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After her release from the hospital, Kaina suddenly finds herself with more free time than she ever had before in her life.
Sure, it isn’t complete freedom, given how she has to remain on U.A. campus while the reconstruction of society takes place and her previous prison sentence and actions in All for One’s name are weighted against her contributions in favour of Midoriya Izuku winning against Shigaraki Tomura in the war.
Still, she finds herself with heaps of time at her hands that she has no idea what to do with.
It’s not the same as the “free” time she had in prison, where she had to focus all her energy on not going insane with the lack of things to pass time with. She is allowed to do things. Things that are… fun, or something.
The only problem is that the last time she did something for fun, she was still a preteen.
So she has no idea what she could do.
Guidance – completely unbidden, to make it clear – comes as a surprise and from a direction she’d never expected it from.
“Oh, it’s just that I’ve dealt with the very business of suddenly having more free time on my hands than I knew what to do with when I retired from hero work myself,” All Might says when Kaina asks him what the hell he means with his offer of ‘helping her find a hobby’.
He looks so different from the last time she has seen him – back when she was still a pro hero – with his gaunt features and scrawny frame, a wisp of the man he once was. But still, the smile he directs at her seems to hold the same confidence and enthusiasm it always did.
“I, too, had to try out a few possible hobbies until I found the one that’s right for me,” he continues, “so I could give you some suggestions, maybe show them to you even. What do you think?”
Kaina thinks that if she knew even a year ago that she would get back out of prison only to spend the time she had newly available with freaking All Might, retired and washed-up, the former Number One Hero, the Symbol of Peace, of all people, she would have thought Tartarus made her insane after all.
It’s not like there are any more desirable alternatives for how she could spend her time though. That’s kind of the point.
So, grudgingly, she accepts.
“Here. This is the hobby I found most to my liking.”
Kaina looks around the room while she tries not to step on any paint tubes or brushes, not even attempting to feign interest.
Not that the artworks lining the whole room don’t look good or anything, even she can acknowledge that much. All Might certainly has a talent for painting. Or, if that isn’t the case, worked hard to build up the necessary skills to paint so well.
Her gaze falls onto the bottle of red paint lying on the floor and stays there, and she has to forcefully drag it away again.
“Sorry that it’s a bit chaotic.” All Might seems to misinterpret her reaction, sheepishly running a hand through the already unruly hair at the back of his head. Kaina shrugs. “Anyway, what do you say?” He gestures towards a large canvas up on a stand at the other end of the room. “Do you want to try it yourself?”
Not really, Kaina thinks. But it’s not as if she has anything better to spend her time on. And admittedly, the former Number One Hero’s eyes look at her with such hopefulness that she isn’t sure he wouldn’t keel over on the spot if she declined. Getting accused of hurting the still well-beloved Symbol of Peace is the last thing she needs.
So she shrugs again and says, “Sure.”
“Alright then!” With a beaming smile, All Might whirls around and pulls a smock from a hook at the door. It was clearly originally pristine white, but many dabs of paint, big and small, have dried within the fabric in the meantime.
He holds it out to her, like a gentleman might hold the coat for his companion after a visit in a high-class restaurant. Kaina can’t hold back the snort.
“And I’m sorry that it’s so long,” All Might adds after she has slipped into the smock. “I needed to get it custom-made because of my height, but I should have thought of buying a smaller one so you wouldn’t… drown in it.”
Drowning in the smock is indeed what Kaina does. The hem reaches all the way to the floor, she needs to drag it after herself. The sleeves have to be rolled up many times for her hands to pop up.
“You should know that I don’t really care about dirtying my clothes,” she says as she deals with the sleeves.
Her gaze falls onto the bottle of red blood lying on the floor yet again, and she has to forcefully drag it away a second time.
“Even if you say so, wouldn’t it be a shame if your dress got paint on it…” All Might objects, though he trails off at the end of the sentence.
Kaina neither agrees or disagrees. It’s not as if she doesn’t care about her dress at all – and she is thankful her request for the wardrobe U.A. treated her to to be made up of dresses was granted – but the possibility of it getting splattered with paint doesn’t scare her at all. It’s much better than is getting covered in soot, dust, sewer water, entrails,…
All Might clears his throat.
“So, uh, feel free to choose whichever colours you like! And whatever brush appeals to you. And don’t worry about drawing something sophisticated. On your first try, it’s more important to get a feel for the brush and canvas and texture of the paint!”
This time, he seems to notice Kaina’s gaze, which his prompt caused to immediately flit over to the bottle of red paint once more.
“If you want to splash the canvas entirely in red, you’re welcome to do that, too,” he suggests.
Kaina laughs bitterly. “Trust me, that is the last thing I want. In fact…”
As she makes her way over to the canvas, she kicks against the bottle of red paint so it rolls somewhere into the pile of other painting stuff off to the side. Any spark of potential guilt over that behaviour is snuffed out in less than a second – if someone told her that All Might did not have the necessary wherewithal to buy another bottle of paint if she ruined one, she’d laugh in their face.
