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“…which makes a total of twelve major organ systems in the body. Over the past few weeks, we’ve done nearly all the ones you think about every day—your vascular system, your digestive system, your skeletal system—but, as I’m sure you’ll remember, there’s one very important one we haven’t covered yet.”
Izuku’s pen flicked across his notebook with vigour. He’d already taken down what was in this lesson already—Tonegawa-sensei never strayed from the textbook—but Team Ingenium had just dropped their new sidekick roster, and he hadn’t even started breaking down their quirk synergies yet.
“Now, the twelfth system is perhaps the most unusual, in that we haven’t always had it! As crazy as it may seem, it’s only after the Dawn of Quirks—” Tonegawa-sensei wrote a title on the board, and undermined it with an attempt at a flourish. “—that humans developed the soulmate system.”
To the groans of the class, Tonegawa-sensei began stencilling out the same body diagram he had drawn, the exact same way, for three months of biology lessons. Izuku paused the video on his phone briefly to zoom in on Glasssmith making—a lens? Probably a lens, so the new sidekick with the yellow costume had to have some kind of light quirk, the way they were using it.
He looked up, briefly, just in time to get caught by Tonegawa-sensei’s sweep around the room to check who was listening. Satisfied, his teacher turned back to the blackboard, and began chalking a line coming from the head of the figure, with a box attached. “Uniquely among biological systems, the soulmate system’s main connection with the body is, in fact, with other people’s bodies! You see, at the moment of birth, every man is assigned a single woman to love, a soulmate.”
The ginger kid who Izuku still hadn’t learnt the name of (it wasn’t as if they’d ever spoken) put their hand up.
“At the moment of birth,” Tonegawa-sensei glared back at the ginger kid, “every human being is assigned a single other human being to love, a soulmate.”
The ginger kid kept their hand up.
“At the moment of birth,” Tonegawa-sensei continued in a way that was far less dignified than actually admitting fauly, “nearly every human being is assigned a single other human being to love, a soulmate.”
The ginger kid smiled, and put their hand down. Izuku wanted to point out his own exception to those rules, but remembered how much a stick of chalk to the head stung, and kept quiet.
“Your soulmate system, then, is responsible for healing your soulmate, not yourself, speeding up their natural processes of repair that we covered last month.” Tonegawa-sensei turned away, beginning work on a new set of chalk diagrams. “The main way you yourselves may use it is by checking their injuries, as well as the point total on your own system, by opening—” Tonegawa-sensei turned back to the class, having finished drawing a series of kanji-suggesting lines in the rectangle. “—your screen! Simply unfocus your eyes, and, well, get it up!”
A slight popping sound, of teenagers checking their screens for their soulmates, came from across the room. Only two desks were exempt. Kacchan was no surprise, given his usual comments, but the ginger-haired kid was—soulmateless? Izuku felt a little sorry for them, if that was the case, but he supposed they managed.
Even he’d done it, once again pausing his video (this time right as Glasssmith and the light-based sidekick set up a real doozy of a supermove), and pulled up the screen for his soulmate in his left eye…
…and the screen for his soulmate in his right eye. Both of them.
They seemed fine. For now. One of them was always a bit of trouble.
“You’re done for today.”
Shouto breathed in and out, shallowly, in the centre of the training arena. He could still feel most of one arm.
“There’s okayu in the kitchen, if you’re hungry.” Endeavour’s steps shook the floor as he walked towards the door. “Be up by 6 tomorrow.”
In and out. In and out. In and out.
Shouto waited, patiently, not moving, in the centre of the floor. There had been a nasty popping sound from one knee when he leapt over an attack and straight into a beam, that could be a dislocation. The front of his body was peppered with the usual assortment of tiny burns, where fire had made it past his training gi and his other defences. His wrist, on his fire side, had probably broken from how hard his father had squeezed it—if he wasn’t so exhausted, he could move it and check.
None of that, of course, would matter in a few minutes.
A gentle, pale, glow started shining over his injuries, and Shouto smiled as he felt his soulmates heal him, slowly rising to his feet and hauling himself out of the room.
