Archive of Our Own

Hitoshi wakes a few minutes before his alarm, eyes opening automatically like his brain is mildly smug about it.

His internal clock is, as usual, obnoxiously precise, and he makes a mental note to appreciate it later. He lies there long enough to confirm he’s actually awake, then reaches for his phone and silences the alarm before it can prove a point. The screen lights up with a notification from a cat image board he follows—someone has posted a blurry photo of their cat demanding breakfast—and he huffs a small breath through his nose, faintly amused. 

With the day acknowledged and brain online, he’s ready to get up.

Hitoshi stretches beneath the covers, extending his limbs the furthest they will allow, as a soft groan escapes him. Morning light creeps through the cracks of the blinds, striping the walls in gold and lighting up his posters, a collage of paper torn from the pages of magazines such as Quirk and Countermeasure, Tactical Hero Review and Unranked. They're all more schematic than inspirational; captions about control and timing instead of power, a breakdown of a capture scenario, candid shots of heroes photographed mid-motion and half in shadow, snapshots of those that never reach the top 100 and don't aspire to. Much of the ink has since faded from where it’s been exposed to the sun for too long, but he's traced the lines so many times he could basically redraw it all from memory.

They're the portraits of the uncelebrated and overlooked, where power isn't always loud and winning is done without being seen. The sight of them always settles something inside him whenever the world feels too loud.

He rises and treads past his bookshelf, packed tight with manga spines lined up in uneven rows. Horror titles with stark black and white covers and action series with explosive art bid him good morning, as does the mecha figurine posed triumphantly on his desk opposite the books. It stands among stacked notebooks and scattered pens, its plastic armour painted pink and the titular robot from the anime Mobile Frame Astra: Roseline, a comfort show, even now. A ridiculous space opera about found families and impossible odds, where pilots shout their feelings and still (mostly) come back alive at the end of the episode. Hitoshi never says it out loud, but he likes how Roseline refuses to frame its heroes as broken for what they survive.

It had been a birthday gift, handed to him with a bright grin courtesy Yamada, who had remembered an offhand comment Hitoshi hadn't realized anyone was listening to. He had mumbled a thank you stiffly, and then spent the rest of the night rearranging his desk so the mech could stand where he’d see it first thing every morning.

It still feels strange, having proof that someone expects him to stick around long enough for things like birthdays to matter. 

Before, when he was still living in the group home, there was no space purely his, not even his bed. All he had then was rules about what could be displayed and how long it could stay. Nothing sharp, nothing ‘disturbing,’ nothing too personal. Interests were something he kept quiet and learned not to get attached to.

But here, his horror manga sits openly on the shelf. Rosaline stays on his desk and isn't torn apart. The posters remain on the walls. No one tells him to take anything down. No one goes through his stuff, he actually has stuff.

In the bathroom, the mirror reflects a tousled mop of purple hair. He reaches out and turns a tap, letting the faucet come to life. The counter is shared, technically, but the left side is unmistakably Hitoshi’s, with a neat lineup of bottles containing cleanser and moisturizer, alongside a small jar of under eye cream. He lets the water warm slightly before cupping it in his hands and splashing his face, shocking any remainders of slumber away. His skin cools and any vestiges of tightness smooths as he massages creams onto his face, leaving behind a soft sheen and the feeling of being put together.

He studies his face in the mirror again. The dark circles are still there. His scars are still there. But his skin feels clean and taken care of, and he hasn't always had such a luxury.

There had been a time wherein ‘taking care of himself’ meant whatever soap was available and whatever routine was fastest. Which meant no time, or space, or permission to care about things like this. Wanting nice things—or any things—had felt like tempting fate.

There’s something reassuring about it. About choosing to care for his body because it carries him through training and classes and long bike rides and bad days. Working out, washing up, sticking to routines… It all feels like proof. Proof that he’s here, that he’s allowed to take up space and look after it.

He sheds his pajamas, dresses into his UA uniform, and collects his bag before descending the stairs. As he moves through the house, his brain supplies that it's Friday.

Friday means no Yamada, because Friday means the blond takes the helm of the morning segment at the radio station, while the sun is still beneath the horizon and Hitoshi is still drooling on his pillow. 

Regardless, the living room is already wide awake when Hitoshi wanders in.

The rabbit corner takes up the far end of the space, neatly contained with modular panels arranged in a wide pen. Thick foam mats cover the floor, layered with woven grass rugs and a scattering of chew toys that look like they’ve been thoroughly loved by a pair of leporine incisors. A wooden hide sits in the corner, along with a low ceramic water bowl and a hay rack stuffed full, the sweet, grassy smell cutting cleanly through the home's morning quiet.

Aizawa is crouched in front of the pen, dividing the morning greens onto two shallow plates. He dons his black sweats, his usual ensemble outside of work, with his hair a perpetual scraggly curtain obscuring his face.

Yoko sees Hitoshi first.

She’s impossible to miss—big, even by rabbit standards, and completely jet black with ears that tilt forward like she's always listening. Once she's cognizant of his existence, she hops towards him before bracing herself against the translucent panels of her pen walls. Hitoshi crouches before her, reaching out as her nose twitches and her ears angle forward like satellite dishes tuned specifically to him.

Yoko shoves her forehead into his palm, leaning hard, her eyes becoming half-lidded as his fingers rub slow circles between her ears. She makes a low, pleased sound that vibrates against his skin, and Hitoshi doesn't curb the smile that overtakes his lips at the satisfaction it brings.

Aizawa snorts quietly from where he's done portioning greens. “You know, she ignores me if you’re around.” He states gruffly.

Hitoshi shrugs one shoulder, still petting Yoko. “Can't help it. I'm charming.”

Aizawa hums skeptically. “That's one word for it.”

Yoko flops onto her side, aggrieved by the physical barrier between her and her favourite couch, that being Hitoshi's lap. If he's on the floor, Yoko is usually on him, and each time Hitoshi pretends not to be absurdly proud that he's somehow garnered such affection. 

A brown shape darts into his vision as Yoko's smaller companion moves within the pen, his nose and ears twitching in tandem. Happy—christened as such for his penchant for binkying whenever everyone is in the same room—perches on his hind legs to survey Hitoshi momentarily, before nudging the edge of the plate Aizawa set down. The man takes the moment as a sign to remind his human child to eat as well.

“Breakfast is in the kitchen,” Aizawa says as he rises, rolling his shoulders. “Eat it before it gets cold.”

“Got it,” Hitoshi replies, retracting from Yoko and receiving a faint huff for having the audacity to leave her, but she ultimately allows it.

As he makes his way to the kitchen, Hitoshi passes the finches. Tiny shapes flit within the rolling enclosure positioned near the sliding glass doors, looking out onto the engawa and yard beyond. Within, tiny swings sway gently, and a shallow water dish glimmers next to a scattering of millet and fresh greens. Twisting perches of natural wood zigzag through the space, with a small nest tucked into one corner. The flock is composed of six female society finches, occupying the cage as rotund gradients of brown and white, already awake and busy. Pipi and Chii bicker over a perch as Haru preens meticulously. Chibi hops sideways and Fuwa and Fuku flutter up and down the bars. 

Assumedly, anyway. Yamada is the one that can actually tell them apart, being the seasoned bird whisperer that he is. Each time Hitoshi thinks he's got it, they somehow switch colour palettes. Regardless, the birds’ murmuration fills the space as a constant, soft soundtrack that makes the house feel alive.

Breakfast waits on the island: a seasoned fried egg, edges crisped just right and perched on thick toast oozing melted cheese, exactly the kind of thing Aizawa excels at when he’s half awake. Hitoshi digs in, meanwhile Aizawa trudges in to indulge in the motor oil masquerading as coffee, appearing perpetually on the edge of a yawn.

When he finishes, Hitoshi rinses his plate and sets it on the drying rack before returning to the living room. There, his gaze drifts. Opposite the finches sits another enclosure—similar size, similar rolling base—but bare of any bird. 

He doesn't need to look to know that the bright yellow travel carrier is absent as well, the one adorned with a sticker on the side that reads ‘Tempo, handle with care' in Yamada's handwriting.

Tempo always goes with Yamada on Friday. Tempo would be permanently affixed on Yamada's shoulders if he had the choice. The cockatiel has been around longer than Hitoshi has existed. Longer than Aizawa, technically, since the bird has been in Yamada's life prior to the pair meeting. Twenty-years-old and still going strong, spoiled rotten and bonded so intensely to Yamada it's like developing cavities whenever witnessing the pair.