The canvas is white and big, so big she is at a loss about what to fill it with. The brush collection is also expansive, she has no idea what the function of each brush with its individual shape and form is. It’s likely similar to her bullets – different sizes or shapes to reach different goals. But she’s not particularly interested in learning about paintbrush differences, truthfully, so she simply snatches the biggest one from the rack that will allow her to smear the most paint onto the canvas at a time.
Then she turns to the colour selection, which is simultaneously wide but also narrow. All Might possesses several shades of each colour, but with her mentally eliminating many of the colours already, there’s not much left.
The red she kicks out again immediately. Orange and yellow go because they’re so contrary to her current mood that she doesn’t want to look at them for a second longer either. The hues of pink and purple she discards because who needs to look as if doing a self-portrait on their first painting attempt. All shades of brown and grey and ochre would look too crushing if they were to fill this entire canvas.
That leaves her with…
“Guess I should just draw a sky and meadow,” she comments. Although she would never admit it out loud, half of it is because All Might has made himself obtrusively quiet and small after giving her free rein of his terrain, really letting her do her own thing. Not even a peep came from him when she discarded all the bottles so haphazardly.
Something about it irks her. She wants him to criticise her for how she’s doing it all wrong. Complain that she isn’t even trying hard enough. That her standards are too high. That her standards are not perfectionistic enough.
Not that she would ever say so out loud either.
“There are many other things you could draw as well,” All Might says simply. “And I know I drew many still lives or motives from nature, but that doesn’t mean that you have to—”
Kaina ignores him as she dips the large, wide brush she chose into the green paint up to its hilt and then drags a broad, wet line horizontally over the canvas, as far as she can until none of the paint still in the brush’s bristles comes out of it anymore.
Like this, she continues, until the entire canvas is covered in two huge, uneven bands of blue and green over each other.
“Exciting,” she mutters sarcastically, examining her work. At least her arm aches somewhat pleasantly from the way she constantly had to stretch upwards to reach the upper end of the canvas.
All Might, who let her work on her own and in silence the entire time, offering no suggestions, comments or criticism whatsoever on her process, does finally speak up again at her remark.
“You could add a little sun in the corner… or a small hut that someone lives in… or a few blades of grass and flowers if that fits the perspective you imagined more… However…” He comes out of whatever corner of the room he hid himself in at least, until he’s next to Kaina and can peer down at her face. “I get the feeling you are not enjoying yourself very much doing this.”
Another sarcastic comment of ‘Wonder how you reached that conclusion’ lays right on top of Kaina’s tongue, but the earnest expression in All Might’s eyes as he looks at her make her swallow it down.
“Sorry,” is what she says instead, the stab of guilt in her chest totally unwelcome.
Just from a glance at the room, it’s obvious that his painting hobby is quite important to All Might. Kaina still has no idea why he decided to give her the time of the day and insisted on spending his surely valuable free time with her, but he seemed excited to introduce her to the world of painting. She doesn’t want to appear as if she’s looking down on it or mocking him or anything.
“Oh,” All Might’s eyes widen and he quickly waves his hands in front of his chest. “No, no need to be sorry at all! As I said, painting might be the hobby that I ended up enjoying most, but that doesn’t mean you have to feel obligated to like it as well! We’re looking for a hobby that will delight you here, not another obligation to add to your list.”
The smile he directs at Kaina is so warm and clearly heartfelt. It makes something twist in her stomach, as if she’s going to be sick any moment.
“I’m wondering…” A furrow appears on All Might’s brow as he evidently considers something. “You might not enjoy painting, but maybe we could give drawing a try. It’s quite different from painting—”
Kaina’s laugh interrupts him. “Yeah, how about no.” At the puzzled look All Might gives her in response, she feels the need to explain, “My right arm doesn’t have the fine motor skills for that due to my quirk. I’m right-handed, but still needed to train myself to write with my left hand. So my handwriting is crap, and my attempt at learning to draw as a teenager only left me with a mountain of frustration. So I don’t think that’ll be a good choice of hobby either.”
“Never fear.” For the first time, Kaina can really see the overlap with the All Might in his prime she witnessed in this entirely different figure before her. “There are plenty of other hobbies we can still try out to find the one that is just right for you!”
“Nope.”
“A-Are you sure?” All Might asks, seemingly distressed that Kaina doesn’t even want to hear out his suggestion to the end. “You wouldn’t need to write by hand if it’s your handwriting you’re worried about, writing on a keyboard works just as well. Or you could even use a dictation machine, if you prefer—”
“I’m not going to try writing books,” Kaina declares, leaving no room for argument. “Or other stories, essays or poems or whatever you might think of. I already hated writing the reports I had to hand in as a hero, you won’t see me dead writing anything ‘for fun’.”
“Alright, I understand, I’ll think of another idea.”
And just like that, All Might does indeed drop the topic. Without even once telling her to “try it out to see if she likes it, how would she know she didn’t if she never tried it after all.”
He does glance at her out of the corners of his eye and smirks slightly though.
“What?” Kaina snaps defensively.
“Oh, no, I was just…” All Might coughs into his elbow, then looks at her outright and says, “You just said you hated writing your reports, and it’s merely… it’s always nice to hear someone who feels the same about it, that’s all.”
“What, did you hate writing your reports as well?” Kaina’s question likely comes out sounding more shocked than she intended. But to be fair, she hadn’t expected the former Number One Hero to admit to such a thing.