The okayu, in its gigantic pot on the stove, was fine, but a bit thicker than Shouto assumed it was meant to be, and with an unpleasant burnt taste the further down the pot you went. He did miss proper dinners—ever since Fuyumi moved out, he’d been eating meals that could be prepared with Endeavour’s cooking skills. At least the big jar of pickled plums hadn’t run out yet.
Carrying his bowl with him, Shouto sat down next to the washing machine, shoved his tattered gi inside, and wondered to himself why Endeavour hadn’t hired more staff. Information security, probably. Wouldn’t want it getting out that the No2 hero was a child-beater.
As he ate, he checked his screen. There they were, shining in front of him—his two soulmates. Two out of the three people in Japan who cared about him.
They seemed as usual. The one on the left was feeling down—when Shouto clicked through the notification, he found that they were suffering from low self-esteem and ‘feelings of worthlessness’. Meanwhile, the one on the right was fine emotionally, but was woozy and tired from hunger.
In his usual ritual, Shouto’s finger lingered on the buttons, for a few minutes. He imagined words of affirmation, plates of delicious food, holding people close to him.
Ding! The washing machine broke Shouto’s reverie, and he closed the screen, and the blinking red “0 POINTS” he saw on it—but that didn’t stop him thinking about that number as he hung his gi up, and thinking about it as he finished his porridge, and thinking about it as he laid in bed.
It was to be expected. How could a shut-in like him, in the same compound every day training, never seeing or helping a friendly face, earn any points?
Two more years. Shouto crossed another day off of the calendar in his mind. Two more years of this, and I’ll be at U.A.. I’ll be a hero in a different kind of training, learning how to save people.
I’ll find my soulmates. And then I’ll earn all the points I need to pay them back for what they’ve done for me, a hundred times over.
Izuku squinted at the screen, again. No injuries for them today, so far, but they seemed to get battered and burnt at least three times a week. Maybe they were in a delinquent fight club, like he’d heard the ginger kid was? They could be a firefighter, or something, though, given the burns they seemed to get.
The other screen, in his left eye, seemed a little stressed—Izuku could empathise, given the pressure of his last year of middle school. Izuku had a few points, and passed them over, enough to undo the knot in their stomach.
“Now, I’m sure we’ve all seen these screens before, but!” Tonegawa-sensei jabbed his finger in the air in a manner that was probably supposed to look like an impressive, sweeping, gesture rather than the actions of a prat. “Can anyone tell me what the numbers and buttons within mean?”
Someone sighed at the back of the classroom. Izuku considered putting his hand up—displaying his command of information well known to almost all seven-year-olds was probably not enough to attract negative attention—but decided against it.
“Anyone?” Tonegawa-sensei jabbed upwards again. “Anyone at all?”
“Tch. We all fuckin’ know this, teach.” Wisps of smoke came from Kacchan’s hand as he spoke. He’d had his feet up on the desk all lesson. “The button’s for whatever boo-boo your shitty soulmate has, that they need to come crying to you for, and the number’s how many damn points you got to heal ‘em.”
“…well, that’s simpler than might be necessary, but, I suppose, accurate.” Izuku spotted Tonegawa-sensei’s gritted teeth as he turned back to the blackboard, and braced himself for a bad mark on his assignment. “Would anyone like to tell the class how they earn points?”
Yubinaga spoke up this time, waving his extended fingers in the air. “Do good deeds? Right? And you lose them for bad ones?” He spoke as though he was genuinely trying to recall the information.
“Yes! Well done!” Tonegawa-sensei began freehand-drawing out a table so lopsided it made Izuku wince. “Five points for helping someone cross the street! Ten for brightening someone’s day! Twenty for saving an animal, fifty for standing up against injustice—”
“—and a hundred for saving a life.” Izuku, and the entire class with him, completed the rhyme they’d learnt in elementary school, and wondered when class would be over for the day.
“Excellent! I see you’re all studying hard, no doubt influenced by your teacher’s good example.” A smug grim floated across Tonegawa-sensei’s face like oil over water. “But it’s not just healing we use these points on. With your soulmate’s consent, you can send messages, you can access the, ah, the other options in the, ah, other tab—”
Twenty middle-school-aged but worldly-wise snickers arose at their teacher’s flusteredness. (Even Kacchan managed a grin.)
