Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Shouta is running out of ways to cope.  

Surely it hadn’t been that hard after Oboro. He’d just thrown himself into work, drank the nights he was off, and occasionally slept over on the floor of Nemuri’s living room when the silence of his own apartment got too overbearing. So long as he kept himself preoccupied, he could let his more primal urges, namely exhaustion and hunger, take over at the end of the day, and he wouldn’t have to think about anything until tomorrow when he could rinse and repeat.  

Looking back, he can admit that it hadn’t exactly been healthy, but it also hadn’t been the worst.  

Now it's like he’s back in his third year—like he’s just sloughed off the last of the shock and is just now coming to the realization of precisely what had happened. He doesn’t even get a six-month reprieve this time, where he just continues to go through the motions until his brain deems it safe enough to snap back into consciousness.   

Any chance of that had taken a nosedive right about when one of the paramedics had handed him a utility knife and asked him to help her get his student’s body down.   

The work angle isn’t going to cut it this time, mostly because every minute he’s on patrol instead of on campus is another chance for things to get even worse than they already are. Shouta’s already spending every minute he can spare at the dorms or in their general vicinity, but instead of easing his conscience, the constant vigilance keys him up even further. Plus, there is really nothing much for him to do, which means that when does come time for him to eat and sleep, he’s too wired to make a good attempt at either.  

It’s getting kind of pathetic too. Sure, the kids had seemed glad to have him hang around the first couple of weeks, but in the past month, the last time he’d been even marginally useful was when Ashido had come downstairs in the middle of the night once and asked him for help getting a packet of instant ramen out of one of the top cabinets.  

Still, work is out of the question. Doubly so since Nezu is continuously adamant about his decision to keep Shouta away from anything and everything related to the investigation.  

It’s ugly to think back on, but Shouta had almost been excited when Shinsou and Uraraka burst in with the picture on Shinsou’s phone. He'd felt strangely awake the whole walk down to Nezu’s office, ready to hand the kids off to Hizashi as soon as they finished questioning them and start digging up his list of old contacts to look into where the message had been sent from.  

Nezu had taken one look at him, ushered in Shinsou and his phone, and closed the door again. Shouta had stood there with Uraraka for the better part of an hour until Shinsou had come back out, eyes red-rimmed and phone-less. Then he’d walked the two of them back to the dorms and tried to pretend like he didn’t know why Shinsou refused to barely even glance his way.  

Tsukauchi had been a last-ditch attempt really, but Shouta had come out of that meeting with nothing but an overbearing pat on the back and the knowledge that the number had been deactivated before they could get around to tracing it properly.   

So yes, work is out of the question.   

The drinking is definitely out of the question. Hizashi tries that with him once, on a Sunday afternoon in their living room with a bottle of something bitter tasting he’d been gifted by a guest on his show a couple of months ago.   

Shouta lasts almost a glass and a half before his near-constant headache starts to fade out against the edges and he remembers that alcohol is a central nervous system depressant and a definite inhibitor of rational thought. Then he spends the rest of the afternoon drinking water and eating toast to try and sober up faster, even though he knows for a fact that it doesn’t really work.  

Hizashi doesn’t say anything. Just watches him from the dining table with his own untouched glass like Shouta is going to OD in his own damn kitchen trying to get the anko spread out of the fridge.   

Later that evening, when he’s half asleep on the sofa Hizashi carefully rearranges his limbs so that they’re in a vague resemblance of the recovery position.  

Nemuri’s house isn’t that great of an option either.     

“You know I moved out of that closet ages ago,” she reminds him before class, ignoring the way Hizashi snickers at her wording, “I have a proper guestroom and everything so you won’t even have to sleep in the bathtub anymore.”  

“You never offered me the bathtub, you made me sleep on your kitchen floor,” Shouta grumbles, but he never takes her up on it. He shares an apartment with Hizashi now, and it’s a troublesome realization that no matter where he is, he’s always going to have at least one of his people out of his line of sight.   

His latest method has been running errands. He can’t be everywhere at once, but the more places he manages in the shortest amount of time means more ground covered. Plus, all the running around is more helpful at tiring him out than constantly hovering outside the 1-A dorms.   

"I’m going to get clothes," he tells Hizashi when he raises an eyebrow at Shouta wearing his good sweat pants at seven in the morning on a Sunday, “for Eri,” he tacks on at the end. The weather is getting colder and he’s not sure if she has a proper winter jacket yet. Hadou has already told him that, in no uncertain terms, is he supposed to get Eri anything she might need for practical use, but she’s already swamped with her work studies so it won’t hurt if he goes and takes a look.  

“That poor girl,” Hizashi mutters, sliding the cutting board into the sink, “How’s she doing lately?”  

“Fine,” and that’s one word for it, fine.   

Shouta had hyped himself up for a week to go see her only to find out that Togata had already told her. It was simultaneously a relief and the worst thing that had happened since he’d had to call Midoriya’s mother and tell her that her son had killed himself.   

“He didn’t tell anyone but he was really sick,” Eri had explained to him with infinite patience, like he was the seven-year-old in need of consolation, “Lemillion said he tried but he didn’t get any better.”  

Shouta had nodded along. It was a decent enough explanation that hopefully, she wouldn’t resent them for it when she was old enough to know the whole story.  

According to Hadou, Eri had cried for three days after Togata had explained it to her.   

She hadn’t cried again until they’d told her she couldn’t attend the funeral.   

“You want eggs?” Shouta hears the spluttering of oil as several small somethings are tossed into a pan. Bitter melon, he guesses by the smell. Hizashi’s mother was originally from Osaka so he’d grown up eating it at least once a week.   

“No.”  

“You’re not eating?” Hizashi pokes his head out of the kitchen when Shouta bypasses it entirely to go put on his shoes.  

“Not hungry,” he grunts, which, according to Hizashi hasn’t been an adequate excuse for years.  

“You didn’t eat yesterday,” there’s a click as he turns the stove off and actually comes out into the hallway to stare at Shouta, arms crossed.  

Shouta rolls his eyes, “I’ll eat later.”   

“That’s what you said yesterday, and then you didn’t.”  

“I’ll eat later today then,” he corrects. It comes out sharper than he intends.  

“Are you? Or are you just going to lie about it?” Hizashi snaps back, and oh, wow, now they’re fighting, over Shouta not wanting to eat breakfast of all illogical things.   

“So now you want evidence?” Shouta wrenches the door open and shoves his keys into his jacket pocket, “You want what? A picture? A video? A phone call ?”  

Hizashi blinks at him, “You know Shou, a phone call would be great sometime,” he says evenly, then turns on his heel and stalks back into the kitchen.  

Shouta closes the door behind him louder than necessary.   

He’s at the bus stop when his phone rings. He picks it up without looking, thinking it’s Hizashi, mostly because he’s already low on energy and he doesn’t want to waste any more of it being unnecessarily upset.   

Besides, his stomach is already cramping so Hizashi had been right anyway, even if Shouta isn’t going to be letting him know.   

“Babe! Ya picked up!” greets a female, distinctly not-Hizashi voice.   

“Joke,” he groans in response. A completely stupid slip-up, he’s been dodging her calls for over a month.  