All Might chuckles in response, of all things. “That I did. So much. Absolutely one of the things I’m happy about leaving behind in my retirement. Of course now I have to design worksheets and put together exams for my students, and that’s hardly any better…”
Kaina never expected to have something in common with All Might. Especially not such a trivial thing. The shock is real. The next moment though, it’s replaced with exasperation, because hating to write reports is surely a wide-spread thing in the hero community. Kaina can name a handful of her former colleagues who regularly complained about it as much as she would have if she’d dared to be anything other than the HPSC’s picture-perfect little hero agent.
Their similarity is nothing to waste a thought on.
“What about this?”
Sceptically, Kaina leans closer to peer at whatever All Might wants to show her on his phone screen.
“Making necklaces and bracelets sounds like a lovely activity. It’s not something I have tried personally, but,” All Might continues to scroll through the gallery of example pictures he has found on the internet, “it seems like a very soothing, almost meditative task to string beads together like shown here. And of course there must be other techniques as well, which you could investigate if you rather want a challenging hobby…”
Kaina scoots even closer to get a better look, ignoring the fact that she is nearly bumping against All Might’s arm with the proximity.
She has to admit, the colourful accessories that are shown in the pictures look very, very cute.
She’d have loved to wear them. Or make similarly cute accessories herself to wear.
“Not my style,” she says, maybe a touch too harshly, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
“Oh, as I said, there are probably tons of other instructions—”
“Crafting cutesy things like that is not my style in general, I meant,” she dismisses, waving her hand to indicate that she is entirely uninterested.
“Alright, I see.” All Might takes his phone back. Just like the previous times when she bluntly rejected an idea, he doesn’t look angry or annoyed about it.
However, Kaina’s stomach starts twisting in on itself with nerves anyway. If she continues to behave as rudely as she did, he will likely give up on his idea of finding her a hobby sooner rather than later. Even the Symbol of Peace doesn’t have an endless well of patience after all.
Not that Kaina needs or wants to spend more time with him. But… All Might is also one of the very few social connections she has here. And probably the one who was most enthusiastic in receiving her and has spent the most time with her so far.
She did survive without interacting with any other humans for years in Tartarus and she’s sure she could do it again, but… if there’s a way she doesn’t have to…
She should throw All Might a bone, give him something to work with for his next suggestion maybe.
“I wouldn’t mind trying other craft things though,” she thus amends. “Like… I don’t know, knitting or something.”
Surely a number of cute things to knit exist as well, but there are just as many boring ones, so it’s easy to avoid them. Maybe she could offer to knit a sweater for All Might and use a boring brown yarn – with his height, she’d be busy for ages…
All Might hums thoughtfully. “Knitting and related handcrafts I know even less about than making accessories – I got the recommendation for the last one from the girls in my class, you see.”
“You never tried out knitting as one of the hobbies to take up?” Kaina asks, the words bursting out of her without meaning to.
“No,” All Might admits, bashfully rubbing the back of his head, “my hands can’t really keep up with the motions, sadly… Too many injuries over the years, given that my fighting style mostly consisted of punching villains into oblivion. They’ve grown a bit stiff as a result. Hopefully this doesn’t apply to you though, as a former long-range fighter.”
His eyes trail down to her hands as he speaks, as if wanting to see the state of them himself. Kaina fights the urge to hide them behind her back like a child hiding candy it just swiped. She doesn’t know why. The first thing she did after she had access to the amenities of a normal life again was to get a manicure.
“Ah, I know one of my students’ mother who knits!” All Might suddenly exclaims, face beaming in excitement at the inspiration he evidently just had. “I can introduce the two of you, I’m sure she could teach you much more about the craft than I could from just—”
“No need,” Kaina cuts him off, biting down on the petulant-sounding question of, ‘Why do you know a student’s mother?’
At her tone of voice, All Might falters, though only briefly. “Wha—Oh, are you worried about any prejudice she might have towards you, given your,” he gestures awkwardly in her direction, then coughs into his fist before settling on, “ah, history? Don’t worry, she’s very kind and sweet, I’m sure that—”
“I said that there’s no need.”
Glaring at the former Number One Hero likely doesn’t help her case either, but Kaina can’t stop herself from doing so.
“Surely there are still tons of other hobbies left to try out? Or have you reached the end of your ideas list already so you have to make a strong case for knitting?”
“Of course not,” All Might declares, quick as a shot. The frown that had pulled at his eyebrows disappears from his face again, replaced by a smile that seems to issue a challenge. “There are still plenty of options left to try.”
“I have to admit—” Kaina picks up the chunk of clay, weighing it in her hand in consideration. “—doing pottery was not a hobby I ever thought about.”
All Might looks up from where he sticks a covering sheet over the table in order to keep any flecks of clay from staining it. “We don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”
“No, I want to try it,” Kaina assures him. The chunk of clay is smooth against her rough fingers at first, but when she slides her thumb over it, she can feel how she rubs dust and small grains off of it. “I just meant… I haven’t thought about how pottery is a thing that some people do, somewhere, in… I don’t know how long.” Out of the corners of her eyes, she sees the intense way All Might watches her, seemingly hanging on to her every word. She lays the clay down again, a sudden flash of embarrassment tingling in her chest. “Whatever. Let’s get to it.”
