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Itoshi opens the front door with a huff, a paper bag filled with groceries in his left arm as his right shuts the door behind him.
The apartment is quiet, but that’s not too unusual. Ito glances at the clock on the stove as he sets the groceries down – 5:16. Non-zero chance that Takayoshi is just asleep in his room. Fifty-fifty shot, if he is, on if it’s a nap or if he just hasn’t woken up yet. (Sometimes Ito thinks they should move to America. It feels like Takayoshi’s sleep schedule is more suited to their timezone than Japan’s, plus the– well. A clean slate never hurt anyone.)
He is in his room, though. There’s no note on the fridge or the table, no text on Ito’s phone, and they’d agreed on one of the two a long time ago, if they couldn’t tell the other outright that they were leaving.
“Taka?” Ito calls out, just to check if he actually is asleep or not. When he doesn’t get a response, he figures he has at least another half-hour before Takayoshi wakes up, and decides to take his hearing aids out, just for a little while.
The silence is different, as he retrieves their case from his room and puts them away, leaving them on the kitchen counter for when Taka wakes up. He’s grown pretty familiar with it, though. It’s been a little over a decade without his Quirk, now, though he stopped keeping track a few years ago.
It’s still odd, sometimes, the way things are different without it, considering he’d given it up because of how little he thought it affected his life. Before he knew about his hearing, before he considered just how comforting being able to sense his family in the rooms around him at night was.
Ito takes a breath, and starts unpacking the groceries, setting aside what he needs for dinner tonight and putting away the rest. The recipe is put up on the fridge, a printed copy of their mother’s handwritten one, and he takes it down as he moves around, gathering the rest of what he needs.
Takayoshi isn’t out of his room by the time he’s done, which is unusual, but not anything that hadn’t happened before. Ito sighs as he puts his hearing aids back in, leaving the plates on the counter and walking back down the hall.
He stops outside Takayoshi’s door, silent, trying to hear any sign that he’s up. When he doesn’t, he knocks – louder than he needs to, on purpose. Usually works better than words.
“Taka,” he calls, anyways, “food.”
Still nothing.
If it was earlier, a late lunch or something, Ito would leave him to sleep. But right now, it’s almost six at night, and he would really prefer that Takayoshi doesn’t miss an entire day, the nocturnal asshole.
He knocks again, even harder this time. When that still doesn’t work, he reaches to open the door.
It’s locked.
Ito huffs, staring at the doorknob, before knocking again. “Taka, you have fifteen seconds to say you’re awake or I’m picking the lock.”
He gives the promised fifteen seconds, counting down in his head, before finally sighing and heading to his room for a paperclip. It’s one of those simple locks, just the push-button kind, so that’s all he needs, walking back, bending it into place, and unlocking the door in the span of a few seconds.
He opens it, and immediately knows something is wrong.
Nothing in the room is out of order. It’s not completely unusual. Taka likes to keep most of his room organized, make things a little easier with his Quirk taking the place of his eyesight. But not his entire room. And nothing is out of order.
His bed is made. Comforter pulled up, pillows organized, blankets folded carefully at the end.
Takayoshi doesn’t make his bed. Doesn’t care enough, with how poorly it carries vibrations, how easy it is to ignore. As long as his blankets are on the bed he doesn’t fix anything, unless Ito makes him.
Ito stares at it, blinking. He glances around the room. Nothing else is out of order, no other signs that something’s really wrong, until light glinting off of something on his bedside table catches his eye.
A thin gold chain, a small red gem hanging off of it, still sitting there.
Taka doesn’t leave home without it. He has never, since he got it, left home without it.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck–
“Takayoshi, this isn’t funny, ” Ito shouts, looking around the room, checking the closet, behind the door, under the bed, everywhere. (He’s used to not having his Quirk, it’s been over ten years, but in this moment, he wishes, really wishes he could close his eyes and check the entire apartment at once.)
Ito’s phone is still in the kitchen. He leaves the door open as he runs to grab it, opening it straight to his phone app, Takayoshi at the top of his favorites list.
It automatically connects to his hearing aids, ringing, and ringing, until finally–
“ Hello? ”
“Taka, you fucking asshole we’ve talked about this–”
“ Kidding, you’ve got my voicemail. Leave a message, or don’t, bye!”
Ito stares at his phone as the message tone beeps. He’s never gone to voicemail before.
He grits his teeth, hangs up, and tries again. Ringing and ringing, until another “Hello?” that he doesn’t fall for.
“Fucking bitch, ” Ito cusses under his breath, not even at Takayoshi at this point.
Part of him hates going to the last-resort. He hated installing it on Taka’s phone, hated the idea of ever having to use it. But the other part of him is glad he did it.
He switches over to the tracker app he’s had installed, untouched, for over a year now, and taps to see Takayoshi’s location. It takes a second for it to load.
And it tells him he’s in the apartment.
Ito presses his eyebrows together and hits refresh to the same result. Refresh, same, refresh, same.
He stares at it for a few seconds, before going back to his number and calling it, again, this time disconnecting his hearing aids, letting it ring out on speaker.
Hearing the other end, Takayoshi’s ringtone, echo into the hallway through his still-open door.
Cold, dark fear seeps into every vein in his body, nearly freezing him to the spot, making every step towards Taka’s door feel like an eternity, making the last steps to his bedside table feel even longer.
It goes to voicemail again just as he opens the drawer.
“ Hello? ”
Ito stares down at Taka’s phone as the third missed call from Ito notification pops up.
Dread overlaps with fear as he glances around the room, too perfectly-clean, too untouched.
“ Kidding, you’ve got my voicemail. Leave a message, or don’t, bye! ”
Message tone. Ito’s free hand moves to his ear, resting on his hearing aid. He thinks about a Quirk he no longer has.
“What the fuck did you do, Taka?” he whispers to a voicemail box that will never be opened.