“Eraser,” she drones in a low-voiced mockery of his tone before bursting into giggles, “How you been sweetheart?”  

“I was doing great right up till now,” he tilts his phone back to check the time, his bus isn’t going to be here for another fifteen minutes, “Listen I have to go, my bus is going to be here any minute, I’ll call you back later.”  

“Is it?” Fukukado says lightly, “C’mon Eraser level with me here there’s no way you’ve consistently missed my calls for like three weeks.”  

Shouta sighs out loud, what is it with people and insinuating that he’s a liar today, “I’m serious Joke, I’ll call you back later ok?”  

“Haven’t heard your bus yet cupcake,” she pauses and makes an exaggerated retching noise just as Shouta’s full body cringes, “Ok, yeah that one was too much even for me.”   

“Good- bye Joke.”  

“Hey, hey Eraser wait, so umm, Nemuri called me a while back and--” the rest of what she says is lost in the rush of white noise that hits Shouta’s ears. For a second his vision blurs.  

“Hello? Eraser? Eraser? Head? Head? Did ya know your name kinda sounds like an innuendo? You still there princess, or has your bus come to whisk you away?”  

“I’m here,” he groans, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers to try and ease the sharp pain that’s erupted behind his eyes, “What did Nemuri call you about?”  

“Your torrid affair with All Might,” she laughs obnoxiously as Shouta chokes on air. It’s sharp and bitter, burning the inside of his throat as he exhales.   

“Sorry, sorry, that was kind of uncalled for, I know you’d never cheat on me, I just wanted to say it and I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for such a long time and I totally got nervous--”  

“Joke,” he tries to cut her off, there’s no way he has the time or the energy to deal with whatever she wants from him. The only thing that’s keeping him from hanging up and blocking her number for the next week is the fact that he has actually been ignoring her for the past month and today happens to be the day he’s feeling bad about it.  

It has nothing to do with the fact that he hasn’t really eaten in two days, or the detail that Shinsou’s training is starting up again next week and the kid still refuses to look Shouta in the eye.  

He’s somehow ended up with a shit ton of half-charred bridges he needs to start mending, and if what he needs to fix this one is listening to Fukukado pester him about last week’s second-hand gossip then that’s something he can manage.  

“She actually, whoa—here I go—she actually called me about a student of yours. Mayuri? Midori? I think he was the little dude with the rabbit ears on his costume? At the licensing exam?”  

Take that back. Shouta can’t manage this.  

“ Midoriya ?” he hisses, “Nemuri called you about Midoriya ?”  

“Yeah, that’s the one. I tried to call her back but apparently, it's all under a gag order now so-”  

“Why was Nemuri calling you about Midoriya?”  

“Cause we’re friends Aizawa,” Fukukado’s voice goes flat, the high-pitched nervous energy draining out, “and she lost one of her students,” she pauses, “you lost one of your kids.”  

“Joke.”  

“And I bet you, like I completely assure you that you’re being absolutely stupid right now. I know you Aizawa Shouta, you internalize this kind of shit and rationalize ways to punish yourself over it.”  

“Fukukado.”  

“I know, like what the hell are you supposed to do in this situation right? But you didn’t pick up your phone that first week and it scared the absolute shit out of me, cause I was like ‘he’s going to do something mind shatteringly moronic now isn’t he’ but then Nemuri called again and told me that you-”  

“ Emi ,” he grits out, “it wasn’t just a gag order, there’s an NDA and everything. I legally cannot be talking about this with you right now.”  

Silence. Then, over the phone, Fukukado sniffles wetly.  

“Fine,” she says, “fine, if you can’t talk about it then I will,” she takes a deep breath, “back when I was a new-boots T.A. there was this girl named Emica in one of my third-year classes. Everyone called her Emi, which was kind of funny cause whenever someone would say her name, I'd, like, have to make sure they weren’t talking to me even though like, why would my students ever call my given name y’know?”  

Shouta’s bus rounds the corner and starts making its way up the street.  

“And one day, like, two weeks after winter break, she didn’t show up for school, and her parents never called her in sick or anything like that, they were actually out of town that week. So, all of us, all the students and the staff, we thought she was just using their absence as an excuse to bunk, cause she did that a lot. But her parents came back over the weekend and on Monday they filed a missing person's report.”  

The bus pulls up at the stop and the doors hiss open.  

“It wasn’t our prefecture or anything, and I’d barely even known this girl, but that week I went up to Mako-San, yeah this was back when he was our supervisor, and asked him to lend me out to the station that was handling this just so I could help look for her.”  

Shouta carefully tilts his head to make eye contact with the driver who gives him a questioning gesture since he’s the only one at the frankly dilapidated bus stop.   

Over the phone, Fukukado takes a breath that sounds like it physically burns.  

Shouta shakes his head.  

“He said no. A couple of days before graduation, they matched Emika’s dental records with a body some fishermen had pulled up on accident. They think she jumped off a bridge and her body drifted out to an open area of water when the channels flooded in the spring.”  

The doors close.  

“A while after that her little sister came forward with a text that Emika had sent her the night before she went missing. She’d thought it was just her sister running away so she didn’t say anything about it, but it was like, an industry-certified suicide note.”  

The bus drives away.  

“I missed a like a week of patrols after they identified the body. Ya remember, and when you asked me about it, I said I-”  

“Had the stomach flu,” Shouta finishes. It had been a flimsy lie, especially considering the way their supervisor had hovered around her for the next week. Still, he’d brought her canned soup from the convenience store nearby and left it in her locker.   

“Yeah, didn’t think you bought that back then either,” she sniffles, “thing is though, for like a month after that I basically convinced myself I’d known that there was something wrong with Emika all along. I thought I remembered her saying things, giving away her books, not putting as much effort into her appearance, all those textbook signs ya know? I drove myself crazy over it.”  

Shouta holds back a sigh, he knows where this is going, “Joke,” he mulls the words over to make sure he isn’t saying anything that he isn’t supposed to, legal order or not, “this is completely different, our kids have dorms now and they’re completely our responsibility. It happened under my watch.”  

Here is the cold hard truth: Shouta was on campus that night. For some reason, he can’t chalk the fact that he hadn’t seen it coming until it happened as something other than his own negligence. To the fact that he’d seen Midoriya, perpetually anxious, sitting hunched in on himself like he needed to protect his soft organs at any given moment, and throwing himself into situations he wasn’t prepared for with reckless abandon, and just thought, ‘I’ve got to talk to this kid at some point’.   

“Emika missed a make-up practical. Even after everything she was very cautious about schoolwork and exams, it was how she’d managed to come that far even with all the skipping. I had every excuse in the world to go looking for her that week,” Fukukado says softly, “But I just thought ‘man this girl is gonna struggle professionally if she keeps skipping like this’ and sat on my ass until the police showed up at my office asking questions about when we’d last seen her.”    

She laughs wetly and Shouta is suddenly thankful that they’re having this conversation over the phone instead of in person. If Fukukado had cried in front of him at this point, he might have done something ill-advised, like hug her.  

“You see it too, don’t you?”   