For this hobby trial, All Might had cleared two of the tables he has in his art room from all of the painting equipment that had been lying on top of them. He also hauled them into the middle of the room and placed them together along their long sides. Both Kaina and he sit on one table each as they attempt to beat and roll and pull the clay into interesting, beneficial shapes.
Meaning that every time Kaina glances up from her work for a moment, she is directly confronted with All Might, who concentrates on his own work with an intensity and focus that Kaina wouldn’t have expected.
She wonders whether he wears the same expression now as when he used to study the police reports on his table to predict the next place a group of villains might attack. Whether the careful way with which he deposits formed bits of clay down on his cover is even remotely reminiscent of the way he deposited toddlers and small children back into the arms of waiting parents crying with relief. What other occasions might lead to him showing the small, barely there smile that’s really just a quick uptick of the corners of his lips, which he gets every time something he did apparently worked as he had hoped.
Thinking these things – and staring so much – is probably weird, so Kaina bows her head back down and returns her focus to her own piece of clay.
Her goal is to form it into some kind of vase. Though at this point, she would even be content with it resembling a bowl. The process is admittingly more difficult than she had assumed in the beginning. The shape of a sleek, elegantly adorned vase in her mind crumbles at surprising speed.
She dips her fingers into the little cup of water, then glides over the clay with them in order to soften the material and make it malleable. And then tries to mould it. Step by step. Dent by dent. Press of her hand by press of her hand.
At one point, a breath of laughter escapes her.
“This is just like how I was formed by the Public Safety Commission into the perfect shape they wanted me to have,” she huffs in dark amusement.
She doesn’t know why she thought this – and then even said it out loud – because it hardly makes any sense. Starting with the obvious fact that even though she was carefully moulded into the hero, the person, the assassin she Commission wanted her to become, that process took place much more cunningly and professionally than her attempt at splashing about with clay.
But for some reason, now that she has had this thought, it doesn’t leave her mind anymore. During every motion in her work, all she can think about is her being her Commission-issued teachers and the bowl of clay being herself that was slowly moulded into the correct shape. Unsuccessfully. Because her attempt at creating a bowl is nothing short of laughable, and she herself never turned into the perfect emotionless assassin-hero that the Commission wanted her to be.
Her vision blurs, the lump of clay going in and out of focus. It’s making the process all the more bothersome.
“I’m sorry.”
Kaina doesn’t know whether it’s All Might’s voice suddenly ringing through the room or the content of his words that shock her more, dragging her out of her head as well as her work.
Her head snaps up to look at him. He has stopped working, too. His hands grip the edge of the table in front of him, his gaze resting on some undefined point on the wood, until he suddenly lifts it as well, meeting Kaina’s eyes.
The blue of his irises seems to gleam, and Kaina’s sure it’s not due to the angle at which the rays of the sun fall into the room.
“I’m sorry,” All Might repeats. And likely because of Kaina’s dumbfounded expression, he continues and explains, “I should have done something. Seen the things that went on behind my back, how the Public Safety Commission created heroes like you. In the first place, I was the founder of hero society as it was practised. The Commission latched onto it, praising the good it did and the light it brought to society. But it should’ve been obvious that there is a dark side to it as well. And I should have… I should have seen it. And told them to cut it out, or—or—”
He looks so genuinely upset at what he perceives as his own mistake, it makes Kaina’s insides twist together. It’s so stupid, because she has murdered more people than she can recount in cold blood, and here she is, aching for the All Might, whose own current pain comes from his compassion for her history.
“Don’t say that,” she tells him. “Even you, the great All Might and Number One Hero, could not have saved everyone. You must be aware of that, right? Besides, you walked the path you did because you wanted to save and protect people’s lives. The hero system that ended up born from that might’ve been fucked up, but where it all came from, this origin of it… That’s not a bad thing.”
All Might’s lips twitch in the ghost of a smile.
“Your spirit is truly remarkable.” His glowing blue eyes are captivating as he looks at her. “I’m sure I can’t even begin to imagine the horrors you experienced over the course of your life, and yet you’re still able to hold such optimistic views. That takes a lot of benevolence.” Kaina’s face suddenly feels much warmer than it did before.
“Well, I’ve dealt with a lot of scum over the years – in several senses of the word – so I’m quite confident in being able to spot the few shining beacons of hope for humanity that still exist.”
Her temperature increases even more. That likely sounded more pathetic than she intended.
“I-In any case, you’re not going to mope around here, are you? I’m really bad at comforting people, that won’t end well…”
The last time she can remember trying to comfort someone was early in her hero career, when she accidentally messed up a shot of hers so she deadly injured her target but didn’t kill them on the spot. She held their hand while they cried about wanting to see their fiancée that was waiting at home for them one last time until they finally succumbed to their injuries.
Kaina takes pride in the fact that her remark at least manages to elicit a small huff of laughter from All Might.
“From how I got to know you so far, I doubt that. But there’s no need to put it to a test, I’m fine.”
The smile that accompanies his statement looks much more earnest than before, so Kaina counts this as a win overall.
“Just…”
“What?”