Tempo literally has a designated spot at the radio station, his own perch just out of reach of the soundboard, and a fanbase among the staff. Hitoshi has heard the stories; Tempo whistling along to ad jingles and bobbing his head during a weather report, before falling asleep to Yamada's voice like it’s the only sound in the world. The bird is arthritic and incapable of forming grudges, and regardless of the seniority, Hitoshi is not in competition with a cockatiel. Even if comparatively, Hitoshi is recent.

He turns away before his brain can do anything treacherous with the thought.

Aizawa is shouldering his duffel that houses his hero gear when Hitoshi moves through the genkan. The man barely glances up when Hitoshi toes on his shoes, but he makes sure to dishevel more of Hitoshi's already untamed hair by petting it when the boy passes.

“See you in class, kid.” 

With that, parent and teacher are braided together, and Hitoshi makes a noise of acknowledgement as he slips out of the door.

Hitoshi retrieves his bike from where it waits in the carport. He affixes his bag onto the back rack and reaches for his phone on muscle memory.

There’s a notification waiting, as usual. It's a message from Yamada, timestamped hours ago when the sky would’ve still been dark. 

Hitoshi's brain accepts this. Then, a fraction of a second later, refuses it.

There is no noise. No outward sign beyond the way his shoulders stiffen and his spine straightens as the words of Yamada's message still remain the same, no matter how many times he rereads it. Hitoshi's expression goes carefully, blankly still, the way it does right before training exercises go very badly for someone else. A sense of wrongness blooms in his chest like an unfurling flower made of ice.

It's like stepping down one more stair than expected, and reaching out for a railing that isn't there.

A cold weight settles in his stomach. His pulse ticks, before plunging into a slow, simmering boil. The air suddenly becomes burdened, morphing into an oppressive shroud. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barks, as though sensing the tectonic shift in his emotional landscape.

This can't be real.

(But it is real)

He reads it again.

And again.

Surely this is a mistake. A glitch, even. A cruel trick of early morning perception. He scrolls, as if the missing piece might reveal itself if he investigates, but the tragedy remains as nothing reveals itself. The universe is steadfastly, offensively unchanged.

Hitoshi exhales. Slow and wounded.

So this is how it ends, he thinks dimly. Not with a bang, but with the thrilling discovery that loyalty is optional now.

He locks his phone. He pockets it like it's a bomb, and his hands do not tremble as he grips the handlebars. He swings a leg over the bike, and perches onto the seat like a soldier mounting a steed before battle—one that is a guaranteed loss.

The school awaits. As does his English teacher, looming like a dragon upon the horizon.

Hitoshi pushes off, pedals clacking into motion, and rides out to meet his fate.

How could Yamada do this?

Why would he do this?

Hitoshi has always known the world is cruel—his starting set of parents held no love for him—but this was targeted. A direct attack on the very foundation of their relationship. It was the kind of slight that turned men into monsters, so it doesn't make a lick of sense.

The neighbourhood scrolls past him as he rides, with early commuters shuffling towards stations as shops open their shutters. A woman walks past with a small dog that looks like it has never known a single thought. The sky is postcard worthy with gentle pinks turning into blue. The air is crisp. The world hasn't ended, but something inside Hitoshi has. And it's loud about it.

His legs pump the pedals, every rotation of the wheels an accusation, every turn of the chain a question with no answer. Hitoshi's jaw tightens as he cements his gaze straight ahead, as if staring hard enough at the road might make the universe flinch and apologize. The crosswalk light turns green exactly on schedule. A car politely yields. Somewhere, someone laughs.

It's not like this is a new routine anyway…!

This—this thing—has been happening between the pair every morning for as long as Hitoshi has been here. It’s established. Consistent and reliable, like breathing. A constant in a life that has historically been anything but.

A constant isn't just removed.

That's not how physics works. That's not how trust works. That's not how Yamada works.

Except, apparently, it is.

Maybe it was an accident, his mind attempts to offer. Maybe Yamada was tired and distracted, and could not commit fully to the routine (the routine that has stayed unbroken until today—!). Maybe Tempo did something and—

No.

No, that doesn't hold up. Yamada operates at a level of enthusiasm that defies fatigue. The man once hosted a three hour radio segment on four hours of sleep and a single protein bar and still came home vibrating at a frequency that made the furniture nervous. He does not simply forget things. Especially not things like this.

Hitoshi swerves around a crack in the pavement, and his reflection flashes briefly in a storefront window. His shoulders are set with his expression carved out of stone, and the problem is that once a pattern becomes a rule, its absence is deafening. He bikes past a convenience store where a clerk sets out crates of bottled drinks, and the smell of fresh bread drifts from a bakery down the block. Life goes on, completely oblivious to the fact their favourite radio host has taken up backstabbing.

Maybe this is a test, Hitoshi thinks darkly. Some sort of social experiment. Maybe Yamada wanted to see how long it'd take for Hitoshi to notice (the answer being immediately). Maybe Yamada wants to see what will it take for Hitoshi to crack, to bring it up and admit—

…What? That he pays attention? That he cares? That these sorts of things have entwined themselves into his very being and made a home there?

Well, ex-fucking-cuse him for daring to get attached to the man who adopted him.

Or worse, so much worse, this is, in fact, intentional. 

A message, subtle and horrifying in its implications. A shift. A change in tone. A prelude to a conversation that starts with ‘Hey, listener,’ and ends with ‘we need to talk.’

Hitoshi's stomach twists into a painful knot.

‘You're assuming the worst based on incomplete information,’ the ghost of Aizawa tells him in his head, using that voice that somehow makes everything sound both obvious and stupid. ‘Knock it off.’

Hitoshi would, theoretically, listen.

In practice, he does not.

Because what if this is how it starts?

First, something small. Something easy to miss. Then another. And another. Until one day Hitoshi wakes up and realizes he's been slowly phased out of their lives like some cheap novelty that's worn off.

It never happens all at once. It doesn’t start with shouting or slammed doors or someone saying ‘you don’t belong here anymore.’ But a gradual quieting. A warmth that cools one degree at a time that only becomes noticeable once he’s freezing. Hitoshi knows this script. He learned it early, how people get tired in ways they never admit out loud and affection turns conditional. His whole life has been defined by the fact he’s never been permanent, but instead a project, something interesting to take on until it stops being rewarding. 

Yamada is loud and loving and endlessly enthusiastic, but even fireworks burn out eventually. Maybe Hitoshi has already overstayed whatever invisible grace period he’d been given. Maybe he’s reached the point where Yamada wakes up too early, looks at his phone, and doesn’t quite feel like putting in the extra effort anymore.

And then there’s Tempo. 

Tempo, who has history. Tempo, who has precedence. Tempo, who Yamada once called his first son. 

Jokes have teeth, and that one lodged itself somewhere ugly and deep, because Tempo never has to worry about being discarded, because Tempo is irreplaceable. Tempo has literal decades of proof that he’s wanted, that he’s chosen every single day without fail. 

Hitoshi is temporary by default. A replacement that can be quietly returned when it turns out the original was enough after all. The thought curdles in his chest, a sour and humiliating mixture, and he hates himself for even thinking it—but wanting to be chosen has always been his most dangerous flaw. 

He swallows around it, hard, as if attempting to ingest a stone. But through it all, one thought remains true:

Yoko would never do this to him.

UA looms ahead in the distance, unapologetically monumental. Students gather near the gates in clusters with their uniforms crisp and voices overlapping in familiar chaos. Hitoshi coasts to a stop with his feet hitting the ground, before he dismounts, locks his bike, and stands there for a moment, swallowed beneath the shadow of the main building. 

The school awaits.

The day awaits.

And somewhere out there, Yamada Hizashi has committed an unforgivable crime and is, presumably, walking free.

Hitoshi lifts his chin, expression remodeled into something cool and carefully neutral, as he steps through the gates of UA, carrying his quiet fury with him like a loaded weapon.

This is not over.

Hitoshi stares at the wood grain of his desk. The texture seems to swirl like a dark prophecy. 

It’s nothing special, technically, standard UA issue that has seen years of restless hands and nervous tapping. The lines twist and spiral, knotting in places while branching in others, and if he squints, he can almost see patterns in it.

