Chapter Text
"It's the end of the line. Give it up."
The villain regards him curiously. "Ah. Most heroes would use that cliche when they're on the winning side," they comment. "Not when they're..."
"On a roof ready to topple," Present Mic -- not Hizashi, never Hizashi -- answers quickly. "Yeah, I get it. Weird, right?"
A long chase had landed them here. Miles of crossing streets he could no longer bring himself to place or recognize in the roads of his mind, corner stores with top of the line products he'd dragged Shouta over to peer at, make colour commentary on and paint them in hues of verbose he could understand. Frequent often enough to keep knowing.
There's a pastry place he's quite fond of; he gets jelly donuts for Shouta sometimes, buttered croissants for himself most times, and the wait staff are quite the hoot. Notably, there's one he could call a favourite. Suzuki. A charming young lady. Average height, hair that usually goes down to her knees but is put up with a clip he'd offered her on his first day as a customer. Like the rest, she doesn't recognize him as Present Mic; he always goes there with his hair down, sunglasses carefully tucked away and hero costume out of sight, out of mind; but she treats him even kinder as Hizashi Yamada than most would.
Present Mic had been cornered into patrolling after his set at the radio station. He'd passed that bakery on the way here. Never does he really attend a patrol often; when it comes to who they pick and choose for the task, he's far from being the cream of the crop. Shiny enough to pick at, he thinks, flicking a finger at his leather collar, to the rhinestones embedded on top and made anew. But not shiny enough to take home.
Voice, his quirk, isn't particularly useful for a standard touch-and-go.
Like him, it's too destructive.
Like him, it's not enough to be used meaninglessly, all the time, without purpose.
"This day can't get any weirder," the villain mutters. They don't seem distressed at all.
"You and me both," he agrees, mindlessly.
It's his fault. For feeling floaty, like this, to wander the trail of life, feel the tracing of brick beneath the grooves of his boots and not assume he's risking his life to see something that's not there.
Mic looks into the depth of the sky. Alluring as they are, the stars wink with red in their bones and an accusing, prison-hue orange in their dust, saying a word of hey and nothing at all. There are clouds that encompass the void, and they do nothing but make his heart pulse with the drumbeat of five sour letters.
They sit in a mocking dove of silence. White wings flapping like a peace treaty about to be torn apart, then reattached together again, a patchwork doll well-loved and well-hated.
"So. You're a hero. I'm a villain."
"That's true."
"Then, why are you here," they start, booting up like a monitor, slow to start but heavy to load. Perhaps it is a heart monitor, beating irregularly, regularly. "If not to arrest me as a hero should?"
Can he know? Does he know? What is he doing here? He'd been chasing this guy. Girl. Person. Mic can't recognize a single thing about them, remember them long enough when he looks away into the twilight that doesn't shimmer.
The stars blink and wink and glint and don't do much else but watch idly in some wretched form of misplaced awe. They should be under lock and key and they should be free; there are cuffs in his right side's pocket and, maybe, there are none.
Tattered weavings of a flag tantalize him in the far distance. Tied to the portruding tile of the roof, it shrieks in the howling wind, at this great height. Makes him wonder. Had he run up the stairs? Taken the elevator? Vaguely, he can feel his chest heaving, still; he never needs breath as much as others do, his lungs better, stronger, better and better with each passing day that he doesn't abandon himself and turn to the smoking, unloaded gun that is cigarettes; but he is panting, and so it means he must've run.
Right. He'd chased them, down the streets, but it doesn't make sense. Present Mic is by no means the only hero on duty. He is the best, the worst, and he is not the only
available help, because he is a commodity.
"I don't know," he answers, far too honest and far too pleased with himself. The villain seems satisfied with his answer. They settle a few feet away from him, breaking from their tentative squat to cross their legs together. "Are you scared I'll arrest you?"
They look at him. "You're not scary."
"I could be," he argues.
"But you're not."
The cuffs are in his left, right, left pocket. Rationally, he could dart forward; apprehend them.
No. Don't. Something tells him there's more to this than meets the eye. The villain sounds like they're testing something.