“As I said, we’re in completely different situations,” Shouta responds, like he doesn’t want to go back to every time he’d seen the kid scribbling in one of his notebooks and ask him ‘Midoriya are you using my class time to write a suicide note?’.  

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Fukukado whispers, “that’s what I called to tell you.”  

“Thank you,” Shouta manages, awkward and stilted, like he’s seventeen again and a classmate he’s never spoken to before is offering him their condolences at Oboro’s funeral.    

“You’re gonna call me if you need something,” she demands, “communication in relationships is a two-way street babe.”  

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he answers even as he holds himself back from asking if Fukukado had been one of the fishermen who pulled her student’s body out of the water because Shouta had been the one that cut Midoriya down from the ceiling.   

“Yeah,” there’s a honking sound in the distance, “well Eraser, would you look at that, my ride is here, and before yours too. Man, what bus line are you using babe cause we’ve been on call a hella long time.”  

“It’s a city bus,” is all he says, “drive safe.”  

“Oh, talking about driving, what do you think of a destination wedding, cause sure they’re pricy, but a friend of mine-”  

Shouta hangs up.  

According to the app on his phone, there should be another bus for the same route coming along in about twenty minutes, but he just turns around and starts back towards his apartment building.   

It’s snowing by the time he makes it back and there’s already a short line in front of the elevator so he opts for the stairs instead even though his knee is beginning to pull. His vision starts to get fuzzy around the edges as he reaches the third floor so he keeps a death grip on the railing just in case he blacks out half way.    

Thankfully he arrives in one piece and no one has to call Hizashi to come pick up his unconscious body off the stairwell. It takes him three tries to unlock the door and get in and he legitimately does lose vision for a terse second when he bends over to stop Bastard from escaping.   

Shouta ends up just picking the little shit up and taking her to the couch with him where he collapses and doesn’t move for the next two hours.   

By the time he wakes up, it’s well into the afternoon and his eyes are no longer trying to burn themselves out of their sockets. He checks his phone and feeds Bastard before wandering into the kitchen to look for leftovers.  

The counters are still cluttered and there are a handful of covered dishes scattered over the table, which is odd because Hizashi usually packs everything away after he’s done eating. Out of curiosity, Shouta peels back the tinfoil on one of the bowls, which turns out to be Hizashi’s bitter melon and egg dish, practically untouched.   

“Hizashi?” he calls out tentatively. It echoes embarrassingly in the silence of the apartment before there is a resounding crash from the office and Hizashi stumbles out, looking bewildered at the sight of Shouta in the kitchen.  

“Yeah?”  

“You didn’t eat?” the conversation is strangely flipped.   

“What?” Hizashi pulls his headphones off all the way and unwinds the cord from where it’s tangled itself around his neck, “oh, nah, thought I’d wait for you.”    

“Oh.”  

They avoid each other’s gaze as they reheat the dishes and Hizashi plugs in the rice cooker. However, once the rice is scooped into bowls and they’re seated across from each other at the table, the endeavor becomes a bit more challenging.   

“You find anything good at the store?” as always Hizashi is the one that breaks the silence.  

“I missed my bus,” he grumbles. It’s a half truth, not the whole story, but part of it. Maybe one day he’ll tell Hizashi about how once Fukukado had sat outside his hospital room for an entire night and how he’d wiped the overnight security cameras in a hero agency to remove evidence of him leaving a 300 yen can of soup in her locker.   

“Huh, I think it was snowing earlier, so schedules might be screwy right now. Want an egg?”  

Shouta starts to shake his head, Hizashi likes to keep the egg yolk runny while Shouta prefers his cooked all the way through, but Hizashi gives him a half pleading look so instead he just holds out his bowl to accept it.   

They eat in silence until Bastard, done with her own food, makes her way over to beg for scraps.  

“I’m blaming you for this, you’re the one that spoils her,” Hizashi complains, even as he leans over to slip her a couple grains of rice.  

All of a sudden, Shouta is hit with something almost physical, like the onslaught of white noise at the bus stop when Fukukado first said Midoriya’s name. He’s at home right now, in his kitchen, eating breakfast at half past twelve in the afternoon.  

The lighting in the room is warm because fluorescents give Shouta a headache. Their dishes are mismatched because half of them are his and the other half Hizashi had cherry picked from his grandmother's collection after her passing. Across from him, Hizashi is half bent over trying to pick a grain of rice off Bastard’s face. Under the table, his socked foot is pressed next to Shouta’s.  

Maybe one day he’ll...  

Maybe one day...  

Shouta seems to be putting off a lot of things lately.  

The breath he takes to break himself out of it is almost physically painful, like he’s outside again in the bitter winter air. Looking down, he uses his chopsticks to split his egg.  

The yolk is cooked through.   

“Hizashi,” he’s fully aware of the way his voice rasps. He hasn’t sounded this bad since the last time they’d gone to see Kurogiri.  

“Shou?” he straightens in his chair and raises a hand, as if to reach for him.  

“I was the one who got Midoriya’s body down for the paramedics,” he starts.  

-------  

Dear Eraserhead Aizawa Shouta Aizawa-San Eraserhead  

Dear Aizawa-Sensei,  

I’m really sorry. I realize that this probably doesn’t cut it but I really don’t have much else to say for myself at this point. I hope you understand.  

If anyone shows you this before you have to speak with my mom, please know that you don’t have to cut corners when talking to her. Don’t keep information from her about how it happened or try to just placate her about it because she’s crying. Forewarning: she’s going to cry, she going to cry a lot. She’s going to cry even more than I do and I’m kind of even more sorry for that in advance because you always look at me like I have something contagious when I start crying.  

Anyway, you should still tell her. She already knows most of the story anyway.  

Also, if she starts crying really hard you should tell her something nice, like how it isn’t anyone’s fault. It isn’t really, it's mostly mine, but it would do her good to hear it. It isn’t yours either. You should know, even if it does come off as presumptuous of me to assume that you didn’t already. I know you’re a notoriously hard-ass pretty strict kind of teacher, but I don’t think you would put in that kind of work preparing your students if you didn’t care about them a little bit.   

I think you care for them a lot more than a little bit. Thank you for that.  

I’m really sorry for not telling you either. You seem like the kind of person that might have logical insight on how to sort these kinds of feelings out. And after that medical upkeep class we had yesterday I don’t think you would judge me too harshly for it. Plus, people are always saying you should go to a trusted adult for this kind of thing, and my mom already knows so at this point it's either you or All Might and I’m still kind of scared that this might change his opinion of me. He feels guilty, a lot, I think, about stuff that happens to me, even though none of it is really his fault.  

I don’t think you’d react as badly; you’d probably try to get me help, but you’d also have to expel me for it. If I entered the workforce the way I am now, I’d be considered a liability, and I doubt you or your conscious would allow that. You worry a lot about those things, about us keeping ourselves safe and realistically prepared. Sometimes I wonder Realistically, I’d just have to hold out a couple of years if I ever wanted to tell you. A bunch of heroes end up with these same kinds of problems eventually, only by then they’re already too far in to be pulled out.   

But I guess if you really are reading this there’s no need for any of that anymore.   

Sorry I keep causing you problems.  