This, he thinks grimly, is how villains are made.

Through a slow rot that sets in when something foundational cracks, and the world keeps spinning like nothing has changed, even though everything has.

The classroom fills around him, with chairs scraping across the floor as bags hit the floor. Kaminari throws out a “Yo, Shinsou!”  like any other morning. Jirou greets him with a nod as she passes. Hitoshi responds on autopilot with his face arranged into something passable. Nothing is amiss, and no one notices anything wrong. 

This is the cruel genius of it, he thinks. The perfect crime, with no visible wounds. Just him, sitting at his desk, hollowed out by something so small yet so devastating. 

Villains always start with resentment. With hurt that boils because it has nowhere to go. With the realization that trust is a liability and attachment is just another weak point waiting to be exploited. Maybe someday, when they write his case file, this will be the footnote. Subject exhibited early signs of disillusionment and withdrawal. 

A familiar presence sidles up beside his desk. 

“Shinsou,” Iida greats warmly, adjusting his glasses. “Good morning.”

He stands with his usual impeccable posture, his uniform so pristine it might've well been new. Iida holds a small notebook against his chest instead of immediately sitting down, which is already odd, because Iida does not loiter without purpose. His expression is open. Almost hopeful, if Hitoshi had to put a word on it. 

“I wanted to thank you again,” Iida continues, a hint of admiration entering his voice. “For helping me review patrol protocols yesterday. Your perspective was… very helpful. I found myself thinking about it on my walk to school.”

That sounds significant. It probably is significant.

Unfortunately, Hitoshi’s brain has categorised significant things under ‘nonessential background noise,’ somewhere between the hum of the lights and the existential dread currently setting up camp inside his chest. He nods, because nodding is what one does when words refuse to line up properly.

“Uh. Sure,” he mumbles, as language was for those untouched by tragedy. “No problem.”

Iida’s lips curve into a gentle smile. 

It’s different from the one he uses when addressing the class, or when he’s enforcing rules, or when he’s trying very hard to be reassuring in an official capacity. This one is… smaller. Less practiced, like it isn’t meant for general distribution.

Hitoshi registers this, and briefly considers that it might be important, before the moment is left sitting unattended, like a blinking notification he doesn’t have the bandwidth to open right now.

“I also—” Iida clears his throat, straightening reflexively. “If you are free after classes today, I thought perhaps we could walk part of the way home together again. It has become something I look forward to.”

Hitoshi blinks.

Walking home together is something they do most days, ever since it happened once by accident and then kept happening, the way habits do. Iida always insists on taking the side closer to traffic. Once, when it rained unexpectedly, Iida had produced an umbrella from his bag—despite the forecast having been clear—and held it angled just enough that Hitoshi stayed dry while his own shoulder slowly soaked through. 

And Hitoshi has learned, very recently and very painfully, that routines are not promises. They’re conveniences. They exist until someone decides they don’t feel like maintaining them anymore.

“Yeah,” he says absentmindedly. “Sure.”

Iida’s expression brightens in a way that seems disproportionate, but Hitoshi doesn’t linger on it. Routine, his brain repeats dully. Habit. A structure that exists until it doesn’t. Another thing that can be removed without warning.

“Excellent,” Iida says, clearly pleased and ears faintly pink. “I shall see you then.”

The class rep returns to his seat while doing nothing to hide the spring in his step. Hitoshi does not see this. Jirou quietly facepalms.

Soon enough, study period arrives without ceremony.

It is, in theory, meant for productivity. In practice, it's an ample excuse for Aizawa to curl up in his sleeping bag under his desk. The man is fully cocooned, like an exhausted caterpillar that had given up halfway through metamorphosis.

Hitoshi sits bracketed by Tokoyami and Tsuyu, textbooks open but mostly ignored. Tokoyami tilts his head, the feathers crowning his head ruffling as if stirred by an unseen wind. His shadow pools like ink beneath the desk, Dark Shadow unusually still, intensely observing Hitoshi like a large cat crouched in long grass.

“There is a disturbance about you today, Shinsou,” Tokoyami intones.

Hitoshi supposes if the universe had to appoint a witness to his suffering, it makes sense it would be Tokoyami. The guy has always had a preternatural awareness for the unseen, such as curses and the psychic aftershocks of a ruined morning.

Hitoshi doesn’t look up from his book. The words sit uselessly open in front of him, their meaning unabsorbed. “I have glimpsed the truth.”

Tsuyu’s pen pauses mid stroke from the drawing of a frog on a lilypad she scribbles. “That’s how cult leaders start sentences, ribbit.”

Tokoyami accepts this. “A revelation, then. One forced upon you rather than sought.”

“Yes,” Hitoshi says quietly. His voice feels older than it should. “It came uninvited, in the morning.”

There are events that divide a life into before and after, and Hitoshi knows this is one of them. History will not remember it, but his nervous system sure will. As will his skin, because there's no way the stress of this won't make him break out.

Tokoyami’s eyes narrow. “Dawn is when shadows stretch longest.”

Hitoshi finally turns his head, meeting Tokoyami’s gaze. There is vindication there. “Exactly.”

“You two should not be allowed to talk unsupervised.” Tsuyu drawls while glancing between the pair.

Tokoyami leans forward and places his elbows on his desk, his hands steepled. “Tell us, Shinsou. What burden do you carry?”

The word lodges in Hitoshi’s throat before he lets it fall. “A betrayal.”

Tsuyu sets her pen down and props her chin on her hands, expression openly curious now. “Go on.”

“Betrayal is the deepest cut.” Tokoyami states gravely. “For it is inflicted by those who knew where to strike.”

Dark Shadow folds inwards. Across from them, Tsuyu remains exactly the same.

Hitoshi leans back in his chair and folds his arms across his chest as a shield. “He knew.”

Tsuyu’s brows knit together. “He?”

“He.”

Tokoyami hums thoughtfully. “A paternal figure, perhaps.”

Hitoshi draws in a slow, steadying breath. “…Yes.” The word feels heavy.

“That escalated,” Tsuyu states flatly.

“The fall from grace,” Tokoyami continues, undeterred, “is most devastating when the pedestal was built from trust.”

“I trusted him.”

It leaves a strange, metallic aftertaste, lingering longer than it should on his tongue. The classroom, meanwhile, carries on as usual as pages turn and someone coughs into their sleeve. Across the aisle, Mina is braiding Sero’s tape while Kaminari attempts to balance erasers on his nose.

Tsuyu inhales a soft preparatory breath, her head tilting as she readies herself to clarify the obvious.

“Which one?” 

Hitoshi’s lip curls. “Our English teacher.”

It’s as if the powers that be have demanded an encore of his suffering with how his chest pangs. Tokoyami waits with him, like a fellow mourner at the edge of a grave. 

Tsuyu blinks. Once. Twice. “Did he forget your birthday?”

“No.”

“Did he say something?”

“No.”

“Did he sell your stuff? Did he actually do anything?”

“Obviously.”

Tsuyu waits.

She simply remains there, eyes on him, patient in a way that suggests she could sit like this until the heat death of the universe. Hitoshi does not crack.

“That was your cue, by the way,” Tsuyu says mildly. “Ribbit.”

Tokoyami studies him with renewed intensity. “Was it a silence, then? An absence where there should have been warmth.”

Hitoshi closes his eyes.

The image flashes unbidden: a glowing screen, a familiar name, and a message that ended in catastrophe.

“…Yes,” he says, voice low, as if sealing a coffin.

Tsuyu remains unconvinced. “That’s still very broad. Have you considered being specific? It helps with conversation.”

The effort of explaining feels immense, like translating something sacred into a language that lacks the necessary vowels. Hitoshi says, “It was a message.”

“A message.” Tsuyu repeats slowly, testing the word as if it might reveal more under pressure. 

Tokoyami inclines his head. “Words carry weight. Their omission even more so.”

Tsuyu glances at him. Then back at Hitoshi. “Was it a bad message?”

“It was incomplete.”

She nods as encouragement, softening her voice, the way a kindergarten teacher might speak. “Good start. Now explain: incomplete how?”

“Fundamentally.”

Tsuyu’s forehead meets the desk with a quiet, defeated thump.

Tokoyami continues as though this is all proceeding exactly as expected. “A missing element can collapse the entire structure.”