“—and, of course, you can buy yourself a little closer to your soulmate! With hints!”
Izuku looked at his two, in the “Data” tab, and wondered.
“I pulls dat snake offa da motahway, an—well, youse heard dat bit already, I fink.” Uraraka tapped her tiny chin with one tiny finger, deep in thought, as Ken watched.
“Yeah, your parents told me.” Ken groaned slightly as he leant against the skip, stretching one arm out. The weather was baking—thank kami he was in the shade for now.
“So I thawt to myself, I beddah buy me some hints wid’ all dose points! An’ I got some hints, half off ‘cuz—‘cuz of reasons, an’ dere wuz a wuhd I didn’t undahstand.” Uraraka began stroking her chin, detective-style. Maybe she’d seen it on TV? “It said…quirkless?”
Ken resisted the urge to let out a longer, more tired, groan. “Didja ask your parents abaht that one?”
“Yup! But dey just tol’ me ‘go ask yuh Uncle Honda’!” Uraraka beamed up at Ken like a cheerful garden gnome. “So I did!”
Ken tried, hard, to remember that this was the daughter of one of his oldest friends, the man who also owned the van that they’d all driven here in. He reached into his overalls for a roll-up anyway—he was going to need it.
“Alright. So, you know abaht’chuh quirk, an’ how people have quirks dese days.” With his other hand, Ken pulled his tobacco pouch from the front pocket of his overalls.
“Yup!” Uraraka’s tiny head began bouncing back and forth, in the most medically-concerning nod Ken had ever seen. Was this good for children? Surely it couldn’t be. Her neck might break in half any minute. “Da doctah said it’s paht ovvah evah—evorr—eva-lu-tionary process.” She grinned again, this time in victory over a complicated word. “’cuz now we’s got quoiks we can use, but when dey foist came in, people couldn’t use ‘em propahly, an’ dey couldn’t do as much stuff!”
“Uh-huh, uh-huh, very good, top mahks.” Ken was glad he had something to do with his hands while he spoke, pouring the rolling tobacco onto the sheet. “But what dat story leaves out izzat dere’s people who never get deir quirks. Dey just stay…quirkless. Like me.”
“Ohhhh.” Uraraka nodded, in a slightly less maniac way. “Whazzat like? Izzit hard?”
Part of Ken, which had heard that question a million times before, heard it again and wanted to snap—before his conscious mind stepped in. Uraraka’s voice was small, innocent, and painfully sincere. She wasn’t an adult who should know better. She was a child, who just wanted to know.
“It’s—well, it ain’t easy, but that ain’t because of havin’ no quirk. Yah pa can get buy jest’ as well withaht usin’ his on da build site, aftah all.” Ken’s shaking fingers carefully rolled the cigarette in his hands, trying not to spill any of the precious tobacco. “What’s hahd is dat people think yuh’re lesser dan dem fuh not havin’ a quirk. Like in da story da doctor told ya—dey think dey’re more evolved dan us, so dey gets da right tah boss us arahnd.” Ken finished his cigarette with a final, vicious, pinch to the end, wrapping it tight. “Like we’re dirt tah dem.”
“But—yah ain’t any wuhse dan dem, aintcha?” Uraraka was trembling slightly as she spoke, tears welling up in the corners of her eyes. Again, something Ken would normally dislike if his audience wasn’t seven years old. “An—an my soulmate—dey’re gonnah havtah go frew allah dat stuff as well, ahrn’t dey?”
“Yep. Dat’s life fuh us, kid.” Ken fumbled in his pockets for a lighter. “Mebbe dey’ll get lucky, but dey’ll have people lookin’ dahn on dem, no mattah what dey do.”
Finally finding his lighter, Ken braced himself for waterworks—Uraraka’s lip was wobbling precariously. “B-but—but dat’s…dat’s…”
Uraraka stomped her foot hard enough for Ken to fumble his lighter, nearly choking on his own cig. “DAT’S SO UNFAIR!”
“Yuh—hkkk—uh—wha?” Ken tried to get the shreds of tobacco out of his throat to reply properly.