Love,  Thank You for your guidance,  

Midoriya    

-------  

Ochako isn’t too fond of this trend of things being replaced.  

Some of it is quite literal. Aizawa-Sensei probably notices that people are spending a blatant amount of class time staring at Deku’s empty desk, so they all walk in one morning to it replaced with a small utility table with a box of tissues and extra school supplies. It’s pretty efficient: there is no need to move around their seating arrangement to accommodate a missing desk and Kaminari no longer needs to go table to table asking for a spare pencil whenever they have a quiz.  

A week in, someone leaves a small plastic All Might figurine next to the box of tissues, positioned so that it can’t be seen from the teacher's desk at the head of the classroom.  

The staring problem does not improve.  

She finds herself at the opposite end of a staring problem as well. The kids in other years and courses know, to some extent that Deku is gone. The investigation itself has been kept under wraps, but that doesn’t stop the gossip from traveling.  

Mainly, gossip about her.   

The first couple of weeks at least, she’d had a couple of kids come up to her and express their condolences. But since then, it's just tapered off into silent watching. Anything she does in the hallway, anything she says in the cafeteria, seems to make its rounds, enough that Yamada-Sensei lets her and her friends eat lunch in the back of his classroom if they ask.   

She’s always been careful in public, but now it seems that she has to watch her every step. She returns a workbook to Todoroki in the hallway once, reaching out to poke his shoulder in thanks, when a kid with braided hair she’s never seen before shoulder checks her as he walks past.   

“You sure moved on fast,” he whispers to her under his breath, but something must show on her face (she really needs to get better about that), because the guy doesn’t even make it to the end of the hallway before slipping and completely eating shit.  

“Oooh, I’m soo sorry,” she hears Mina gasp, loud and high pitched, “I must have accidentally spilled something there, my bad.”    

Later in class, she turns in her chair to shoot Ochako a secretive thumbs up.  

“Heard you’ve been cheating on Midoriya with Todoroki here,” Shinsou drawls good naturedly when he settles himself onto a desk during their customary lunch meetings.  

“I’d never disrespect Deku’s memory like that,” she leans in conspiringly, “I’m just using him for his wealth and status.”  

“Fascinating,” Todoroki deadpans next to her, splitting his wooden chopsticks.  

“Kero, if anything shouldn’t it really be the other way around?” Tsu questions, “None of you were ever in an official relationship, but Midoriya-Chan was always more publicly affectionate with Todoroki-Kun.”  

“Ugh, the staircase incident, please don’t remind me,” Ochako groans. Shinsou raises a questioning eyebrow for context and Iida puts down his juice box to explain how, after a particularly grueling training session, Deku had carried Todoroki up three flights of stairs back to their classroom while the rest of 1-A looked on with aching legs and barely concealed jealousy.   

“Wow, that sounds disgusting,” Shinsou comments at the end, “glad I’m not in your class if that’s what you all had to go through.”  

“Yes, it was rather... embarrassing, to witness in person,” Iida waves an arm, “though in hindsight it is quite humorous.”  

They fall silent for a moment, the classroom filled with nothing but the clicking of utensils and light scraping of chairs.  

“Don’t mind it Uraraka,” Shinsou finally says, “it’s all just misogynistic, heteronormative bullshit anyway. It’ll blow over the next time that couple in 3-A breaks up and gets back together.”  

They all nod around the table except for Todoroki who looks deep in thought.  

“Uraraka,” he calls her after a minute, “were we... love rivals?”    

Iida chokes on his orange juice.  

According to Shinsou, the gossip does die down, but Ochako isn’t really around to witness it in person because the school green lights their second round of internships and she ends up spending most of her time with Todoroki and Bakugou in Endeavor’s agency.   

Endeavor looks somewhat surprised when she shows up with his son and the winner of the first year’s sports festival in his office but he doesn’t say anything about it.  

Really, he can’t be more surprised than Ochako herself that she’s there. The first time Todoroki had brought it up to her she’d turned him down cold and clean-cut.  

“C’mon Todoroki-Kun,” she’d whispered, “We both know who that third spot was for.”  

She’s not even bitter about it. She and Deku were in different leagues, both as heroes and as people. This was the same logic she’d used to talk herself out of her silly crush on him in the first place.   

He tries again the next week, starting out with a, “I never even told him about the offer,” he keeps his gaze firmly trained on the window behind her, “Endeavor wanted a closer ranged fighter who does well with civilian management.”  

“Ojiro-Kun is a close ranged fighter,” Ochako offers.  

“Ojiro isn’t my friend,” Todoroki responds.  

Ochako pauses at that. There it is again, that odd childishness that he seems to let slip through from time to time. Todoroki makes rational choices, Ochako does indeed fit the bill for the third person on their team, but at the same time, when given the option to choose, he wants to work with one of his friends, someone he likes and is familiar with.  

She really can’t fault him for that, these days, Ochako is consistently craving familiarity too. She can never seem to get enough of it.   

Still, "I’m not the kind of friend that Deku-Kun was to you,” she warns him, “And I don’t think I’m going to be,” there is something buried deep in Todoroki that Deku seemed to be able to understand fluently while Ochako still struggles to catch glimpses of it.  

“I understand, I did not expect you to be” he replies, and something about the way he says it assures Ochako that he really does.   

Just like she can’t replace Deku for Todoroki, there is no plausible way he can replace Deku for her either.   

So, Ochako takes the position. Besides, who is she kidding, interning with the current number one hero is going to look killer on her resume no matter where she goes afterward.  

Overall, no one in the agency comments on it, but, at the start at least, it's kind of obvious that they were expecting Deku. Endeavor slips up a couple of times, assigning her a mock battle position that she’d be much better suited to if she could move faster and once leaving all three of their evaluation forms on a table in the men’s locker room. He catches up eventually, even going as far as to compliment her on her strategy in her Sports Fest fight against Bakugou.  

However, some people are more obvious about it than others.  

Burnin, who supervises their warm-up and sparring sessions, asks it outright the first time she meets them. Her eyes rove over Todoroki and Bakugou and land finally, on Ochako.  

“Ooh you’re new,” she comments, “man, I thought we were gonna get that kid that broke all his bones at the sports fest. I was kinda excited to meet him.”   

Ochako has to suppress a wince, Deku would have been excited to meet her too. Besides her, Bakugou grinds his teeth at the mention of him, and Todoroki goes even more stone-faced than she thought possible.  

“I mean, you’re probably as tough as they come,” she points at Ochako, “but, like what’s with the switch up?”  

Before Ochako can say something stupid like ‘he changed his mind’ or ‘he wasn’t able to make it’ or even ruin her internship before it even starts by snapping at a supervisor, Todoroki steps up.  

“Midoriya’s dead,” he says it so plainly every time. It angers Ochako, sometimes, because it makes him sound like some kind of an apathetic asshole when she knows he calls Deku’s mom every Friday evening because she had mentioned that she enjoyed talking to her son’s friends.  

Burnin’s hair flickers and her jovial expression practically evaporates. Bakugou makes a weird noise.  

“Oh, I um-” she falters for a moment, “is it alright for me to ask how...?”  