“You sound like a bridge engineer,” Tsuyu mutters, her voice muffled by the desk.

“A symbol withheld is a statement in itself.” Tokoyami responds.

“Exactly,” Hitoshi says immediately.

Tsuyu lifts her head just long enough to squint at Tokoyami. “I don’t like how quickly he agreed with you.”

“It’s what I’ve been saying,” Hitoshi insists.

“You have not said that.”

Tokoyami turns fully toward Hitoshi, his attention undivided. “When one who once offered light suddenly does not, the darkness notices.” His voice lowers, becoming reverent. “Shinsou, know this: should the one who wronged you fail to acknowledge the depth of his transgression, the night will still shelter you.”

Hitoshi swallows. It doesn’t fix anything, but it does stop the worst of the internal collapse, which feels like a small mercy. “That means a lot.”

“It really shouldn’t,” Tsuyu says, in the same tone one might use to comment on weather patterns.

“You will not face the reckoning alone,” Tokoyami continues.

Hitoshi nods, and the tension recedes by a hair’s breadth, the way an audience exhales during a brief moment of hope. “I knew you’d understand.”

Tsuyu heaves a breath. “I understand that I’m going to hear the actual reason for this later and be mad about it, ribbit.”

Hitoshi knows this is the point of no return. 

He has been carrying the sentence all day, careful not to drop it. There is no smaller way to say this. There never was. His pulse beats too loud in his ears, each thud a countdown.

He draws in a breath.

“I think my father is in the process of disowning me.”

The air itself seems to pause.

Every sound becomes amplified. The brush of paper against wood feels like distant thunder, a giggle somewhere in the back cracks like a whip, and the clatter of a dropped pencil ricochets like an ominous drumbeat. Hitoshi’s chest tightens, a vise of heat and pressure. His limbs feel simultaneously heavy and weightless, as though gravity itself has turned traitor. 

The words hang in the air like smoke.

Tsuyu blinks slowly. 

“That,” she starts, “is a big claim.”

Hitoshi does not get the chance to defend said claim.

Because across the room, Aizawa stirs within his sleeping bag. He is brought back to the living with a furrowed brow already stamped across his face. He bolts upright like a ghoul rising from the grave, sensing a great disturbance. 

One moment he is an inert lump of fabric and spite beneath his desk. The next, his hair is sticking out at aggressive angles, eyes bloodshot but focused, already present beside Hitoshi’s desk without a sound. 

“You,” Aizawa says, pointing at Hitoshi as though identifying prey. “Outside. Now.”

The word ‘now’ cracks like a starter pistol.

Hitoshi stands, chair scraping across the floor as Tsuyu bids him a mock salute. He follows Aizawa outside, and the door slides shut behind them with a soft click, plunging them into silence.

The hallway is empty, with sunlight spilling through the windows.

“Start talking,” Aizawa starts. “Preferably in sentences that mean something.”

Hitoshi briefly considers asking for a chair. He thinks potential life-altering conversations should probably be done seated.

There is dignity in accepting the inevitable. He has decided he will be dignified about this.

“There are some things you don’t come back from,” he says coolly. “I trusted Yamada with my expectations. That was my first mistake.”

Aizawa stares at him.

“I’m not looking for poetry, Hitoshi.”

Yamada, in all his sunshine glory and brightness and hair Hitoshi somehow never finds any loose strands of, is above all else one thing:

Yamada Hizashi is safety.

And safety is supposed to be reliable.

Yamada is comforting in ways that don’t ask questions. He fills silences before they can become suffocating, and he never forgets the things that make Hitoshi feel seen. 

But all it takes is one missed step. 

One reminder that this—having a home—was never automatic. That love, especially when it isn’t biological, always has an exit clause no one talks about.

Change means the foundation had never been as solid as it felt. It means Yamada, consciously or not, decided that the effort is no longer required.

Hitoshi juts out his chin. “He knows what he did.”

Aizawa lets out a laboured exhale before pinching the bridge of his nose. He then affixes his gaze upon Hitoshi, his red-rimmed eyes unblinking, making Hitoshi feel like he’s standing under a floodlight.

“And I don’t,” Aizawa says at last, voice low and rough around the edges, like it’s been dragged up from somewhere he’d rather not revisit. “So what was it that your brilliant deducing uncovered that led you to decide he now hates you?”

The words are flat, but there’s a thread of incredulity woven through them, stretched thin by exhaustion. Aizawa shifts his weight, leaning one shoulder against the wall with his capture scarf loose around his shoulders.

Hitoshi does not hesitate.

“He demonstrated a concerning lapse in judgment, and a gross disregard of responsibility.”

Saying it out loud steadies him, like relaying a summary of a patrol or report.

Aizawa’s eye twitches.

Hitoshi presses on, because clearly this requires elaboration. “Yamada crossed a serious line.”

Somewhere far away, a door closes. Footsteps echo and fade. Aizawa stares at him for a long moment.

Then he closes his eyes.

It’s slow, like he’s bracing against a headache or counting down from ten. His shoulders sag by a fraction, the rigid line of him softening just enough to suggest the weight he’s carrying.

When he speaks again, it is with the calm of someone checking off boxes on a disaster response flowchart. “Is anyone hurt?”

“Emotionally.”

“Anyone bleeding?”

“No.”

“Any laws violated?”

“Only moral ones.”

Aizawa opens his eyes and asks dryly, “Hizashi's?”

Hitoshi responds faintly offended by the question. “Who else?” 

Aizawa studies him more closely now, head tilting by a fraction. “Did he say something to you?”

“No.”

“Did he not say something?”

Hitoshi’s jaw tightens.

Aizawa exhales. “That was a yes. Was this today?”

“Yes.”

“This morning?”

“Yes.”

“Hizashi wasn’t even home when you woke up,” Aizawa says flatly.

Hitoshi falters, just barely, before rallying. “Which only proves—”

“So,” Aizawa continues, merciless, “you concluded, based on one interaction—presumably through text, as it wasn’t in person—that your entire familial relationship has collapsed.” He pauses, then adds, deadpan, “Do I have that right?”

“Not collapsed,” Hitoshi says stiffly. “Revealed.”

“Revealed,” Aizawa repeats, utterly devoid of enthusiasm.

“The mask slipped.”

“The mask,” Aizawa echoes. He drags a hand down his face, pulling down the skin as if he were melting. “Hitoshi.”

“It was a pattern,” Hitoshi insists with a sharpness creeping into his voice. “And then it wasn’t.”

Aizawa tips his head back and looks at the ceiling, as if hoping it might rain patience directly onto him. Or collapse.

“Did Hizashi at any point say the words: ‘I no longer care about you’?”

“No.”

“Has he threatened to replace you with a louder child?”

“No.”

“Did he express explicit regret over being your dad?”

Hitoshi hesitates. “...Arguably.”

He has lived through the part where adults decide they are done, and the child is supposed to adapt. He didn’t survive the first time without learning the signs.

Aizawa’s gaze bores into him. 

“Explain to me,” the man says carefully, “in detail, exactly what happened.”

Hitoshi gathers his thoughts like evidence. “There are unspoken agreements people make when they repeat the same action every day. It’s a psychological phenomenon, where routine acts as a stabilizing force. It can ground a person, because it removes ambiguity.” He makes a vague, frustrated gesture with his hand. “When that is disrupted, it introduces… noise. Uncertainty.”

He pauses.

“I don’t like uncertainty.”

He isn’t being dramatic. He’s being cautious.

Something thoughtful flickers behind Aizawa’s fatigue. “I see.”

“You don’t,” Hitoshi snaps, bristling. “You’re underestimating the implications.”

“I’m actually estimating them pretty accurately,” Aizawa replies. “And they’re small.”

“That’s what makes it dangerous.”

Anyone with a sense of self-preservation would feel the same.

Aizawa raises a brow. “You skipped ‘talk to him’ and went straight to ‘irreversible emotional abandonment.’”

“Because confrontation assumes good faith.”

Confrontation is for misunderstandings. This is not that. He has already done the thinking, what remains is simply for the adults to catch up.

“And you think your father,” Aizawa says evenly, “Yamada Hizashi, doesn’t have that.”

Hitoshi says nothing.

Aizawa is very good at many things. Emotional pattern recognition is apparently not one of them.