"Another time, then," he concedes, caving in. Voice stuffy in his chest. It is a collapse of coalesced thought and reason. There is debris sticking out from beneath the rooftop and soiling the ground with blood. His head floats and his body aches and his nostrils flare upon taking in another gust of air that rushes through him in his entirety, swallows him whole in mistaken belief that he could be something he is not.
What kind of hero is he?
A carousel. A dream. A barterman. A shop. DJ-ing. A radio show. UA. English. America. A husband. Ring. Ring. Ring. The phone is--
There's no phone. He'd left it in his commission-mandated locker back at his agency, by accident, by mistakes, and he doesn't make mistakes, and it's still just waiting there.
A different ring, then.
Ring. In the haze, squatting down, the ring blares bright in the dead of night and the chime of crickets beneath the roof that is much too high. It rests snug on his finger with a date he can't read. Etchings like braille greet the pads of his skin in a hush. A reassurance: There's No Need To Understand. Come Back To Me.
Come back to where?
"You have any family?" they pipe up. There is something owlish to the way they observe him when he turns to deal with the reckoning. Most of their face, beyond their eyes, is hidden away by a mask that looks like Shinsou's... who's Shinsou? "Any friends?"
The question.
Plenty, he thinks, then thinks again to a grave with a body that was lost temporarily in a hospital, then returned. "Enough."
"And you still won't arrest me despite that," they frown.
I will arrest you, eventually. "I won't arrest you."
"Say it again."
"I won't--" He snaps his mouth shut. His tongue lolls uselessly inside it, in knowing. The whistle of the flag in the wind is barely audible to anyone's ears but his own. "You're doing something to me."
Their eyes narrow. "Try again."
Mic crosses his arms, interlocks them into each other, and embraces himself in a hug that isn't returned.
"I have family and friends," he says. "And I still won't arrest you. It's the end of the line."
"Good," they hum. "The Voice Hero can actually listen."
Jabbing at everything he stands for. Rude. Cautious. He lets his eyes fall apart, fall to meet not theirs but the trees in the distance, damaged birch and batk barely visible to his sight. Blurry lines trail the corner of vision's pastures like a hound dog. Hound Dog. Hound Dog.
This is UA. This rooftop. He's...
"Respond, please."
His throat bobs. "I can listen," he grits out. The dove flaps its wings once more, and a gust of silence lashes through him like lightning in a bottle.
And he waits. And he waits. There's still the rustling of a flag.
The thoughts of UA are not so easily forgotten. It comes back elsewhere.
There's a blue-haired boy waiting next to the gutter, the air conditioning unit when he gets another chance to look back. When the villain scooches further off, hangs their legs off the roof and swings them back and forth. Boredom is written plain on their face.
Mic finds he still has the ability to talk freely. "You led me here," he reasons out first, slow, then faster, because thoughts will evaporate if he doesn't sound it out in a reasonable time span in a reasonable way as not to draw suspicion. Like he's buying time with money he doesn't have. To him, time doesn't exist, so what's it matter anyway?
To his answer, they nod.
He yammers on. "You... did something to me. Which is very obvious. With your quirk." Sucking in a breath, Mic thinks hard enough for glass to break. "I don't even know what your quirk is."
The blue haired boy gets up and waves at him. Only when his teal eyes land on Mic, trail further down his body, do they fade into worry, transparent sounding footsteps pacing anxiously as the boy begins to walk over to him, hands crossed behind his back in some mock of prayer.
"To be fair, I never told you," the villain comments idly. Their eyes glint. "Or anyone else for that matter. It's on the registry as something else."
Whatever conscious part of his mind is left stutters in a falsetto of alarm.
'
Zashi, you need an answer fromhim-her-them.Be rational about this.'
"Why?" Mic demands. Oddly enough, when he speaks, again, his voice is raspier.
("Oy! Get back here! I won't hesitate to use my quirk on you, little listener!")
They laugh. "It's not 'cause I was a horrible child, or anything, or planned to use it like this at the start. It just changed, and there wasn't any point in changing something that wasn't even broken, and so it stayed. And then, I realized," and their smile shows in their eyes -- pupils a colour he can't even bring himself to place. "It was much too good of a quirk to be found out at all."