“He killed himself,” Todoroki says. Ignoring the way Bakugou is trying to incinerate him with his eyes, he turns to Ochako instead, “Uraraka the woman’s locker rooms are on the fourth floor. You can take the elevator down the hall,” then he simply snags Bakugou by the strap of his bag and starts towards the opposite end of the room, presumably to their own.  

Burnin lets them go, but she does apologize when she goes to open the locker rooms for Ochako.  

Hawks, for all his charisma, isn’t particularly subtle either. He drops in from time to time, assisting them with longer patrols and showing them where all the good convenience stores by the agency are. But he’s also perhaps the biggest, most persistent busybody Ochako has had the displeasure of meeting.  

The first time they explain the whole Deku situation to him, he goes quiet for all of two minutes before starting with the consistent questioning.   

Ochako quietly cries in the bathroom stall after that interaction, less because of the insensitive questioning and more because she wants so badly to grasp Deku by the shoulders and spin him around his room and yell in his face, “I met the number two hero, and he’s so cool but he’s also like a massive prick. Betcha didn’t have that in your little notebooks now didja!?”  

Really, the only person who can seem to get some kind of one over on Hawks is Todoroki.  

He wanders into their training room once just in time to catch sight of Ochako helping Todoroki off the mat after she’d flipped him over her shoulder so hard, she could have sworn she heard something crack on impact. Of course, Hawks completely misses her possibly misaligning Todoroki’s spine but he does get an eyeful of her rubbing slow circles on his back as he tries to breathe again.    

“Aww, are you two together?!” he coos, and number two hero or not Ochako hopes he crashes into plexiglass so hard he slips a disk at the ripe old age of twenty-two.  

“No,” Todoroki frowns once he can breathe steadily enough to speak again, “Why would I date Uraraka?”  

“Oh, there’s no need to hide it little Todoroki, it’s just lil’ old me, I’m not going to tell anyone” Hawks smiles. Ochako mentally envisions him in a neck brace.  

“I’m not hiding anything,” Todoroki looks genuinely confused, “Uraraka and I aren’t dating.”  

“Why though?” Hawks settles down on the mat next to them, “You two would be so sweet together.”   

“I can’t date Uraraka,” Todoroki says it slowly, like he’s talking to a small child, “because we are love rivals.”  

“...love rivals?”   

“Yes, when two people like the same person they become love rivals,” Todoroki, the little shit, explains. Ochako has to physically bite down on her lip to stop herself from bursting into laughter, “Uraraka and I want to be close to the same person, so we are love rivals.”  

“Oh, well,” Ochako’s amusement drifts into horror as Hawks turns his gaze thoughtfully to the other side of the room where Bakugou is practically cannibalizing a practice dummy, “Hey by any chance is this person-”  

“No!” Ochako and Todoroki say it at the same time. Hawks holds his hands up in surrender. Across the room, Bakugou finally puts the dummy out of its misery.   

“Hey! Are you losers talking about me!?” he yells at them waving the decapitated plastic dummy head.  

Ochako rolls her eyes as Hawks drifts over to pester him instead. Bakugou is another thing that she has to deal with now. She’d always regarded him with distance especially considering the way he tended to treat Deku, but his confession to Inko-San has had her somewhat on edge around him.   

Really, at the end of the day, there’s nothing she can do about it. Inko-San had been right, none of them had truly understood the intricacies of Deku’s relationship with him enough to grant any kind of judgment. Deku never really said anything negative about the guy, even if he did jump out a window once to try and avoid him. So right now, Ochako is going to honor Deku’s hypothetical wishes by settling for glaring at Bakugou occasionally instead of giving him a full-on sports festival round two.  

Still, Aizawa-Sensei has taken special care not to pair them for any kind of sparring exercise for the past month. Sometimes, when Bakugo does something extremely irritable in class, she gives Sensei a ‘where’s my cash prize for dealing with this’ kind of look and he returns it with an ‘I am quite literally not paid enough’ glance.  

(Also, on the day of Deku’s funeral she’d left to find a quiet place to cry and accidentally walked in on him openly sobbing by the back exit. She still doesn’t quite know what to feel about that.)  

They work together fine though, the three of them.   

Most of their lunches end up being rushed meals at the agency cafeteria, but once in a while, they have slow days where they can actually take a break long enough for them to go outside and grab food. They have the routine for that down to a t. As soon as Endeavor tells them they’re good to go, two of them disperse to go funnel funds out of either Burnin or Hawks, when he’s available, while the third asks Endeavor.    

Surprisingly, none of them have caught on to this yet.   

Today Ochako is handed a couple of bills by Burnin and Todoroki gets a gift voucher that is on the verge of expiring from Hawks. They wait in the lobby until Bakugou shuffles out of the elevator.  

“Next time one of you losers is gonna be the one asking the old man,” he grumbles, flashing them Endeavor’s credit card before continuing to stomp through the lobby.  

“I was hoping he’d give cash again,” Todoroki frowns which is just his regular face but with the eyebrows tilted slightly downward. Ochako is proud to be able to discern it, “I already have his card,” he fishes his wallet out to show her.  

“Let’s not tell Bakugou that,” Ochako reminds him gently as she tries to commit the card number to memory.  

Todoroki nods, the corner of his mouth pulling up, which is practically a grin from him.  

It turns out the voucher Hawks had given Todoroki is for a store at the very edge of their patrolling route. Ochako is nothing if not economical, and the voucher also happens to be expiring the next day, so they bundle up their coats and scarves and make the trek.   

By the time they get there, Bakugou is already foaming at the mouth about them getting lost twice on top of the long walk. He and Todoroki make a beeline for the instant noodle aisle while Ochako winds her way to the back of the store, stepping around a guy with dark hair to browse through the selection of pre-prepared meals.  

Bakugou is still in a foul mood as they check out, glaring at the cashier out the corner of his eye. Ochako grabs her own things and moves to the self-checkout just so they can get out of there faster.  

“What’s your problem?” she grumbles when they step back out into the bitter winter air.   

“He couldn’t find the noodles he wanted,” Todoroki explains, “they were out of them.”  

“Goddamn extra said they’d be in the back,” she guesses he’s talking about the cashier, “but the entire shelf was empty.”  

“Guess that guy must have grabbed the last one,” Todoroki muses. Bakugou stops walking.  

“What guy?” he hisses with barely concealed bloodlust.   

“That guy from the store. He had one of them in his basket,” Todoroki shrugs, then glances back, “oh, that’s him.”  

The man who just walked out of the store freezes at the sight of Todoroki pointing at him. ‘Me?’ he mouths, bewildered, pointing at himself. His eyes dart between the three of them.  

“Hey, you-” Bakugou starts towards him and Ochako is torn between stopping him before he possibly mauls a civilian and getting herself out of the blast zone.  

She and Todoroki choose to keep walking. That way there’s less chance of them being implicated in whatever Bakugou does to the guy.  

They make it to the end of the street until Bakugou catches up to them. The guy, thankfully unharmed, trails behind him, face screwed up in confusion.  

“Are you alright?” Ochako asks him obligatorily, “Blink twice if he’s holding you hostage.”  