Aizawa sighs deeply. “If you told Hizashi he hurt you, he would apologize within thirty seconds and then overcorrect until one of us stopped him,” he says, then serves Hitoshi a pointed look. “Whatever it is you are overthinking, Hizashi did it by accident.”

For a treacherous second, Hitoshi feels the impression of a hand ruffling his hair. He hears someone humming off-key, then remembers the feeling of being handed a mug that was too big for him, filled with something sweet and steaming, and being told—very seriously—that this was ‘emergency cocoa protocol.’

He remembers being asked if he was okay so many times it had felt excessive. Annoying, even. Safe.

Hitoshi’s expression wavers momentarily. A crack, quickly plastered over, but Aizawa sees it.

The man turns back toward the classroom door. “Go back inside.”

Hitoshi doesn’t move yet. “What if—”

“If there’s an actual issue,” Aizawa cuts in, “we’ll deal with it at home. Like a normal family, with actual words, rationally.” He reaches for the door. “Come on. Back inside before someone mistakes your brooding for an actual crisis.”

As they step back into the classroom, Aizawa mutters under his breath, with the long-suffering certainty of a man who has raised too many of them already.

“Teenagers.”

The rest of the school day unfolds in the way all catastrophes do: tediously.

Classes blur together. Hitoshi takes notes. He answers questions when called on. He participates just enough to avoid scrutiny. To the casual observer, he is functioning. To Hitoshi, this is an act of profound bravery.

By the time English rolls around, Hitoshi has come to the conclusion that this would have to be handled later. At home. With words. Rationally.

English, unfortunately, insists on happening now.

Yamada enters the classroom in a whirl of bright energy and loud enthusiasm, already halfway through a greeting before he’s fully inside the door. He’s smiling, of course, wide enough to light up the room in a show of radiant and effortless weaponized cheer. He looks exactly like a man who would not intentionally emotionally devastate his son.

It’s unbearable.

How can the man exist in such easy warmth, as though he were innocent? How can the man commit such a crime and yet still be so blasé? As though he had not begun dismantling the bond between father and son?

Yamada launches into the lesson without preamble, pacing as he talks and gesturing broadly like punctuation has become a full body activity. The topic of today is a menagerie of symbolism, irony and subtext. Hitoshi watches on with the kind of look heroes and villains share only moments before battle. The kind of look that precluded storms.

Every laugh Yamada draws from the class lands like a personal affront. Every easy smile feels suspicious. Every glance in his direction makes something in Hitoshi’s chest tighten, like his ribcage is enforcing a non-compete clause on emotion. The man has the audacity to continue with the lesson, to grin and move through the room as though the foundation of Hitoshi’s world hadn’t cracked beneath him.

Each word Yamada speaks feels like a fresh offense.

Each moment of brightness, a reminder of the shadow he had cast.

Yamada asks a question about metaphor, and Hitoshi answers it correctly. Yamada beams at him, his praises immediate and genuine, and the room tilts just enough to be disorienting.

It would be easier if Yamada was cruel. Or distant. Or even slightly off.

But he is exactly the same.

Which, Hitoshi thinks grimly, is its own kind of confirmation.

He catalogues it all with the detachment of a scholar: the way Yamada’s voice softens when he explains something difficult, the way he checks the clock to make sure he isn’t running over, the way he says Hitoshi’s name like it’s something cherished.

It means nothing. Performances often do.

Confronting Yamada here would be impossible, as public spaces complicate things with too many variables, too many ways for the narrative to get muddied.

Indeed, this requires privacy. It requires controlled conditions and a setting where the truth cannot dodge accountability, where truths can be laid bare and silence cannot mask the enormity of the sin

Home.

By the final bell, the decision had hardened in him:

Tonight, the truth will come to light.

Tonight, Yamada will answer for his crime.

The afternoon unwinds into something gentler.

Hitoshi walks his bike at his side, hands curled loosely around the handlebars, as the tires whisper along the sidewalk with the chain ticking faintly with each step.

Beside him, Iida is talking.

Today it’s about traffic flow patterns and how recent construction might affect pedestrian safety near the station. He gestures as he speaks, his words expertly enunciated and clear as glass; if the whole hero thing doesn’t work out, the guy definitely has a bright future as some sort of commentator.

Hitoshi listens.

Not in that polite, half-attentive way people often do when Iida gets like this, nodding at the right intervals while their thoughts wander elsewhere. Hitoshi follows along as Iida mentions how delivery trucks have started stopping too close to the corner of a specific intersection, resulting in blocked sight lines. The guy also apparently timed the light cycle yesterday, and found it lasted thirty-eight seconds. Which sounds like plenty until one accounts for elderly pedestrians and kids with short legs. 

Hitoshi lends his ear to the way Iida circles back to clarify points no one has challenged and tunes to the faint lift of excitement when the guy reaches a conclusion he’s particularly pleased with. There’s something grounding about Iida’s certainty, about how the world makes sense to him if you just apply enough care and structure. Walking beside him, Hitoshi finds his thoughts drifting without unravelling, held in place by the steady cadence of Iida’s monologue and the quiet companionship between them.

But his mind still wanders back, inevitably, to Yamada. It feels less like an open wound being picked at, but rather more like a bruise pressed experimentally, checking how much it still hurts.

Hitoshi doesn’t remember much about his birth parents in concrete terms. But he remembers the feeling: the constant tension of waiting for the floor to drop out from under him. Like living in a room where the fire alarm is always ringing, rattling his skull and setting his very bones to vibrate, as if it was trying to separate from the rest of his body.

Logic takes a seat on his shoulder like Tempo takes to Yamada, chirping at him that this is why disruptions feel less like accidents, and more like omens to him.

Hitoshi slows without meaning to.

His steps falter as the tires of his bike sigh to a near stop against the pavement. Iida keeps walking for exactly three more strides before noticing, then adjusts seamlessly, as if they’d planned this pause together.

“…Iida,” Hitoshi says.

Iida tilts his head toward him. “Yes?”

The word ‘I’ forms in Hitoshi’s mouth and immediately trips over his pride.

“If someone was…” He exhales, recalibrates, tries again. “If someone was, hypothetically, hurt by someone they care about…”

He hates how carefully he’s phrasing this. Like he’s trying to sneak his feelings past security without setting off the alarms.

There’s a brief silence. The kind where Hitoshi becomes intensely aware of his own existence, his posture, and the fact that he is in public.

Iida’s attention sharpens, evident with how his posture straightens and squares his shoulders. “I am listening,” he says, with the gravity of someone prepared to take minutes.

Hitoshi swallows. “If this person was hurt by someone they loved… Not on purpose—probably, and it was something… small. Objectively.” He stares very hard at a crack in the sidewalk. “But it still feels,” he adds, quieter, “big.”

They stand together with the afternoon stretched thin around them. The corner they’ve stopped at is unremarkable—no crosswalk, no sign, bordered by residency—but Hitoshi is faintly aware that this is the kind of location stories like to linger on. He resents that.

“And logically,” Hitoshi continues quickly, because if he doesn’t he might swallow his tongue, “this hypothetical person knows accidents happen, that people forget things and get distracted.” A beat. “But emotionally, it feels like… proof.”

Iida frowns. “Proof of what?”

The answer is already there, lodged between Hitoshi’s teeth like a splinter.

“That they matter less than they thought.”

The words sound smaller once they’re out, but with the weight of a mountain.

Iida’s frown deepens. “That is not a logical conclusion.”

“I know,” Hitoshi says immediately, because apparently he is now the kind of person who preemptively defends himself from Iida Tenya’s disappointment. “That’s why it’s hypothetical. But—” He hesitates, fingers tightening on the handlebars. “This person is starting to wonder if this is the start of something worse.”

“Because of a single error?”

“Yes.”

“That is an unfair burden to place on oneself.”

Hitoshi huffs a quiet, humourless laugh. 

Iida speaks with the certainty of someone whose emotions have always come with instructions. Step one: identify the issue. Step two: address it. Step three: resolution. Hitoshi has never received the manual.

“But,” Iida continues, adjusting his glasses, “feelings do not often measure themselves by scale. Being aware of a feeling’s irrationality does not make it disappear.” His voice softens. Not by much, but enough that Hitoshi notices. “If this transgression touches something important, then of course it feels immense. Even if the action itself was minor.”