"It's a mental quirk," he guesses immediately, watching warily as the blue boy treks further to him. A scarred hand warps through Mic's torso. His shoulder. No yelp comes out of him at the contact. Ghosts don't make much sound. Or even feel like anything beyond a sliver of cold.
The blue haired boy's mouth begins speaking mutelessly, and though Hizashi has always prided himself on reading lips to a tee, Mic is no Hizashi. "It's a mental quirk," Mic repeats, "That disorients. My thoughts... are all off-kilter. Off. Weird."
He can hear himself speak in tongues.
"Weird." They latch onto the last word like it's a lifeline from how marveled their voice sounds. "You called being on this roof that earlier."
"Answer the damn question, is it a mental quirk?"
"Patience," they tut. "All good things come in due time."
"Zashi."
Hizashi's hand stills mid-air, in his task of reaching for the red marker he usually uses for grading. Shouta's standing in the doorway. "Oh, hi, Shou."
"Hey."
His husband looks ill. Paler than he usually does in the husk of fluorescent, artificial light of orange that beams from Hizashi's office's overhead lamps. It'd been just an hour or two since he'd arrived home and dropped his bags, winded his hair down with many spritzes of water and the anti-gel hair softener he'd sponsored, and cleared himself for the active duty of grading his student's English assignments.
This week, they'd been whittling away at an essay titled "Pros & Cons of Daylighting versus Night-lighting as a Pro Hero," or in his own, much more official terms, "Which Job Is Less Likely To Leave You Scrambling For a Packet of Tylenol."
Turns out, it's neither. Both are horrible. The both of them, respectively, know it. Shouta may not go on as many day trips as he used to back in the day, but he does, still, go out in broad daylight to patrol. The night-life is mostly reserved for his more pent-up days when he feels that rush of adrenaline hit him. The need to be useful, to fight, to punch-- and Hizashi gets it. He misses the rush, the thrill.
Hizashi, on the meanwhile, more often patrols at night if he's cleared to. Which is, again, not most times. Being a teacher at UA, still going out for DJ sets every now and then on account of Nedzu insisting on 'enrichment', though Hizashi had offered to refrain from performing despite the ache in his chest, which Nedzu must have known, because the rat knows everything, and he's also called out for team-ups alongside the heavenly task of running his radio show, Put Your Hands Up! on Hero FM.
You'd assume, as an underground hero, that they live up to the name, in a way. Patrol only at night. Stay in the firm borders between light and dark. Which is plain wrong. They patrol in daylight all the same, chase some of the same battles -- unlike Hizashi, currently ranked proudly at number 46 out of thousands of other limelight heroes, Shouta's name will never appear in a ranking's list. His husband will do the work and stick his hands in the mud and get them dirty and no one will have a say-so in how he celebrates afterward.
If not for the quick check they send him for the villains he takes in, or Class 1-A's revering compliments on the man's work in secret (mostly in secret, anyway, as Hizashi had found out upon walking in on a conversation surrounding Eraserhead and had been happily obliged to spill the beans on any other possible achievements he'd known of, without subsequently revealing he was married to said underground hero), no form of recognition would come Shouta's way.
"Did you know," Shouta says, languid, choosing his next words carefully, seemingly, "That you were acting off today?"
"Off how?" he asks, immediate. Hizashi's eyes squint teasingly. "Like, did I accidentally reveal to your class that there was more to our 'bestie-ship' than meets the eye, or...?"
Shouta grimaces. "Never use 'bestie-ship' to describe our marriage again." Hizashi stifles a snicker as Shouta sighs. "And, also, no. 1-A reported that you were quieter than usual."
Caught off guard, Hizashi considers it.
He hadn't thought he'd been holding his tongue more than usual today, his usual exclamations still on the horizon of loud and too loud -- as judged by both Jirou's and Shoji's ears pricking up ever so slightly in discomfort, the two of them Class 1-A's next best hope of reclaiming the word 'listener'. Then again, he hadn't been paying much attention to himself today. It'd been a taboo task as he'd drifted in and out, starting from the morning; it'd been rather shit. A word he would never use on air but would use while laying on Shouta's lap, complaining about his absolute fuck-up of a day if need be (there goes two strikes! one more, and you're out!), because all in all, it'd been just one thing after the other.