“It’s nothing. Or probably a foolish request. But…” For once, All Might glances away from her, as if embarrassed by what he is about to say. “You referred to me as All Might earlier. And while many people still do and I don’t want to divorce myself from my hero identity entirely, I enjoy the opportunity of hearing my actual name more often. So… I’m Yagi Toshinori.”
“Alright, Yagi-san,” Kaina acknowledges his implied request. “Tsutsumi Kaina,” she adds.
Yagi’s smile brightens even further. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Tsutsumi-san.”
Kaina quickly looks back down at her pottery attempt in front of her on the table. Though that causes memories of her pro hero career to bubble to the surface of her mind again, without her being able to do anything against it. She grimaces unhappily.
“Run out of steam for the day?” Yagi asks kindly after a few more moments during which she makes no more moves to return to her work.
“It’s not that.” Kaina breathes out a huff of frustration. “Just… I think now that I made this comparison between my past self and a chunk of clay that’s formed to people’s liking, it’s not going to leave again.”
Yagi hums to signal what seems like understanding. “That’s understandable,” he simply says, before reaching over to her desk towards Kaina’s poor attempt at pottery. “Is it better we stop here then?”
“Yeah,” Kaina agrees. She gives her work a last, pained glance, thankful when Yagi’s giant hand scoops it up and away from her. “I don’t think I would’ve been patient enough to build my skills until I could form something halfway passable anyway.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” Yagi admonishes her. “This is already good for a first attempt. Better than mine in any case.”
With a sarcastic wave of the hand, he directs Kaina’s focus on his own work lying in front of him on the table. It is a… donkey. Possible. Or maybe a dog. Or any other four-legged animal. Not that Kaina can think of any that has such a sausage-shaped body with such thin and long legs in actual real life.
A giggle escapes her before she can stop herself.
“Glad that we’re in agreement on this.” Yagi chuckles along with her.
Together, they start cleaning up the mess that already developed from just a few minutes of basic pottery experimentation.
“Maybe next time, we can try out a hobby that doesn’t require one to be creative after all?” Kaina suggests. Her eyes constantly travel back to the animal-thing, and every time they do, another giggle bubbles up within her.
Despite everything, Yagi gently put both of their failed attempts off to the side – his creature lost one of its legs in the process – and hasn’t squashed them back into simple balls of clay yet. She wonders if he’s even too soft-hearted for the task of destroying objectively disastrous pieces of art.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Yagi assures her.
“Is this really not a creative hobby, too?” Kaina questions. “I always thought baking requires one to be quite creative as well.” At least she looked through the shopwindows of numerous cake shops in her life and inwardly praised people’s inventiveness and creativeness at the uncountable cute and delicious-looking sweets she always saw.
“I guess it depends on what you want to do exactly,” Yagi says, pondering, as he starts pulling the ingredients out of the fridge and lines them up on the counter. “Of course, a certain amount of creativity is needed to invent your own recipes. But if you don’t want to come up with your own inventions, following an already existing recipe to a T leads to success as well.”
“Well, following instructions to a T is something I’m good at,” Kaina mutters darkly. Yagi looks at her in horror and as if he wants to apologise and call everything off, and she laughs. “Sorry, too morbid?”
With a shake of his head and a wry smile, Yagi returns to the preparations he makes. “I like that you can joke around and laugh freely. Better than constantly putting on a smile that turns into a façade over time.”
“Surely that’s debatable,” Kaina objects. She peers at the sheet with the recipe that Yagi chose for her first try at making a cake, though she finds it difficult to absorb the words when Yagi’s ‘I like that you can laugh’ replays on a loop in the back of her mind. “And hey, the instructions I’ll be getting from you won’t be so bad after all. They won’t cause anything to explode, go up in flames,…”
“No, ideally they won’t,” Yagi agrees with a laugh.
“I have to warn you though: When I was a pro hero, there were periods of time when I had to provide my meals entirely by myself, no fancy dietitian to make sure I was getting all the right nutrients. I ended up mostly eating takeaway food because my cooking attempts were unfit for consumption.”
“I’m sure between the two of us, we’ll manage to make something edible. If it’s any consolation, my first cooking attempts were quite horrifying as well. Cooking and baking are two different animals though. You don’t need to worry.”
As it turns out, cooking and baking might indeed be two different animals, Yagi is right in that, but one can be bad at multiple things.
How people claim to bake in order to relax, Kaina can’t understand. Fetching, measuring out and mixing all the ingredients the right way is incredibly stressful in her opinion. Annoyed, she tries to wipe her bangs which constantly bounce up and down in her vision away without getting any of the flour coating her fingers stuck in them.
“Do you need this for your bangs?”
Kaina turns around towards Yagi and looks at the object he’s holding up between his thumb and index finger.
“A bunny hair clip?”
Yagi points at his own two bangs hanging into his face, similarly to her own. “I have this problem as well, so I often clip them to my hair to get them out of the way. Like this.” He brushes his bangs from his forehead and onto his mane of hair in demonstration.
Kaina chuckles. “With such a cute hair clip?”
“Don’t tell anyone.” Yagi winks at her conspirationally, then joins in her chuckling. “So, shall I…?”