The guy blinks in surprise before shaking his head rapidly, “O-oh, n-no he, he d-didn't do anything. Honestly, he was j-just asking me if he knew where he could buy this brand,” he holds up his shopping bag.  

“Was that the one he was looking for?”  

“Y-yeah? It’s a bit hard to find, someone recommended it to me though so-” the guy blows a strand of dark hair off his face, his hair is pretty long, longer than Ochako’s own, “I-I said they might have it at this other s-store but h-honestly, he can have this if he wants.”  

“I’m not taking shitty freebies from anyone!” Bakugou shouts, already halfway down the next street, “I can find my own just fine!”  

Ochako glances at her watch, they barely have an hour left of their break, and they still need to get back to the agency, “Hey, if you’re up to it, I’ll trade you,” she offers. It’s not like she’s just going to take some poor guy’s lunch.  

“What? Oh yeah, sure I-I really don’t mind,” he smiles at her softly as he reaches into his bag and takes out a bright red package, “Does he really like these?”  

“I’m not sure, I think he just wants it 'cause it’s spicy,” Ochako eyes the logo: an alligator skull breathing flames. If that’s not spicy she’s eating her goddamn scarf.  

“I like the goddamn flavor!” Bakugou interjects from across the road, she doesn’t know he even heard them from there.  

“In that case, it’s all his,” he offers her the package, “I really only got it cause it's hot and my tastebuds don’t really work so I can’t tell flavors apart but spice makes my mouth feel funny which is a sensation I suppose. Still, I can pretty much achieve the same result with hot sauce. But then, I’d have to see what hot sauce brands-”  

“Here,” Todoroki tosses a package of instant soba at him which cuts off the rambling as he fumbles to catch it.  

“O-oh it’s fine, really you didn’t need to give me anything,” he murmurs staring at the soba wide-eyed like it’s going to blow up on him any second.  

“It’s no problem,” the guy is tall enough that Todoroki has to tilt his head up to look him in the eye as he talks, “Did you want another one?”   

“It’s alright. I’m fine really. Thank you so much,” he speaks politely even though he definitely seems older than the three of them. Ochako thinks he might be a college student, there are a couple of universities in the area.  

“It was nice meeting you,” she glances back at Todoroki who’s already started crossing the road, “I’m Uraraka Ochako,” she throws out, just because it might seem rude to end the conversation without having introduced herself.   

The stranger smiles back. For some reason it strikes her as a familiar production, the way his shoulders hunch up and his eyes slide shut as the corners of his mouth rise. He uses a gloved hand to tuck his hair behind his ear; he’s left it loose, even though it’s a decent length and it's breezy out today.  

Just as he completes the action, another strand falls over his face.  

“I’m Izuku.”   

-------  

Dear Uraraka-San,  

Hopefully this is not the last note I’ve written you because that would be kind of sad seeing that it’s also the first, but if it isn’t please skip this and move on to the most recent one because I’m probably more articulate there since I’d have known you longer. Better yet, just don’t read any of these at all. I really can’t think of any conceivable scenario where you absolutely have read this but if there isn’t I’d really prefer if you left this alone. I write these for myself really. It’s selfish of me, to be using my thoughts and memories of you to try and come up with how you might feel if I killed myself was gone but it actually helps in some messed up way cause halfway through the note I usually end up talking myself out of whatever I was thinking of doing.  

I think the people pleasing tendencies are what do it. It’s kind of pathetic of me honestly.   

Alright, but here it goes for real this time.  

Dear Uraraka-San,  

I am really, really, sorry.  

At the same time, I’m kind of nervous. It’s a bit morbid, but this is the first time I’ve written one of these to a friend, mostly because I haven't had any of those in a while. The last one was Kacchan, years and years ago, but I think I threw those notes out because my mom found the folder they were in and I was really young when I wrote them so I didn’t want her seeing. I think that last point is kind of an overshare but it’s in pen so I’ll just leave it. I overshare a lot around you. Sorry. I think it must be because you’re one of the only people who bothers listening. You make people feel safe.  

Sometimes I can’t believe the two of us are friends because you’re probably the nicest person in the world. Even the first time we met at the entrance exam you were nice, even though you didn’t know who I was and I totally could have been a massive jerk who didn’t deserve any of that kindness.  

Actually, me being a massive jerk might actually be true, because this afternoon you split your dessert with me and right now, I’m writing a suicide note addressed to you.  

I told you yesterday, while we were cleaning up, that I thought there was something wrong with me, and I think you thought that I was talking about coming out to you or something because you started being really supportive all of a sudden and then I think you tried to come out to me which I might have spoken over and I’m really sorry about that. I think that conversation got away from us. Still, now you know what was wrong Uraraka-San.  

I’m sorry I never let you say your part.  

Love,  

Your best friend Midoriya (Deku)  

-------  

Naomasa hasn’t been in his kitchen all week.  

Technically, it's not the longest he’s spent away from home, only popping in to shower and grab a change of clothes, but when he walks in on Friday there’s a thin layer of dust on the back of his counters, and, all of a sudden, it seems like he’s been gone forever.  

Leaving his grocery bags on the table he gets to work wiping down the surfaces, still in his slacks and dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The last thing he’d been working on before Sansa had strong-armed him out the door had been the monthly reports, which, considering the HSPC’s latest interest, were definitely going to be more than skimmed and required a lot more critical thinking and source checking than normal.  

He almost welcomes the repetitiveness of a simple task.  

Kitchen prep was the one chore Naomasa used to get into full-blown arguments with his sister to try and avoid back when he was in high school. He’d let Makoto use his phone and cart her all over town on weekends just so he wouldn't have to slice and peel veggies before their mother got home.  

Now the monotonous work is a comfort. He gets so into chopping more green onions than he could possibly need that he almost misses his phone ringing in the other room.  

He’s expecting Sansa with another question on how to cite picture evidence, but, to his surprise, it’s actually Toshinori. There’s no name or profile picture on the display, but he’s long since memorized the number by heart.  

“Ah, Toshinori, sorry, I had something on the stove.”  

“My apologies,” his friend splutters lightly, “But um, I just received a call from Nezu, and he would like to meet with us as soon as possible.”  

“Can it wait?” Naomasa throws a forlorn glance at the pot on the stove, “It’s getting rather late, I doubt all the bus lines are still running.”  

“Well, uh, about that. Do you want to look out your window?”  

Naomasa usually prides himself on being level-headed, but right now he wants nothing more than to ring up Nezu and tell him to shove off and let him eat his dinner in peace. Nezu has already been aware of his plummeting mood and rising exhaustion for the past couple of weeks. It’s likely why he’d sent Toshinori instead of calling himself.  

It’s not like Naomasa can deny Toshinori anything.  

He sighs as he pulls back the curtain on the window; sure enough, Toshinori’s car is parked right in front of his apartment building. He rolls the window and sticks his arm out to wave.  

Naomasa waves back and goes to shut off the stove.  

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb your dinner,” Toshinori says sheepishly as they turn onto the main road, “I got the call as I was passing through and just thought I’d swing right by.”  