Waking up ten minutes later than usual, leaving him no time to make a cup of coffee from their not new, state-of-the-line machine they have in their kitchen, lest he show up to teach with his hair taken care of just a little less and a little more down on its luck with strands poking out from the sides of his headphones, and he'd come to find while preparing, in the bathroom, that he had just one use of hair spray left until he'd have to wait again to order in bulk. Then, when he'd popped off to a cafe on his usual route to UA, parking his car just a block away, he'd been spotted and hailed down to take an autograph, then promptly bumped into once he'd dusted himself off from all the photos. Present Mic couldn't even apologize to the person, and the person -- he couldn't tell who exactly they were, if they were a man or woman or something else, just the shimmer of their eyes -- who'd bumped into him hadn't even apologized, either, and he'd spilled half of the coffee from his thermos that he'd also been saving for Shouta to try, as it was a brand new edition, onto the sidewalk. Suzuki had offered to whip up a new one for him in a jiffy, but he'd just shook his head no, as he was already running late.
Then again, in retrospect; if any sense of normalcy had a say, there's never a need for Present Mic to 'hold his tongue' at all. Even if he has a bad day, the actor can never leave the stage.
"As their minds were all non-occupied enough to even worry to that extent about you, I sent them off with another lecture instead of the study period I had panned out," Shouta grumbles, worry in his voice still enough to betray the mask of discontent about not being able to crawl into his sleeping bag while his students worked.
Eraserhead patrols much more than Present Mic does, even if it isn't at night. He is tired plenty, all the day, all the time. Hizashi's throat is dry at the thought of taking such a precious thing as sleep away from his husband.
"Please tell me you didn't torture them," he opts to say instead, hiding his unease with a soft smile. "I would hate to have the listeners' blood on my hands. Or a mob."
His husband shoots him an appraising look. "Let them try. Whatever pitchforks they can get away with bringing to UA is up to Nedzu," he snorts.
Continuing, Shouta adds, "Anyhow, it isn't like I did any of that. They were fine. Some of them were whiny little brats about it as I'd promised it just a day earlier, and they do have an exam in mathematics coming up soon..." He escapes into a thoughtful look as he shakes his head, perhaps thinking on Ectoplasm and how he could help his students himself. Hizashi knows the uncaring demeanour is all a facade. At heart, Shouta is a caring man. "I'll give them a study period next week. But enough about that, are you alright?"
It takes just a while of careful thought.
DON'T-THINK-ON-WHAT-TO-SAY.
"Right as rain," Present Mic says.
Mic goes back to analysing. "It's a strong quirk," he rationalizes. "You're making me forget. I..."
He looks back down at the void below, from the roof, feels the tiles under his leather pants, and does not think on the blue-haired boy resting his head on Mic's shoulder. "It gives incentives, to do things, doesn't it? Impulses."
Bit by bit, he can feel something crawling back to him. (Crawling, ugh, bugs-- no, he's not scared of bugs. He's scared of bugs.) Whether it's his own logic or simple common sense makes no difference. The streetlights below glare in warning.
Hadn't he been there to oversee the blueprints for the dorm lights?
Taken aback, they huff. "Sorta. I'm surprised you figured that one out so quickly." Their pupils fade into slits. "I thought you were a bit ditzy when I first looked at you, Voice Hero."
No surprises there. Present Mic is engineered to a tee.
"Huh," he agrees. "Very kind of you. Most would agree. You're something of a riot, aren't... you?"
"You're a riot," they say back, not mocking. "Is it not a persona? This whole thing?" They wave to him, in his entirety. "You just, naturally talk like this?"
Mic knows what they're doing. It's textbook distraction; the way you'd lean into a cradle with a rattle and entertain a crying baby with noise and noise and more noise. He finds himself in a ditch with a bent shovel. Only one way up.
