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Growing up, Hitoshi had long since resigned himself to the fact that he didn't have a soulmate.
Every time he glanced down at his wrist, where one by one each of his classmates developed a beautiful and intricate mark when their own soulmates manifested their quirks, the bare skin always seemed to stare back at him tauntingly.
How fitting it was, anyway, the fact that nobody would want the boy with the villainous quirk. Even the universe had deemed him fated to be alone and ostracized for all his life.
As he grew older, he wore long sleeves more frequently to hide the lack of soulmark, but by then it was already common knowledge among his peers. Shinsou Hitoshi was Unmarked and thus unwanted. Any new students who didn’t know would find out soon enough, the knowledge divulged to them right alongside the whispers about his villainous mind control quirk.
(Even if sometimes it felt almost as if there was a whisper of sensation on that magical spot on his wrist, as if something was singing his song, calling to him, trying to let him know that he was not alone. Hitoshi wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t delusional. He knew that it was only his imagination, dreaming up things that he no longer dared wish for, and nothing real.)
His peers grew and changed and occasionally found their soulmates, and Hitoshi is left growing more and more bitter. Someone even suggests that maybe he has a soulmate, someone quirkless. It’s a very real possibility; despite the fact that only five percent of the population Hitoshi’s age is born quirkless, it’s still a greater likelihood than being entirely Unmarked; yet everyone that speaks of it agrees Hitoshi would be better off soulmateless instead.
Then comes the chance to enter Yuuei, and Hitoshi takes the chance to change it. There is a marked difference between the way soulmarks are handled in high school rather in than middle school. Especially in a school catered towards heroics.
Armband in place, Hitoshi attends his first class with the faintest flicker of hope in his heart. The fervent wish that his classmates will see him for who he is, and not for his Unmarked state or his villainous quirk.
It may be a pipe dream, but that is what he is here for, to chase dreams people say are impossible.
~~~
Midoriya Izuku gains a mark the same day he’s officially diagnosed quirkless.
A momentous occasion that typically heralds celebration and joy instead brings naught but tears and apologies and grief. Izuku can’t even appreciate the mark for the bitterness that is also associated with it. The raven stretches across his wrist in magnificent glory, mocking him with a soulmate he knows will reject him for dragging him down. No one wants a soulmate with no quirk, that fact is beaten into his head every day at Aldera.
Worse still is when someone deciphers what bird is on his wrist.
“Villain,” the whispers hiss through the hallways, following his every waking step. With a raven representing their quirk, his soulmate must be a villain, everyone knows that. Ravens are categorically bad, so Izuku’s soulmate must be a villain.”
“Oh poor pathetic little Deku, no one to love him but a villain.” Or “If Deku’s soulmate has such a villainous quirk, Deku must be destined to go bad too.”
Izuku almost believes them by the time he’s kneeling before All Might and hearing someone tell him that he too, can be a hero. He’s so close to accepting the assessment and giving up on his dreams when a hand reaches into the darkness in offering, giving Izuku a way to be lifted out of the loneliness and misery.
He grabs onto that mercy for all he’s worth, clinging to the possibility of something more. The chance to leave this dark chapter behind him for good. A quirk, a mentor, new friends and the possibility of finding his soulmate…yes hope begins to unfurl its wings in Izuku’s heart.
At first he thinks that he’s found them, when he lays eyes on Tokoyami for the first time. Deeply, desperately hoping it is true, that someone so incredible could be his soulmate, Izuku offers his hand to his classmate only to find disappointment.
There is no resonance between them. Tokoyami isn’t his soulmate. The other boy assures him he wishes to be Izuku’s friend, and that they will walk through the darkness together. It may not have been everything he’d hoped, but a friend is something to be cherished.
Instead of looking for his soulmate, he puts his all into learning all he can and growing. Armband firmly in place, he delights in no one looking at it and accusing him of being a villain-to-be or worse, pitying him. Only around Tokoyami does he uncover it, the other boy delighting in the dark bird on his wrist.