Something in Hitoshi’s chest tightens, precariously close to his heart. He was already braced to be found wanting, to be told that this was beneath concern. And maybe it is, but Iida does not call him too sensitive or too much. Instead, he treats the feeling as something worth examining, instead of discarding. It’s disarming. It’s nice. It’s dangerous, how much it means. 

“What if,” Hitoshi asks, and hates how young this sounds, “it means this person is easier to forget than they thought?”

Iida answers without hesitation. “Then I would say that their feelings are lying to them.”

Hitoshi blinks.

“And,” Iida adds, “that if you are accustomed to instability, you begin to look for signs of it everywhere. Even in places meant to be safe. Or in actions that are otherwise benign.”

Something in Hitoshi’s shoulders tenses, an instinctive response, before it slowly eases. Like a fist unclenching when it realizes it isn’t about to be struck.

“So,” Hitoshi says after a moment, forcing his tone back to neutral. “What would you do?”

Iida considers this seriously, because of course he does. “First, I would remind myself of the full pattern, not a single data point. One mistake does not outweigh all the care preceding it.”

Hitoshi’s mind supplies it immediately. 

Yamada remembers that he hates sweet breakfasts and always buys savoury bread. The way he never teases Hitoshi about his music, even though it’s loud and aggressive and objectively terrible to everyone else, instead just nodding alone and asking which metal subgenre it is this week. How the man learned, without ever being told outright, that Hitoshi doesn’t like rooms going quiet all at once. That Yamada always announces he’s leaving, even if it’s just to grab something from the next room. 

“And if,” Hitoshi asks, “this person can’t stop thinking about it?”

“Then I would suggest speaking up,” Iida responds. “Silence allows imagination to take command. And imagination,” he adds gravely, “has the potential to be unkind.”

The thought curdles: speaking up implies there's something worth speaking about, and it feels dangerously close to asking for more than he’s entitled to. Attention, reassurance, proof that he isn’t a mistake that’s finally begun to show at the seams—he thinks himself as excess weight, the kind someone doesn’t notice carrying until their arms start to ache. Baggage picked up with the best intentions and quietly regretted later. 

Of course Yamada would forget something eventually. Of course the cracks would start with something small. Hitoshi has always known, in the marrow of his bones, that he is easy to love in theory and difficult in practice. That one day, someone might look at all the accommodations and the careful habits and the emotional noise he drags behind him, and decide it was more than what they signed up for.  

Hitoshi is quiet for a few seconds too long.

The city fills the space for him with the ambiance of distant traffic and a crosswalk chirping somewhere down the block. He rolls Iida’s words around in his head, testing them for weak points. 

“There’s also,” he says slowly, “the possibility that speaking up is… unnecessary. Like,” Hitoshi continues, eyes fixed on the sidewalk, “if the thing is objectively minor. And the other person has done a lot. Consistently. Over a long period of time.” He swallows. “Then bringing it up feels like… making a commotion.”

He risks a glance at Iida, then looks away immediately. Rookie mistake; the guy has a stare that could rival Aizawa. 

“It starts to sound,” he adds, quieter, “like ingratitude.”

Iida doesn’t interrupt. Which somehow makes this worse.

“Or,” Hitoshi says, words picking up speed now that he’s committed, “like you’re being selfish. Or spoiled. Or—” He huffs out a short breath. “Too much.”

Iida has gone very still. Like all the energy he usually spends on movement and correction has been carefully rerouted into listening. His posture is open, squared toward Hitoshi, with his gaze steady in a way that doesn’t feel interrogative so much as anchoring. There’s no impatience there, no faint smile of indulgence or sign that Hitoshi has crossed some invisible line into nuisance. 

If anything, Iida looks resolved, as if Hitoshi has just entrusted him with something important and he intends to handle it correctly. The realization sits oddly with Hitoshi, but he doesn’t linger on it long enough to ask why.

“May I respond directly?” Iida says.

Hitoshi gives a half-shrug. “You usually do.”

“Gratitude,” Iida says carefully, “is not a debt that must be paid through silence.”

Hitoshi stares.

“Being cared for does not obligate one to ignore pain,” Iida continues. “Even small pain. Particularly when the relationship in question is meant to be safe. And,” Iida adds, “expressing a need is not the same as demanding restitution. If this person approaches the matter without accusation—without assigning malicious intent—then they are not being selfish, they are being honest.”

Hitoshi shifts his weight, the toe of his shoe scuffing the pavement. “What if honesty still feels like asking for too much?”

“Then I would question who taught them that their needs must be minimized in order to deserve care.”

Hitoshi’s first instinct is still to defend them—whoever they were. To insist that no one taught him this directly, that it’s just common sense. 

The truth sits heavier than that: he learned it because it worked. Because being less had once been the difference between being tolerated and being gone. 

Iida straightens slightly. “Someone who loves you would not wish for you to endure discomfort in silence simply to preserve an image of gratitude.” He pauses, then adds, gentler, “And if they would… then the issue is not that you asked. It is that you were made to feel you should not.”

Hitoshi’s throat tightens. Annoyingly.

“So,” he says, because humour is easier than admitting he might cry on a perfectly average sidewalk, “hypothetically speaking, this person wouldn’t be a monster for saying something?”

Iida allows himself a very small smile. “On the contrary. I would consider it an act of trust.”

That settles uncomfortably, in the way new truths tend to be.

Hitoshi nods, staring resolutely at nothing. He lets out a long exhale, like he’s been holding his breath for several blocks without realizing it. 

“…Thanks,” he says. It feels insufficient, but sincere. “You’re… really good at this. Talking things through, I mean.”

Iida stiffens slightly, as if he encountered an unexpected obstacle in the road.

“And,” Hitoshi adds, because the thought has been hovering and now seems important enough to say out loud, “you’re a good friend, Iida.”

Whatever internal framework Iida uses to navigate social interactions appears to lag, as for a brief moment, nothing happens. 

Then Iida’s ears turn pink.

Hitoshi notices, but the sun is low and Iida’s helmet-like hair probably traps heat. 

Iida clears his throat. Then adjusts his glasses. Then re-adjusts them again.

“Well,” he manages as the sun creates a glare across the lenses of his glasses. “If you prefer, you may call me Tenya.”

Names, Hitoshi supposes, feel like doors. You don’t open them unless you mean to go somewhere. 

Hitoshi blinks. “Oh.”

Iida watches him with the intensity of someone awaiting exam results.

“Well,” Hitoshi says thoughtfully, “Tsuyu sometimes calls me Hito-chan.”

It feels like a reasonable compromise. 

Hitoshi doesn’t notice the way the air subtly recalibrates around them, nor does it occur to him that nicknames are a kind of intimacy, or that offering one is rarely neutral. 

He shrugs. “So you can call me that, if you want.”

The effect is immediate and catastrophic.

Iida makes a sound that does not belong to any known human language.

“T-that is—!” He starts pacing. Stops. Starts again. “I mean—! If you are comfortable with it, of course! I would not wish to presume undue familiarity or overstep any personal boundaries or—”

He adjusts his glasses again. They are definitely not crooked. He doesn’t appear to know what to do with his hands. He looks like he’s fighting for his life against a swarm of invisible bees.

Hitoshi’s first reaction is not ‘oh,’ but ‘oh no.’ He watches this all unfold with mild concern, how flush and frantic the other boy is, and wonders if the route they took was longer than usual. Hitoshi considers suggesting that they move into the shade, or offering the water bottle clipped to his bike.  

As he is debating whether it would be rude to ask if Iida needs to sit down and worrying if this is a sign of low blood sugar, the class rep stills. 

“Hitoshi is…” Iida says, slightly desperately, “…entirely sufficient.”

“Okay,” Hitoshi says easily, like he hasn’t just witnessed a full system reboot. “Hitoshi it is, then.”

The tension drains out of Iida audibly, through the way he lets out a wheezing exhale. Hitoshi doesn’t comment, he merely nods with his decision made, and starts walking again, bike rolling along beside him.

He thinks about how much Iida—Tenya—has come to matter to him. 

How rock solid he is. How he listens like it’s a responsibility, not a courtesy. How his name fits him perfectly. Tenya. It sounds warm when it's said. 

Tenya falls into step beside him seamlessly, though a slight pink remains. A few steps pass. Then Hitoshi glances sideways, a familiar spark lighting in his eyes.