“It’s no problem,” Naomasa had been worried at first, by the way Toshinori had seemed to withdraw into himself those first couple of weeks. He hadn’t been that bad since Kamino, and even then, he’d managed to muster up the energy to look after his successor.  

However, since the funeral, he’s been better, more involved in the case, but not quite with the same fervor he’d been infected with during that summer camp incident.  

Naomasa will take what he can get though.  

Toshinori swears under his breath as he brakes jerkily at a sudden red light and Naomasa puts a hand on the dashboard to brace himself. There’s a fine layer of dust on it. When he leans back against the headrest, his handprint remains. It’s not the only new addition to the car: there’s an All Might-themed charm hanging from the rearview mirror that he knows Toshinori would never in a million years have bought for himself.  

“If you happen to be free after,” he murmurs as the U.A building comes into view, “perhaps we could eat together.”   

“I would like that,” Toshinori smiles lightly, pulling into the parking lot.  

Nezu’s office is unlocked and when they enter the principal is standing at the window instead of seated at his desk as usual.  

“The Commission has told me that they are shutting down the investigation,” Nezu greets. He’s holding an unlit cigarette, which seems downright odd in his paws, no matter how many times Naomasa has seen him smoke.  

“What?!” Toshinori coughs lightly, “I thought they were leaning into the theory that there were connections to the League involved?”  

“A funeral home employee being distantly related to one of the USJ arrests was hardly a lead Yagi,” Nezu notes, “Really, all we can press at this point is the body going missing, if that even really happened. Wasn’t Midoriya Inko handed her son's remains eventually?”  

“Her son’s alleged remains,” Naomasa feels the need to add, he hadn’t spent an hour trying to link the forensic analysis to the official report for nothing, “all they managed to identify was that they belonged to a male between the ages of fourteen and seventeen.”   

“Still, any tampering that may or may not have occurred was with the body. There are numerous possibilities: organ trafficking, a technical mistake, an individual’s disillusioned fanaticism. Since the sports festival and his work studies, Midoriya had gained quite the reputation in some circles,” Nezu stands on his tiptoes (tip paws?) to slide a file off the desk.  

“The HPSC works to assure the safety of heroes, but that, it seems, is only extended as far as the living ones, and there do not seem to be any,” he pauses for a moment, before holding out the file to Toshinori, “ complications , with the events that took place on campus that might jeopardize the safety of fellow staff or students.”  

“Complications,” Toshinori echoes faintly, “A child took his own life, and you do not see any complications with that?”  

“Yes Yagi,” Nezu sighs like he’s been waiting for this mounting outburst. He turns to Naomasa, “this, detective, is why I opted to keep Eraserhead off your investigation. Yagi, I allowed tentatively due to his connection with One for All, but, in the end, this kind of emotion will only serve as a detriment to rational decision making.”  

Naomasa winces lightly at the reprimand. Sensing Nezu’s frustration, he puts a hand on Toshinori’s shoulder and changes the subject, “So there is no chance of recovering One for All at this point?”  

“I’m afraid not, we have samples of Midoriya’s DNA but he didn’t have any kind of intent to pass it on before his death so it isn’t likely we’ll be able to recover it that way.”  

“What about from the body? The texted picture showed it intact. Could the quirk be extracted from the corpse?” Naomasa asks, squeezing his friend's shoulder.  

Truth be told: he’s done with this investigation. For the past week, he’s had nothing new save for spammed complaint forms about his report’s format from the HPSC. The sooner he wraps this up, the sooner he can get things in his prefecture reorganized and scrounge up free time to look further into the League. Into the real threat.  

However.  

Besides him, Toshinori takes a rattling breath. He'd looked horrible a month ago, face set and lined in a way that made him look older than he really was. He’s perked up since joining the investigation; it got him out of his house and gave him something to do, even if it was just running back and forth between Midoriya Inko’s house and the station carting baked goods and tupperware.  

“Shouldn't recovering the body be an important task then?” he tries one last time. For All Might.  

Nezu shakes his head, “That’s not how the quirk works.”  

“Then make it work,” Toshinori pleads, “you know how to talk, you can spin the story for them, give us more time.”  

“More time for what,” Nezu’s face is somewhat mammalian but practically unreadable. Still, Naomasa hopes his expression is one of pity, rather than barely concealed aggravation, “I understand how you might feel Yagi, but you cannot stretch this forever. Though you may not consider it that way, I ask this of you with kindness: find me a discrepancy or move on.”  

“A discrepancy?” Toshinori croaks, tugging at his tie lightly.  

“Yes, irrefutable proof of doubt. Here is my fact: Midoriya Izuku committed suicide,” Naomasa has heard enough of this conversation to know the pause there is more a punishment than a reprieve, “If you can find me something, a solid piece of evidence that puts this fact up for questioning-- evidence, I must remind you, that is not rooted in any kind of personal opinion or evaluation of character-- then I will make sure this investigation remains open until either the body or its final whereabouts are recovered.”  

It’s a tall order, but a fair one Naomasa supposes. If they find foul play regarding the suicide itself, then it will become a matter of school security, and Nezu is nothing if not thorough with that.  

“Oh,” Toshinori whispers, tie completely loosened. This time when Nezu hands him the files, he takes them wordlessly.  

“I cannot promise any of my future time, but both of you are free to access my available archives of notes in case you desire to work on this on your own,” Nezu adds, “But, and I hope I will only have to say this once, your private investigations should be kept well away from the Commission’s inquiries. If they ever come knocking on my door, I will be asking for my files back.”  

Yagi seems to be frozen in place; fingers still curled around his necktie so Naomasa sweeps the rest of the files off the table before Nezu can change his mind, “Thank you so much for your time, Principal, was that all you wanted to discuss?”  

Nezu nods lightly and Naomasa takes that as a signal to start herding Toshinori out of the room. They make it to the door when Toshinori pats Naomasa on the shoulder, signaling him to stop.  

He takes a deep breath before turning back around, “You wanted evidence, didn’t you Principal?”  

For all that he claims to be part mouse, Nezu looks considerably like the cat who just got the cream, “Cold, hard evidence Yagi, if you would be so kind.”  

Toshinori nods curtly and rushes to the coffee table at the center of the room, flipping over files frantically, “Naomasa which one of these has the evidence they collected from Young Izuku’s room?”  

Naomasa blinks at the familiar use of the first name before the request catches up to him, “oh, this one I believe, it has the listed items and the pictures.”  

“Pictures, pictures, here it is,” Toshinori withdraws something and places it safely on the chair next to him. Naomasa has to lean over to see it properly in the dim lighting. It’s a picture of a bright knotted nylon cord: the noose after they had removed it from the kid’s body.  

“This wasn’t tampered with at all was it?” Toshinori asks him frantically.  

“No, I think all they did was cut it off the top to get the body down and loosen it slightly for removal.”  

“And the rope, where was it from?”  

Naomasa shuffles through the papers for the item report, skimming it to refresh his memory, “It was Midoriya’s. He brought it with him to the dorms. According to his mother it was used to tie some of his moving boxes securely and make them more identifiable?” he squints at the print, “it was a typical brand, you could find it at any store that sold camping or travel supplies, uhm it was a 97% percent nylon blend...” he moves down the page, “and he had another bundle of it in his closet, left over from the move.”  