“Please.” Kaina turns her attention back to the dough she’s kneading, waiting for Yagi to apply the hair clip.
Although she expects the touch, she finds herself not prepared for it at all. It’s careful, soft, delicately feeling for the hairline of her bangs and pulling them backwards without causing even the slightest twinge. When one smaller wisp of her hair escapes the hold, it is tenderly tucked back in with the rest.
Kaina tries to concentrate on the way her fingers sink into the dough as she kneads it and hopes the colour of her face hasn’t turned too ugly.
The application of the hair clip is just as mindful. No part of the clip scratches against her skull, no strand of hair is pulled tighter than the others by the clip to cause any pain. The only reason she knows it’s sitting in place is because she hears the snap of it closing and Yagi’s joyful declaration of, “There!”
Experimentally, Kaina shakes her head from left to right. The clip and her hair stay firmly in place.
“Looking good,” Yagi adds before getting to the recipe’s next step as if it’s nothing.
He’s right, Kaina learns when she manages to catch a glimpse of herself in the reflection on the oven door. She does look good with her hair pulled back like this. In contrast to what Yagi described, he hadn’t fixated her bangs on top of her head in what would be a practical but silly-looking display. Instead, he draped them along the sides of her head, creating an easy but at the same time elegant hairstyle.
Fortunately, with the way baking often requires many well-timed steps after each other, Kaina is sufficiently distracted from her appearance and the way her heart is beating just a bit faster than usual.
It really is only due to Yagi’s help and instructions that the cake ends up baking pleasantly inside its cake tin in the oven. Kaina heaves an enormous sigh of relief at the entire ordeal being over – or almost over, at least – without there having been any explosions or other catastrophes. At some points, she wouldn’t have put it past herself to be able to cause that.
At least the frosting tastes good, but she hesitates to eat the remnants of it with Yagi present and waiting with her for the cake to finish baking.
When the timer finally beeps, a heavenly smell has already wafted through the kitchen for some time. Yagi retrieves the cake from the oven, frees it from its tin, and then tells Kaina to cut it. She does, fetching two plates and putting a slice of it on each. Once the cake has cooled enough, she takes a bite.
It tastes good. Delicious, even. She has fretted about the texture quite a bit, but it turned out just as light and fluffy as she hoped.
Kaina wouldn’t call it the best cake she has ever eaten – she has been on too many hero galas and parties from the HPSC, with master chefs and confectioners preparing extravagant meals – but it’s tasty for sure. Plus, although she refuses to get too sentimental… she cannot deny that there is something special about knowing that she, together with Yagi, made this cake. Knowing every step of the way, from the fun time handling the mixer to the mishap with the flour, the way she could barely stop herself from bouncing on her toes during the last minute on the oven timer, the fact that Yagi chose this particular recipe for giving her, them, a good first time baking and eating a cake together… Somehow, it all adds to the taste.
“Here, I proved that it’s not poisonous.” She barely remembers to swallow in time before addressing Yagi, who hasn’t yet touched his slice of cake at all. “Don’t you want to try it?”
Yagi smiles at her and it looks apologetic. “Believe me, I really do. However, I’m afraid I can’t due to my dietary restrictions.” His left hand starts massaging the left side of his torso at his words.
Kaina’s mood plummets instantly. “Do these dietary restrictions prevent you from eating cake at all or…?” She is keenly aware of the fact that it’s not her place to pry, but she cannot help asking this question.
“Well, there are a couple I can still eat. They’re boring though.” Yagi sighs and, noticing that Kaina has already demolished her entire slice, slides his own plate over to her. “I like it more to bake other cakes for other people in my life. The students, my fellow teachers, … I’m sure if you wanted to, we could gift this cake to some of the campus-dwellers as well. Or you can keep it to yourself of course, you should get to enjoy the hard work you put into making this! Hmm, in that case, let me get a box to keep it in, so it doesn’t go stale…”
Kaina nods along to Yagi’s words. “Given that this is the first and only cake I’m going to have made, it would be a pity if it went stale.” At Yagi’s questioning gaze, she adds as an explanation, “Honestly, this entire experience was very… stressful. Getting a cake out of it was nice, but it’s frankly not something I want to do on a regular basis. Perhaps there’s a… calmer hobby we could try out?”
As a child and young teenager, Kaina loved reading. The spare time she had available to do so got slimmer and slimmer, but she snatched every moment and every book she could to read.
She can’t pinpoint exactly when she stopped, when her workload simply got too much to allow any leisure activity… Nor why she can’t seem to submerge herself in the words on the pages again like she was able to do when she was younger.
Perhaps she just needs to find the right book. But she has already snuck a peak into and discarded what feels like a mountain of them. Yagi, being as generous as he is, brought a vast collection of many different types and genres with him.
For the last ten minutes, she has been watching him more than staring at any letters printed onto paper, truthfully. When offering her a stack of books, a comfortable recess with armchair and couch and a cup of tea to relax and enjoy herself, he also asked whether he might join her and continue reading the book he has recently started. From the cover, it seems like an old, possible American comic book; it’s somehow charming that that is what he chooses to read in his free time.