And slowly but surely does he grow comfortable with his other classmates as well, content in the knowledge that even if none of them are his soulmate, he can trust them deeply nonetheless.
The week of the Sports Festival comes far too quickly for Izuku’s comfort. He knows he’s meant to use this occasion to announce himself to the world, to make his name known and show his strength alongside his classmates to give the public something to have faith in, but even as he ramps up training in the days before it, Izuku can’t help but feel increasingly apprehensive.
The class assembles in the morning and walks out to the stadium together to stand with all the other heroics classes, and Izuku can feel the shaking in his hands amplifying with every step he takes. The opening ceremony passes in a blur; he barely pays attention to the speeches and introductions, only distantly registers the crowd’s reaction to Class 1-A’s announcement; his attention is entirely focused on trying to calm himself back down before the first event.
It’s announced to be an obstacle course race, and it’s all Izuku can do to keep up with his classmates, determined not to fall too far behind, not to disappoint his mentor–
He ends up in first place with a 1 million point bounty on his head. Of course he does.
And then he narrowly avoids losing the cavalry battle but instead manages to make it through by the skin of his teeth, and suddenly he finds that he has a moment to breathe as the teachers reset the field before the one-on-ones.
His first match is against a general education student named Shinsou Hitoshi; Izuku vaguely recognized him as the purple-haired rider from another team, but other than that, he’s a complete dark horse.
Anything could happen.
~~~
As Hitoshi steps out onto the field and faces his green-haired opponent, his hands begin to tremble as something in him — apprehension maybe? — swells before dying down.
He takes a deep breath to steel his nerves. He can’t be faltering now, not when he’s made it so far, not when he’s a few matches away from a hero course transfer, not when he’s about to prove to everybody what he can do.
“Start!” Midnight cries, cracking her whip, and Hitoshi wastes no time in attempting to taunt the other boy into a reply. His opponent is curiously quiet — likely somebody warned him already, Hitoshi thinks, annoyance flaring. Switching tactics, he tries insulting one of the boy’s classmates, and it gloriously works, Midoriya freezing mid-run toward Hitoshi.
“You’re lucky to have been blessed with such a heroic quirk,” he spits. “But it didn’t save you in the end. Now walk out of bounds.”
Midoriya obeys, but Hitoshi can feel his control wavering like it has never done before, almost as if his quirk is rebelling against him. Suddenly, the boy pauses at the end of the boundary line, and then in an explosion of power and wind that happens too fast for Hitoshi to process, Midoriya is charging back toward him.
“Stop! What- that’s really all you got? How did you do that?” Hitoshi hurls question after question, but he’s running out of ideas.
And then Hitoshi’s fist makes contact with Midoriya’s nose, but along with the a rush of blood that spurts out, Hitoshi can feel a vibrating up the length of his arms, humming, buzzing with warmth. He meets Midoriya’s eyes to see that the other boy evidently is experiencing something unusual as well.
“What…” Midoriya murmurs, the first sound that’s come out of his mouth since breaking out of Hitoshi’s brainwashing, but Hitoshi doesn’t even try to take advantage of his opponent’s slip-up, too preoccupied by the way that something underneath Midoriya’s half-torn armband is pulsing in time with what he feels on his own arm.
“It can’t be,” Hitoshi whispers. But there’s a glimmering, pulsating, wavelike rainbow encircling his wrist now where before there was nothing but pale bare skin, and there’s no other explanation possible.
The tiny smile on Midoriya’s face all but confirms it, and he’s not even angry when he doesn’t get a single other reply from the boy throughout the subsequent round of hand-to-hand combat that follows, each blow resonates and makes his heart sing when it lands — when he makes contact with his soulmate.
He has plenty more questions for Midoriya, plenty more that aren’t meant to trap him and triumph over him, but the knowledge that he isn’t Unmarked, the knowledge that he has a soulmate — it’s enough for now.