At this point, Nezu wanders over, picking the picture up to look at it again.  

Toshinori places another picture down, it’s a pair of the kid's shoes, tucked in against the side of his closet wall. Besides that, he lines up a picture of Midoriya in his school uniform. Nezu places the one of the noose back down and Naomasa stares at the three of them, trying to find Toshinori’s desperate connection.  

“Ah,” Nezu sounds vaguely surprised, “Well done Yagi, that was something I’d never even considered.”  

“Okay, can someone explain this,” Naomasa’s stomach chooses the moment to rumble embarrassingly. He really wishes he’d grabbed a light snack before leaving.  

“Please,” he tacks on when Toshinori shoots him a vaguely guilty look.  

“I’ve known Young Izuku for over a year now, and as much as children are always picking up new skills...” Toshinori points at Midoriya’s blazer in the third picture, “there was a great number of things my boy excelled at, unfortunately, tying knots was not one of them.”  

He isn’t pointing at the jacket, Naomasa realizes, but the tie: Midoriya’s ever mangled, drastically shortened tie. He glances at the second photo. Sure enough, the shoes are lace-ups, and the laces are tangled into thick, clumsy knots that look like they’d be a nightmare to open.  

He shifts his gaze to the third photo. The nylon cord is knotted neatly, almost professionally, in a way that could hold both the shape of the loop and would tighten when weighed down with little to no chance of unraveling or slipping open.  

“Unless he was relentlessly preparing for a future career as a sailor, I highly doubt Izuku was the one that tied that rope,” Toshinori finishes, staring at Nezu.  

Nezu starts to respond, but the end of the sentence jogs something in Naomasa’s memory. It’s debatable that Midoriya was the one that tied that noose.  

This isn’t the first piece of evidence created by ‘Midoriya’ that he’s found questionable.  

“The letters,” this time he’s the one shifting frantically through the piles of folders, uncaring of the stray pieces of paper that flutter silently to the floor, “Do you have the folder with the copies of the letters here?”  

Nezu stares at him silently before walking back to his desk and returning with another folder.  

“The letters?” Toshinori questions and Naomasa doesn’t even consider the fact that they’d never let Toshinori see any of these previously before he scatters the papers on the table in his hurry.  

“They’re notes, suicide notes, except Midoriya wrote them almost as a form of self-therapy,” Naomasa explains flicking through the pages, “He addressed them to his friends and family, basically people he considered important to him” He can’t find the goddamn letter itself but the content has practically been seared into his brain.  

“Nezu,” he turns to address the principal, “if you had never seen that last letter, who do think Midoriya would have addressed his final one, the actual suicide note to?”  

Nezu smiles blankly as he thinks, fingers (paws?) tapping on the armrest of the chair. He has a scary good memory; Naomasa knows from years of working alongside him. Unlike his own small recollection of details, Nezu could probably recall the content of most of these notes by heart. He's probably matching up the dates of the letters with those of Midoriya’s past visits to the emergency room. Especially the ones where he’d been flagged to take a mandatory phycological evaluation after.  

“If the pattern holds...” Nezu nods lightly, “If the pattern holds, it should have been addressed to his mother.”  

But it isn’t, Naomasa remembers, as his gaze finally lands on the piece of paper he was looking for.  

‘Dear Izuku’: the letter starts.  

“We’ve gone over this before,” he reminds Nezu, holding up the paper “see here,” he taps the top of the page, “no date,” he drags a finger down the text, “the handwriting is sloppier,” he taps on one of the lines, “the phrasing is slightly off, there’s--”  

While he may not remember them by heart, Naomasa has poured over nearly eight years' worth of notes extensively. Midoriya writes about other people with exceeding care, but he always references himself callously: a failure, a coward, a problem, a selfish person. No matter how many times he sees them, those phrases are the ones that make Naomasa’s heart twist painfully in his chest each time.  

There’s none of that here.  

“There’s too much remorse ,” he whispers, “too much remorse and not enough self-deprecation, he writes it like he’s feeling sorry for himself. The rest of these,” he gestures to the splayed pile of copies, “the rest of these are written like he’s talking out loud,” that’s what the Shinsou kid had said, hadn’t he, the whole letter sounded exactly like something Midoriya would say, “what if we were thrown off at the start because-”  

“Because we were comparing the earlier notes to the final one, instead of the other way around,” Nezu finishes, climbing onto the couch to skim the page over Naomasa’s shoulder, “he calls himself a murderer,” he notes quietly, “I didn’t think that significant before.”  

“He’s never done that in any of the previous notes,” it’s what he’d been waiting for all evening, but Naomasa still doesn’t like where this is headed, “he writes like his own death is an inevitability, the only guilt he feels about it is how it might affect other people.”  

“Toshinori,” Naomasa calls, and his friend startles, quickly putting down a paper with the words ‘dear All Might’ on the top, “Toshinori I hate to ask this of you but...” he holds out the page.  

Toshinori takes it from him wordlessly with trembling fingers.  

Naomasa looks away while he reads it. Even when Toshinori sighs lightly to signal that he’s finished, he takes care not to look him in the eye.  

“Well?”  

“It- saying this was written by Izuku, might need a bit of a stretch,” Toshinori shakes his head lightly, “it’s too clean cut. Any time he’s given the chance to express his own opinion, even on assignments, he tends to ramble, go off on tangents,” he leans forward until Naomasa is forced to meet his gaze, there’s a hardness there he hadn’t walked in with, “why wasn’t this flagged immediately?”  

“We thought he was simply too emotional to stick to his usual pattern, since this was going to be his final one...” Nezu nods along, even he had agreed with their initial assessment, flimsy as it might sound now, “the book was on his desk, where it could be easily found, and the final entry was his last words...”  

Sure, it was staged. Suicides, especially ones that occur in the person’s own space, are often carefully arranged. And this case had been classic: a kid with a history of self-harm who habitually wrote out his feelings. It was likely that he’d have left something for them to find.  

They found plenty. Only, Naomasa thinks now, they might have found plenty of the wrong things.  

Toshinori cradles his head in his hands, “I haven’t read any of these Naomasa, and even I can tell that this last one wasn’t written by Izuku,” he freezes suddenly, going still enough that it’s almost frightening, “If anything, it sounds like it was written for him. An apology note addressed to him.”  

“And what are you proposing this apology might be for Yagi?” Nezu stands on the arm of the couch so he’s at eye level with both of them.  

Toshinori leans forward to jab his finger at the word on the page.  

“For murder.”  

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Dear Izuku, 

I’m really sorry. 

It’s pretty rich of me to be saying this at any point, but know that I wanted this precisely as much as you did. Maybe it's too assumptive of me to say so, but I think I’m standing at a place where I can afford these kinds of guesses. 

This is a checkmate, in the very literal sense, but I’m not sure who’s really winning here. Congratulations, I guess, for making it this far. You get what you’ve always wanted and at that price you also make a murderer out of me. There’s a lot I’ve been able to let slide past but I doubt this one is going to wash off.  

I hope it doesn’t hurt. 

I don’t think you deserve that. 

Love, 

Midoriya Izuku  

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