In general, he gives off a quite charming aura, with the way he’s leaning back into the cushions of the couch, at ease and fully concentrating on the pages in front of him, once in a while twirling one of his bangs around his index finger absentmindedly. He’s also wearing reading glasses. Though several times so far, Kaina noticed him peering over their rim, then looking through them again, then peering over them once more, as if having trouble deciphering the words nonetheless.
He’s cute.
No matter how hard she tries, after this thought entered her mind, Kaina cannot make it leave again.
Eventually – perhaps after just one or maybe several more minutes of staring at him, she cannot say – Yagi looks up and catches her gaze. A smile spreads on his lips, but the confused question in his eyes is obvious as well.
It’s not like Kaina can say any of the things that have been going through her mind, so she talks about something else that has occurred to her a while ago.
“You remember when you voiced your regrets over not doing anything against the HPSC and the way they operated in the shadows?”
Yagi hums in indication that he does but apparently has no idea where Kaina wants to go with this topic.
“Well, I just have been thinking about it and… I don’t think I would have accepted any hand you’d have offered me in order to escape the situation.” She smiles wryly. “I was convinced that what I was doing was for the greater good of society for quite some time. I was proud of what I was doing. Of how someone with a quirk like mine could still be a hero. If you’d have told me you’d ‘save’ me, I would have been offended – at best. So if you’re still hung up about it, don’t.”
Yagi mirrors the expression on her face. “Easier said than done. But I’ll try my best.” His gaze travels away from her and to the window behind her head. “In the end, our improved society is still under construction, but it’s visible that we are on the right path so far. I just wish… not such a large amount of people would have needed to be hurt or lose their lives for us to get onto it. Including you.”
“At least I’m here now,” Kaina says in another one of her miserable comforting-attempts.
“That’s right.” The smile on Yagi’s lips turns more natural at the words. “At least you’re here now.” The collar of her dress suddenly feels too stuffy and restrictive and she hastily glances at the book in her lap again. She doesn’t even know what it was about.
“So, how long should a reading session take?” she asks to change the topic again.
“If you don’t have any other commitments, you can read as long as you want to.” Yagi watches Kaina sigh and shift in her seat in search for a more comfortable position and adds, slight amusement in his voice, “Though I get the feeling you’ve already reached the level of reading you want to do for this time.”
“Not only this time,” Kaina admits. “Honestly, I think I would prefer a more… active hobby. At least at the moment.”
“Of course,” Yagi agrees. His gaze wanders out of the window once again. “Actually, with it being late summer, it’s a shame that all the hobbies I’ve suggested until now are ones that left us cooped up in a building.”
At the implication, Kaina’s heart jumps in her chest. “I don’t mind that!”
“Nevertheless! I’m sure a bit of fresh air will do you good.” Yagi shakes his head and slaps his hand against his forehead. “I started jogging regularly in the wake of my retirement, and yet I never thought that you might benefit from it as well.”
Kaina grimaces. “I don’t like jogging. And I’m also not sure it would really be such a good idea to go outside…”
“It will be nice, trust me! And you won’t have to be afraid of anyone’s reactions. They won’t bother you. In fact, they might even be happy you’re finally showing yourself and they can make your acquaintance!”
Kaina is seriously doubting that. The only exception she can think of might be Midoriya, but otherwise, she cannot imagine anyone being happy to see a former pro-hero-traitor as her. However, Yagi looks so excited at the prospect that she cannot find it in herself to debate him on this topic any further. At least he is right in one other aspect; the campus of U.A. has an abundance of parks to it and it will be nice to be able to feel the sun and small breezes on her skin and breathe the fresh air. She has already tried getting as much of that as possible through a window, but it’s naturally far from the same.
Whatever happens, she will at least treasure the opportunities to freely walk around in a greater radius than she currently does.
When Yagi has selected a new activity for them to try out – a sport, he tells her, not necessarily an outdoor activity but nonetheless something they can enjoy in the open air – he also leads them to a secluded corner of the U.A. campus, hidden behind several rows of trees. Honestly, she doesn’t know why she expected having to do whatever she’s going to do out in the open for everyone to see and gawk at. She has been stupid.
When they have arrived on a lovely opening within the forests growing around the U.A. school building, Yagi stops and pulls two things from a bag he carried along. The first Kaina cannot identify because it still seems to be packed up in a small case. The second she does recognise, and her heart already starts beating faster as her mind is racing with possibilities before Yagi has even had the chance to say and confirm anything. Ridiculous.
Luckily, Yagi first extends the hand with the headband towards her.
“Here,” he says, “I thought this might be helpful with them.” He gestures towards Kaina’s bangs.
“It will be,” Kaina agrees, taking the headband from him feeling flushed and jittery for entirely foolish reasons. “Thanks.” The headband has a pattern printed onto it and on closer examination, she sees that it’s made up out of many bunnies.
“So, uh, this was actually part of the same set that the bunny hair clips I use came from…” Yagi explains sheepishly. “I promise that this is totally unused though! I didn’t have any need for it so it just lay in my drawer collecting dust—N-Not literally of course, I checked that it wasn’t totally dusty before deciding to gift it to you…!”