“Dey’re my soulmate, an’ bullies are pickin’ on dem? Dat ain’t right!” Tiny balled fists swung at Uraraka’s side as she spoke. “When I find aht who dey are, I goddah protect dem, an’ make sure dey know how cool dey are! Cooler than any of dem joiks!”
Despite himself, Ken laughed, loudly and uproariously.
He’d only brought the two hints, after all. One presumably corresponded to each—but he didn’t know anything about the people behind the screens, really. Just that one could be described with the word “Hunger”, and the other with the word “Loneliness”.
“You’ll be wanting those hints, of course, because soulmates are hidden!” Tonegawa-sensei’s grin was discordantly large for such a topic, and also for the end of the school day. “Studies suggest that it’s almost certain that you’ll meet your soulmate, at some point in your life, and unlock the additional powers associated with that meeting, but they could be anywhere in the world, and for that matter, anyone.”
Izuku had worked out which screen was which for the hints (only one of them needed healing from ‘hunger-induced nausea’ at least a couple of times a month), but not much more. Oh, he had more conjectures than that, but none with any real evidence behind them, all guesswork based on which injuries and stresses came up when.
“There are, of course, all kinds of myths about it.” Waving the chalk in his hand like a conductor’s baton, Tonegawa-sensei was for once breaking away from the textbook—no surprise, given the half-page this topic had been given—even if not in a productive direction. “They say your heart flutters when your eyes meet, you see new colours when they enter the room, you’re guaranteed to see them on New Years if you throw an apple peel over your shoulder…all nonsense, of course.”
Izuku had heard, somewhere, that soulmates tended to have similar quirks—that might have been another rumour, or it could have been a paper he found back when he’d been researching soulmateology. He hoped it wasn’t true. He wouldn’t want to have screwed his soulmates over like that.
“The only constant is that they’re someone important to you, or will be.” Tonegawa-sensei was, thankfully, steering back towards the book now the lesson was nearly done. “Brought together by fate, seeing each other’s pain, surely they’ll be the love of your life—err, or platonically the love of your life.”
The ginger-haired kid hadn’t even put their hand up that time, but dutifully nodded their head, smiling in Tonegawa-sensei’s direction like a cat waiting in the bushes.
Sneering, Kacchan leant back in his chair right onto Yubinaga’s desk. The creaking of the chair’s back legs was narrowly audible from where Izuku was sitting. “Pfft. Who needs this shit other than useless Deku, teach? C’mon. Anyone who’s actually strong doesn’t have to bother with some loser sending them points to make their boo-boos better.” The chair slammed back down, accompanied by the sound of explosions from Kacchan’s upraised hand. “I’ll be Number One without having to bother with some dumbass soulmate!”
Tonegawa-sensei pinched the bridge of his nose hard. “Well, Young Bakugou, it’s on the curriculum for a reason, and may I remind you, one more strike and you’ll have to stay after class. Be careful, young man.”
Kacchan scoffed, which was fair, considering how he’d had “one more strike” for months now.
“Anyway, that concludes our less—” At this point, Tonegawa-sensei was cut off by the bell, but tried valiantly to keep going. “—concludes our lesson—our lesson for today. Worksheets are due tomorrow on the subject of—”
Slipping his notebook back into his bag, Izuku waited, slightly, for Kacchan to leave the room before making his own exit—he wasn’t sure if he should overtax his soulmates by picking up another set of burns. They were plenty generous to him already. Plus, it gave him time to organise his biology notes—in their extended version, adding in what Tonegawa-sensei left out.
Like his own situation. Something like 4% of people had multiple soulmate bonds—it was rarer than being quirkless, even. Even if it was another point of freakishness, Izuku wouldn’t trade it for the world. No matter how much of a disappointment he turned out to be, they’d always have each other.
(He wasn’t blind. His mum and his dad had been soulmates, close as could be, but Hisashi had left when he was four years old, and he’d seen the first-aid kid—some specialist thing his mum had had to order off the internet, probably—under the sink. If that was what him just being around could do to a relationship, he knew what would happen if he was discovered on the other side of a screen.)
(Who would ever choose a quirkless, useless, soulmate?)