His hair is mussed up, too. Some of it, not obscured and held down by his headphones, blips out of the carefully manufactured smoothness, golden locks sticking out. "Enough about me. Talk to me about your quirk. What did you do to me," and he scrapes out the last word carefully, last scrap of something he can barely remember, "--listener?"
The blue haired boy lifts his head up in alarm. Perking up. His teal eyes wash over them both, darting back and forth, and the villain traces Mic's gaze over the young listener with some hallmark of confusion. He assumes the blue haired-boy is a product of the quirk, too, and maybe there are limitations to what they can see.
The first few nights after Oboro passes on, Hizashi dreams enough to stop thinking of electric sheep.
He tosses and turns and tosses and turns in a bed that isn't his own. From the first time he'd tried falling into the arms of sleep in his own bed, he'd been shoved back as the smell of his stale sheets had hit him, the scent of Shouta and Oboro's smells rotted away from how long it'd been since they'd last slept over. Robotic, too much so with the way his acidic-green irises boot up with battery acid and the wish to close just long enough to stop thinking, he finds himself an android wanting and waiting to be powered off. It is not enough to hold something that isn't there.
It is not enough to remain the stronger one, the one who can let the grief bleed and not stain into his metal. Let his gaze hide behind orange-tinted sunglasses, prescription useful and useless enough to remain standing as Oboro's hero costume is tucked away into the corners of UA's support department and never seen again. Since the day of his death, petrichor hissing in his tongue like a whistle and the pride of the cops who placed their hands on Shouta's shoulders afterwards and told him 'good work, kid, you took that villain down all on your own? you're brave. what's your quirk, your hero name, your quirk?', Hizashi realizes that life is not fair, and knows what exactly he has to do even before the grief takes Shouta away from him, too.
"I heard his voice."
"Yeah."
"It was him."
"Yeah."
Shouta stiffens. "I know it was him."
"Yeah."
"He was there. From the very first day we'd met, he was by my side," Shouta says, battered, goggles hanging limp in his hands and a noose. They're broken. Oboro's goggles are elsewhere. "Supporting me. He's always had my back."
"I know."
"Just like today. The entire time."
"Yeah," Hizashi agrees, and he doesn't say much else. The rain drips and pours on them both and he stops thinking about Shouta and Oboro and Hizashi, and starts thinking about how It's a Fitting Day for Rain and, hey, how will UA talk about this, and, he watches his dreams shatter whole enclosed in a tight fist and he thinks, damn you, Shirakumo.
The rain drenches them still. Keeps pouring.
"Aizawa, Yamada. The rain's picking up." Kayama-senpai never comes in during the right times. And, in disgust, to himself, he questions how Oboro could love her, in her vainness. "You'll get sick. Please come inside, we'll get you some warm towels. Sensoji's on his way with some more."
Looking back at the stretcher, facing away, he realizes why exactly he would, too.
He dreams and doesn't dream and he doesn't think of electric sheep.
A decade and a half passes, and Present Mic is no longer a numb 16-year old boy, but a 30 year old pro-hero, on a roof-top, with a villain he doesn't quite understand and a quirk he keeps questioning.
The blue haired boy keeps leaning over Mic. A protective sort of stance he recognises from someone a million light-years away.
"So you didn't bring me up here to kill me."
"I followed you up here, so, no."
Mic picks apart the wording from earlier, because this makes no sense. "You led me up here," he remarks. Nothing in his skin tingles at them not denying the underlying threat. He is not afraid to die, and hasn't been afraid to die in a long time.
...When has he ever voiced that to himself?
They regard him with a newfound eagerness. "Not in the way you would think! God, you really are clever, aren't you!"
"Why would I go up here?" he wonders aloud, twiddling his bare thumbs. They'd begun to grow uncomfortable with the moistness gathering in his palms, more so than usual, just enough to rival that kid Bakugou's nitroglycerin sweat glands to foster a sense of unease in him, make him throw his gloves off the side of the building. He has spares. Present Mic looks around at the rest of the rooftop and sees nothing. "Why here, of all places? Why would you follow me? Why play into that weird role at the start?"
