, too, was familiar.
Turning around, he found the little bluebird sitting on the branch outside his window, announcing the coming of spring with its song. That song Shouta remembered from back then. It rang just like it used to––as if it had never changed.
“Oh, hello there, little guy!” Oboro greeted the bird cheerfully when he spotted it. “And who are you to make my friend smile like that? Should I be jealous?”
Shouta huffed a laugh and shook his head.
“It’s a bluebird,” he explained.
When Oboro turned back to him with that same old smile, bright and dazzling, full of dreams and hopes and life, Shouta understood.
He reached for Oboro’s hand, squeezing it gently, and with a shy smile, he admitted:
“It’s always been here. I just… haven’t been able to see it in a long time.”