“Hey,” he says casually. “Tenya.”

Tenya startles slightly, looking over immediately. “Yes?”

“I bet I can beat you home.”

Tenya freezes, and Hitoshi’s steps halt in tandem. 

“That would be,” he says carefully, “ill-advised.”

Hitoshi raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Racing on a public sidewalk presents unnecessary risk,” Tenya continues, already warming up. “Additionally, using one’s quirk outside of emergency situations is both irresponsible and a violation of public safety ordinances, not to mention—”

“Wow,” Hitoshi snarks. “You’re already making excuses.”

“I am not—!” Tenya splutters. “I am explaining that I will not engage in reckless behaviour!”

Hitoshi steps backwards just out of reach, his bike wobbling slightly as he grins. “Didn’t say you had to use your quirk.”

Tenya pauses. He processes this. Frowns. “That would still be—!”

“C’mon,” Hitoshi says with a small laugh he doesn’t bother containing. “What happened to healthy competition? Y’know, character building. Youthful vigor, or whatever.”

“I am plenty vigorous,” Tenya says stiffly with his hands planted on his hips. 

“Uh-huh.”

Hitoshi swings himself atop the bicycle’s seat. He twists his handlebars forward, readying himself. “First one to the convenience store wins. Loser has to say ‘You were right, and I was wrong’ out loud.” 

Tenya hesitates. But only for a moment.  

“I will participate,” he says, very seriously. “At a reasonable pace.”

Hitoshi grins. “Sure you will.”

He kicks off, tires humming against the pavement as he shoots ahead, laughter spilling out of him before he can stop it. Behind him, he hears Tenya shout something about ‘maintaining proper form’ and ‘situational awareness’—followed by the unmistakable sound of someone sprinting far faster than they probably intended to.

The home is decorated with the rhythmic knocking of Aizawa’s knife against the cutting board, alongside the soft chorus of finch song filtering in from the living room. The smell of soy and dashi warms the air, curling into the corners of the house until everything feels steeped in it. 

It’s all very ordinary. Hitoshi hates it a little, right now.

He’s still in his UA uniform, jacket shrugged off but tie loosened and hanging crooked at his throat like it’s given up on being formal. The fabric feels too tight across his shoulders, like it knows he’s about to do something reckless.

Down the hall, the living room is lit in the gentle gold of early evening. The rabbits have free reign, as they do whenever someone is home, and the evidence of it is everywhere. Yoko is sprawled in the middle of the rug  as a black shape with ears tilted forward and eyes half-lidded, radiating the unshakeable confidence of a creature who has never once doubted her place in the world. Happy binks past her in a blur of brown, skidding slightly before vanishing behind the couch in pursuit of nothing in particular.

Then Yoko notices Hitoshi lingering at the threshold like a ghost. 

Her ears swivel toward him, then she’s up and moving, nails clicking softly against the wood floor as she makes a beeline for him. She stops just short of his feet, lifts herself onto her hind legs, and stares expectantly.

Hitoshi obliges, obviously. He couches and places a hand on her head, and rubs slow circles between her ears. 

Her presence is a warm, solid reminder that at least one being in this house has never, and will never, betray him. 

From the kitchen, Aizawa moves. He’s in an old grey t-shirt and black sweatpants, hair tied back in a low, messy knot that suggests he gave up halfway through. A pot of udon simmers on the stove, steam fogging the lower cabinets, and the scent of broth grows richer by the second.

In the living room, is the blond.

Yamada is curled into the corner of the couch like a man who has never known stress in his life. He’s traded his usual loud layers for comfort: loose joggers, an oversized sweater in bright yellow, socks that do not match and are worn anyway. Tempo perches on his shoulder, feathers fluffed contentedly, occasionally chirping commentary as Yamada fills in another square of his sudoku puzzle.

The finches add their own opinions from their enclosure near the sliding doors, a soft, constant soundtrack of chirps and rustles that fills the space between moments. Someone preens. Someone bickers. Life continues.

Hitoshi straightens slowly.

This is it, he thinks. 

He takes stock like a strategist before a doomed battle. Aizawa is occupied. Yamada is relaxed. The house is calm. Too calm. The kind of calm that exists right before something irrevocable happens, like a dropped glass or a poorly timed confession.

His phone feels heavier in his pocket than it has any right to.

Yoko presses against his shin. Hitoshi absently reaches down and lets his fingers sink into her fur, grounding himself in the physicality of her. She won’t leave. She won’t forget him. She has never once failed to show up exactly where she’s supposed to be.

He breathes in.

Soy. Warm wood. Clean laundry. Home.

Hitoshi steps into the living room before he can talk himself out of it.

Yoko moves with him, a shadow at his heel, her flank brushing him as if to make sure he’s still there. He stops in front of the couch, squarely in Yamada’s line of sight, and the words come out before his courage can evaporate.

“We need to talk.”

Yamada looks up from his sudoku, pencil paused mid-hover. He folds the newspaper closed and sets it aside, Tempo adjusting smoothly on his shoulder.

“Oooh,” Yamada says with his eyes bright. “That’s ominous. Is this a talk talk, or a ‘you forgot to take out the trash’ talk?”

Hitoshi plants his hands on his hips. “Don’t joke.”

Yamada’s smile dims slightly, but doesn’t disappear entirely. He lifts his hands in surrender. “Oh. Okay. No jokes.” A moment passes. Yamada squints up at him in thought. “…Is this about the trash?”

From the kitchen Aizawa calls, “I’m not mediating unless someone is actively dying.”

Yamada laughs reflexively, and it grates against Hitoshi’s nerves like sandpaper. He doesn’t laugh back. He doesn’t even blink.

Yamada notices.

“Kid,” he says while studying him. “You’re scaring me a little.”

“Good.”

Yamada winces. “Ouch.”

“I want to know what you thought you were doing,” Hitoshi says steadily.

Yamada blinks. “Today? In general? Or spiritually?”

“This morning.”

That seems to clock something.

Yamada’s energy shifts. It’s subtle, but as Hitoshi is staring directly at him, it’s unmistakable. The man sits up properly, sudoku abandoned on the coffee table, one hand rising to his shoulder to ensure Tempo isn’t too jostled by his movement.

“Okay,” he says. “Alright. Let’s slow down. What tone are we setting here? Confused? Defensive? Mildly panicked?”

“Honest.”

There’s no point softening it. 

Yamada’s brows lift, and a familiar grin tries to resurface out of reflex. “I can do honest! I love honest. Honesty is my brand.”

“Then explain yourself.”

Whatever comes next is either going to ruin his night, or prove he was right to be afraid all along.

Yamada tilts his head. “Explain… what, sweetheart?”

Hitoshi’s jaw tightens. “You know.”

“I genuinely, deeply, fearfully do not.”

“You expect me to believe that?"

He is prepared for betrayal. He is not prepared for incompetence. Somewhere in his head, a jury is already filing in, and they look deeply unimpressed.

Yamada shrugs helplessly. “I once forgot my own shoe size, so yes.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“I’m not laughing!”

Hitoshi takes another step forward before he can stop himself. The space between them feels charged, like a held breath.

“You crossed a serious line.” He condemns. 

Yamada exhales slowly. “I cross lines all the time. I host a radio show.”

“This one mattered,” Hitoshi states sharply. “To me.”

Yamada’s expression stills instantly, the humour draining away like someone’s pulled a plug. The room feels quieter, suddenly, like even the finches have paused to listen.

“…Okay,” Yamada says, his voice lowered. “Did I hurt you?”

The question is careful. Something in Hitoshi loosens, against his will.

“…Yes.”

Yamada’s smile disappears completely.

“Oh.”

Yoko nudges Hitoshi’s calf, reminding him to stay upright. He swallows and keeps going.

Hitoshi barrels on. “You broke the pattern.”

“The—the pattern?” Yamada repeats, frowning.

“The routine.”

Understanding dawns on Yamada with the kind of clarity that only comes in hindsight.

Yamada’s eyes widen in the sudden, devastating awareness that he has, in fact, stepped directly on the emotional landmine.

“Oh no.”

From the kitchen, Aizawa dryly chimes in like a prophecy fulfilled. “I warned you about routines.”

Hitoshi stands there, his heart pounding and thinks dimly that it’s too late to retreat now.

“This feels like a trial and I don’t have my lawyer,” Yamada states with his hands raised in the universal sign of surrender, palms up and forward.