His directional speaker still rests on his throat. Bruising and light on his collarbone; from the looks, no, feel of things, it hadn't been discarded nor stolen from him at all. Really, it seems to have been taken once, from what he knows, as the padding for the collarbone is adjusted just a few inches further from where he'd set it today as he'd gone out for-- patrol or up here, he doesn't remember -- and it's designed in a way that it doesn't shift too easily.
So, they'd taken it off.
Then put it back on him.
Why would they not limit him of his power? It makes no sense, and yet, all kinds of sense all the same. They're not a viable threat.
"You're an interesting guy. I don't know," they shrug. "I saw you earlier."
Present Mic squints quizzically at them, ignoring the blue-haired boy pointing vapidly.
"Honestly, I didn't take you for a black-coffee guy, Voice Hero. You seem like the type of man to have a different taste. Maybe something sweeter? A latte, caramel? Cinnamon?"
Beyond the weirdness of being referred to just as Voice Hero again, or the frankly absurd stereotype, bringing into question their intent, some pieces fall into place.
Their eyes. "You were there, before, weren'tcha? This morning."
Their silence is volumes enough to be heard.
Mic turns away, before twisting his head back to shoot them a glare Shouta usually shoots him. "You were," he accuses, breaking off into a slurred mutter. "You're a total dick."
"So I've heard," they comment sheepishly. "But, wow. Another new side to you," and their expression, for whatever reason, turns fond. "I'm impressed! Really! First, you manage to break through most of my quirk; a round of applause for you, there," they murmur, clapping vibrantly, before their voice turns stern, "And manage to remember just enough to hold an entire conversation with me! Most tend to lose their minds and give into their desires within a matter of moments, after turning!"
His nose scrunches up. Despite the very helpful information, gears already ticking away in his head, he can't help himself. "Turning? Like a werewolf on a full moon, or what? Just to have you know, I'd make a very poor werewolf," he jokes, eyes still locked onto them.
Their patience seems to run out then.
"Take off your sunglasses."
Mic startles. Unsurprisingly, he can already feel what must be a command wash over him. If he had to describe it, it would be a tangerine being blended. "Why?"
"Take off your sunglasses," they repeat, and so he does.
Right. Another aspect to their quirk.
They hum in satisfaction. "Alright, so it's still working," they muse. "You're just like that." Blue, this time, their eyes study him. Mic feels like a lab rat. He shifts uncomfortably, not noticing the blue-haired boy pressing another hand back to his shoulder, trying to squeeze. "Your eyes are actually pretty. It's a waste, hiding them behind these things."
Waving the sunglasses around heedlessly, outer corners of their eyes crinkling as their brow lifts in amusement.
"Your eyes are like sound waves," Shouta murmurs, slurring. Hizashi doesn't breathe. For all he knows, he could be dead, right now. "I like them. Like... nets."
"Nets," he repeats, perplexed.
A nod. "Uh-huh. Yeah, like nets. Red ones. There are circles in your eyes that look like my capture weapon after I string it into a web, which is... very nice." Shouta pauses, and in his best attempt to render Hizashi even more speechless, he mimics a gesture Hizashi can recognize instantly from an interview he'd taken just the other week with the press. "Jamming," he slurs. "The green's like algae."
"Thanks a lot, " he laughs, no humour in it, red heat on his cheeks. His sunglasses are made quick work of as the villain takes them into their own hands. Another theory pops into his head; maybe they want his autograph, to sell parts of his own hero costume. Then again, wouldn't they have tried saving the gloves if that were true? Where are his gloves, anyway, what did he do with them? "But I'm taken, ya'dig? This bad boy's off the menu."
Mic stiffens instantly. Why did he give that away?
They don't take the bait he accidentally set out. Nor take away the cuffs, or the directional speaker, or anything else he might have from him. Instead, they simply turn their gaze to the sky, and Mic does not scowl as the lenses are scrubbed at and smudged with some inky substance he can't place unveiled from their hands as they take off their own gloves. As he'd predicted, it's finally taken into their own bag, in some pocket he doesn't dare criticise for its lacklustre taste in iron patches-- it's an iron patch.
An iron patch with yellow goggles.
What the fuck?
"I know," they say eventually, and the blue-haired boy offers him nothing nearly as wide-eyed as the look Mic gives the villain.
"Eraserhead, Eraserhead!"
Shouta looks up from where he'd been writing away the student's monthly reports on his tablet, computer shining a bleak white. Leave it to him accidentally muttering 'this day's the wrong kind of quiet' to land himself in another precarious, bone-tiring crosshair of a night. He just wants to lay in the arms of Hizashi and, preferably, stay there forever. Nevertheless, when duty calls, you answer. 'What."
"There's a presence on the Class 1-A dormitory roof."
"Who is it," he says, biting his lip and eager to cut to the chase. He sure hopes it isn't who he thinks it is. Bakugou and Midoriya had fought a few months back, sure, but they'd done it in a training ground and not on a rooftop where they could so easily fall, and none of his other brats had been stupid enough to fight curfew and go to places they're not authorised to be up on at this time of night. Shouta looks at the clock; it's roughly 2 am. Whoever had the bright idea to be up there would get the world's worst lecture. "Which student is it?"
The robot pauses, for too long. Damn Nedzu for making them the closest thing to sentient when it comes to AI.
The warning signs start, as all things do, as if they're not there at all. "It's not a student, Mr. Eraserhead. It is Present Mic," it reports flatly. Shouta stiffens. "Your colleague."
"Right as rain," Hizashi says, flashing him a calm look.
Unconvinced, Shouta glares into him questioningly, and lets him take his time.
His partner sighs. "I'm just a bit jittery today, 'kay? All these kids will give me an aneurysm one of these days, honestly, they've got eyes like hawks."
His eyes glitter. "I'm fine. I swear it."
It's a Friday, he thinks. Why had he believed Hizashi?
YO YO YO LISTENERS!!! WANNA HEAR SOME MORE OF MY ROCKIN' OPINIONS AND JAMS?! THEN HEAD ON OVER TO FREQUENCY 99.0 ON THAT NIFTY RADIO OF YOURS!!! I GO LIVE FROM 1-5 AM EVERY SINGLE FRIDAY, AND I HAVE PRE-RECORDED STREAMS FROM MONDAY-THURSDAY, SO YOU'LL NEVER TIRE IN THIS DJ HERO'S ABSENCE!!! HOPE TO SEE YA THERE, LISTENER!
With some remark of notable panic, Shouta realizes he hadn't bothered turning the radio on to hear his husband like he usually does, to wait up on him. Because Shouta had assumed he'd get distracted by the light airiness of Hizashi's voice, the ease in which he transforms from Hizashi Yamada to Present Mic, a butterfly earning its wings from the sludge of a cocooned caterpillar -- a comparison Hizashi would despise beyond no measure -- and talks as if it's his life essence, his duty. And so, he hadn't turned the radio on, because he wanted to focus on something as uneventful as grading, which, if he thinks on it, he could do with his eyes closed-- which left him oblivious.
The oblivion is obvious now when he reaches for the small radio behind his monitor and dials it up, turning the antenna left as he usually does when it comes to Hero FM, and switches the frequency to hear a voice that isn't Present Mic's.
"Shouta, meet my understudy, Kana!"
He nods in greeting to Kana, who's looking at him. "Aren't understudies usually reserved for actors?"
"Usually," Hizashi admits, a finger gun then thrown out as he adds, "But this spiffy young lady's here to help out when I'm not around! She's training to have her own radio show someday, you hear that?"
Kana blinks. "Oh, you really don't have to-"
"And from what I've heard so far, she's a great announcer. Truly a shining force to be reckoned with! I'm shocked I haven't been taken down just yet!"
The compliments make Kana flush.
Shouta shrugs a shoulder in understanding; it's usually like that, with people, how Hizashi makes them feel; like you're on top of the world, and his hand is keeping the ladder holding you up closer to the sky in place.
"He's alone on the roof," the assistant tacks on, monotone, and Shouta can pinpoint the exact moment he freezes.