“You don’t deserve one,” Hitoshi huffs.

Yamada smirks, the corner of his lips twitching in that infuriating way he does. “Harsh. But probably fair.”

Hitoshi’s jaw tightens. “Every morning. Every single morning. No exceptions.”

“…Okay, now I’m sweating,” Yamada mutters, pulling the collar of his shirt.

“You changed it,” Hitoshi accuses, voice cracking just enough to make it dramatic.

“I swear on my entire vinyl collection, I did not mean to,” Yamada protests, hands flailing slightly, Tempo bobbing in tandem with each exclamation.

“I trusted you.”

“You still can, baby! We can call this my redemption arc!”

“That’s not the point.”

“Then what is the point, sweetheart?” Yamada has the gall to tease. 

Hitoshi unearths his phone from his pocket. “This.” He shoves his phone forward, pressing it near Yamada's face, the screen’s brightness momentarily bleaching the man’s complexion. Tempo gives an indignant chirp, testing Hitoshi’s phone case with his beak.

Yamada blinks, adjusts his glasses, and squints at the screen. “…Is that my text?”

“Read it,” Hitoshi commands.

Yes. Read it. Read it slowly. Let it. Sink. In.

Yamada’s eyes skim the message: “Good morning, my little sunshine! You’re my favourite little listener in the world. Don't forget: I love you. Kick today’s butt. Proud of you!!” He blinks. “That’s a pretty solid text, I’d say.”

Hitoshi has the strange, hysterical urge to laugh. 

On its own, the text is perfect. Overbearing in that aggressively affectionate way Yamada wields like a weapon. It’s verbal confetti, and any reasonable person would see this and think, ‘wow, what a loving parent.’ 

But the absence is glaring. It’s a bare space so loud it practically screams. Hitoshi resists the urge to point at the screen and sneer ‘Notice anything missing? Anything at all?’ 

“Keep reading,” Hitoshi says, tone clipped.

Yamada raises a bow. Tempo tilts his head. “…That’s the whole thing.” 

The moment clicks into place with a quiet, vicious satisfaction. 

Hitoshi taps the screen insistently, the sounds bouncing off the walls. “So where is it? Where is—“ he jabs the screen again, hard enough that his fingertip bends. “—my love-heart!”

Yamada gasps so dramatically he momentarily chokes on his own saliva. 

“Oh no,” his hand flies to his chest like he’s been struck by an invisible bullet, eyes widening. 

“You forgot it.” Hitoshi decries, his arm locking into place as he extends the phone forward, making it unavoidable. It feels good, holding the evidence out like this. Like a dagger.

“Oh no,” Yamada repeats, sinking in the couch as though his body has deflated. 

“You always put it there,” Hitoshi presses, his voice climbing just enough. 

There is no longer a misunderstanding. This is history. 

“I—” Yamada stammers, hands flailing uselessly. 

“Always,” Hitoshi says through clenched teeth, the word landing like a verdict. 

“I—“ Yamada tries again fruitlessly. 

“At. The. End.” 

“I know,” Yamada blurts, the fight leaving him all at once as he finally, fully acknowledges his sin.

“My love-hearts. Pink or red. Sometimes two, or even three if you’re feeling extra,” Hitoshi says, counting off on his fingers for emphasis.

“I know—” 

“And today there was nothing,” Hitoshi finishes, aggrieved.

“…Oh my god,” Yamada whispers in horror. 

“You didn’t give me my love-heart.” 

The words slip, just slightly, on the way out. Frayed at the edges despite his best efforts to keep it unassailable. 

Yamada slaps a hand to his face in exaggerated shame. “…Yamada Hizashi,” he intones solemnly, “you absolute monster.”

From the kitchen doorway, Aizawa leans against the wall with his arms crossed and eyes half-lidded and merciless. “You’re dead.”

Yamada lets out a wounded wail and all but slides off the couch, collapsing onto the floor in a defeated heap. Tempo hops neatly onto the backrest, feathers puffed, as if abandoning a sinking ship. “I’m dead!”

Hitoshi doesn’t smile. He folds his arms instead. “So you admit it.”

“I admit it. I confess!” Yamada throws his arms wide, face turned toward an imaginary sky. “Put me in shackles and throw away the key!”

Tempo punctuates the declaration with a sharp, judgmental chirp.

“You don’t get to joke your way out of this,” Hitoshi says, the vindication in his chest sharpening into something more brittle.

Yamada looks up at him from the floor, eyes wide and earnest in a way that almost—almost—makes it worse. “I’m not joking. I’m devastated. I have failed as a father, as a broadcaster, as a human with thumbs.”

“You had one job,” Hitoshi says quietly.

“I was half-asleep! Tempo sneezed! The coffee machine made a sound like it was dying!”

“Excuses.”

“Valid context!”

Hitoshi inhales, then exhales, the fight draining just enough for the words to slip out before he can stop them. “I thought—”

Yamada is on his feet instantly.

He crosses the space between them in two quick steps and places a hand on Hitoshi’s shoulder. The theatrics vanish like a dropped curtain.

“Hey,” he says softly. “No. Don’t do that part.”

Hitoshi’s throat tightens. The house feels too quiet again. “…I thought you were getting tired of me.”

Yamada’s expression crumples, something open and unmistakably sincere breaking through. “Oh, baby,” he murmurs. “No.”

“It felt like you forgot.”

Hitoshi hates how small it sounds when he says it, like it's something fragile he’s setting down between them and hoping it doesn't crack.

Yamada doesn’t deflect, he doesn’t joke or posture or dramatize. He just looks at him, really looks, and says quietly, “I forgot the emoji, not you.”

Hitoshi swallows. “It didn’t feel that way.”

There’s a pause. It’s brief, but full. Yamada’s shoulders relax, his expression gentling into something unmistakably earnest.

“…Come here.”

“Don’t—” Hitoshi starts reflexively. 

“I’m coming there anyway.”

“Yama—”

Too late.

Yamada closes the distance and wraps him up without hesitation, arms holding Hitoshi both like a vice and as a warm blanket. Hitoshi stiffens for half a second out of habit, then melts despite himself, forehead pressing into the familiar curve of Yamada’s chest.

“I am so sorry,” Yamada murmurs into his hair. “I am criminally sorry. I will never emotionally recover from this oversight.”

Hitoshi huffs despite himself. “You’re being dramatic.”

(The irony of this statement does not reach Hitoshi.) 

Yamada chirps, “This is how I process guilt.”

“…Okay.”

Yamada presses a gentle kiss to his cheek.

“There. One apology kiss.”

“That’s—!”

Then another, just as soft.

“Two for good measure.”

“Stop—”

A third, lingering this time.

“Three because I love you!”

“Dad!” Hitoshi yelps, mortified, as his face heats instantly.

“I will never forget a heart again!” Yamada declares, voice ringing with mock solemnity. “I’ll put three, I’ll put five! I’ll fill up a whole text box!”

“You’re embarrassing me,” Hitoshi mutters, burrowing closer despite himself.

“I am reassuring you.”

Somewhere off to the side, unnoticed, Aizawa quietly lifts his phone. He doesn’t make a sound, merely recording unobtrusively, filing the moment away for a future Hitoshi who might still need proof.

Hitoshi’s voice comes out muffled against Yamada’s sweater. “…You won’t forget again?”

Yamada’s arms tighten just a little. “Never. Not your love-heart. Not you. Not ever.”

Tempo chirps in agreement.

Yamada smiles. “See? Even your brother swears it.”

Hitoshi exhales, the last of the tension finally slipping free. “…Okay.”

Yamada tilts his head. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

Hitoshi stays there.

He doesn’t pull away, and allows himself to be held, tucked securely against Yamada’s chest where the steady thrum of his heartbeat seeps into Hitoshi’s bones and makes its home there. He closes his eyes, and lets the moment stretch. Yoko, pleased, leaves the pair to it.

For once, the world doesn’t feel like it’s waiting for him to mess up. 

The next morning, Hitoshi’s phone is lit up. And continues to light up. 

It’s absolutely buried in notifications. Heart emojis in every shade and size stack over one another and flood the display. Pink, red, purple, sparkly ones, lines of them. Full paragraphs. An excessive, unapologetic wall of affection. 

Yamada is forgiven, Hitoshi concludes.