“Thank you,” Kaina repeats firmly to save them both from the embarrassment. Then she pulls it swiftly over her head down to her shoulders, plucks the tips of her hair out of it, and finally pushes it all the way up onto her forehead again so her hair is securely tied back. The expression on Yagi’s face with which he looks at her is hard to decipher, so she clears her throat and says, “So. What kind of sport did you have in mind for today?”
Prompted by her question, Yagi hands her the other item he was carrying. Kaina twists open the top and takes out the skipping rope that’s folded tightly inside of it.
“Rope skipping?”
“Yeah, I thought it might be a nice hobby. It doesn’t need much equipment, space or any extra people, and it should be easy to learn the basics while also having much room for more complex and challenging exercises once you’ve reached that level.”
Kaina nods, already untwisting the rope. “Sounds good.”
“You can eventually decide whether you want to go the route of creating hard, fast-paced workout programmes or whether you might rather want to create choreographies timed to music. So it’s an easy but at the same time complex and flexible sport.”
Putting her feet onto the rope in order to adjust her hold on it, Kaina continues nodding along. “I’m surprised the first sport that came to your mind wasn’t shooting, considering my quirk.” After a split-second, she adds, “Or would taking up that sport disturb the other residents on campus too much?”
“No, that’s not the case.” In contrast to the enthusiastic tone from before, Yagi’s voice has fallen and grown serious now, prompting Kaina to look back up at him in fear that she has said something wrong. He is meeting her gaze head-on with his gleaming blue eyes, looking thoughtful and determined as he asks, “Is shooting the sport you want to do? I wasn’t sure, so I didn’t pursue that possibility. However, if it is what you—”
“It’s not,” Kaina cuts him off, and she hopes the wide, genuine smile on her face is enough to convince him of the truthfulness of her words. “Really.”
As a child, a large part of Kaina’s life was shaped by the fact that her quirk is good for one thing and one thing only. That was why she was overjoyed when she was told that even with a quirk as one-sided and destructive as hers, she could become a hero and help the betterment of society. Perhaps one day she can approach the topic of trying to find a different utility for her quirk and fully reclaim her quirk as ‘hers’ that way.
However, that is a tasks for a far-off day in the future, she doesn’t even dare to approach this topic with the way she currently is. She stills needs to grow in many areas before she can manage a feat like that. Until then, she is content to live her life without her quirk, like many people whose quirks give no benefits for their jobs have been doing for a long time already.
Like Yagi is doing, too, with the way he passed the torch of his quirk to Midoriya.
If he can manage to adjust to a life of suddenly being entirely quirkless, then Kaina can adjust to a life of not being able to use her quirk anymore without being reminded of her years locked away in prison.
“I have played skipping with the neighbourhood children, what, thirty years ago?” she muses to drag her thoughts back to the matter at hand. “I wonder if I can still do it.”
“I’m sure it’ll take a few moments of getting back into the rhythm, but you will be able to,” Yagi declares confidently. It causes Kaina to smile.
“Alright.” She takes a step forward and lets the rope swing against her heels a few times as she prepares herself. “Let’s see then.”
She takes a deep breath, then swings the rope in an arc above her head.
The first jump she lands perfectly, the following one makes her trip. It takes a few tries in general until she finds the rhythm necessary for skipping the rope again. At one point, she even flounders and gets tangled up in the rope so much that Yagi has to grab her upper arm to prevent her face from meeting with the ground. She’s thankful for him preventing that scenario although she very hastily puts her weight back onto her own two feet.
Not before long, she’s skipping without pause or interruption for a minute and more. The excitement and cheering Yagi does is a mirror of her own fluttering in her chest at the achievement.
Also, she discovered that rope skipping is indeed fun. She has only jumped in a straightforward fashion up to this point, once attempting a jump with her arms crossed on impulse, which she’s very proud about getting through without messing up, and is very much looking forward to trying out more advanced tricks.
“When are you joining me?” she asks before taking a greedy gulp from a water bottle that Yagi has generously prepared beforehand. Even before she started her hero training, this amount of exercise wouldn’t have sent her sweating, but she guesses she really did spend way too long without exercising properly.
“Ah, um…” Immediately, a frown develops on Kaina’s forehead. “Actually, I don’t think there are any ropes that are long enough for, uh, my height,” Yagi confesses, sheepishly messing up the hair at the back of his head.
“Have you looked?” Kaina continues to frown. Sure, Yagi is taller than the average person by a lot, but his height is nothing outrageous in a world full of many different quirk-induced body shapes.
“I did. But, well, I just found the standard length.” Yagi gestures to the rope that he handed Kaina. “I guess with the efforts of rebuilding everything that are still ongoing, getting the production of non-standard-sized skipping ropes going again is not at the top of the priority list…”
Which is understandable. Nevertheless, it doesn’t keep Kaina’s mood from souring further at all.
“Isn’t there… a different activity similar to rope skipping that doesn’t rely on equipment?” she asks.
The activity that comes to Yagi’s mind is dancing. It’s still somewhat reliant on equipment because neither of them has the talent to make up choreographies on their own, so they watch videos of other people performing routines and attempt to replicate them.
It’s fun. They quickly discover that neither of them has the best sense of rhythm, which leads to quite a bit of stumbling around, desperately trying to coordinate their limbs the right way, and much laughter.
Still. Most of the choreographies that they find that are in line with their dancing skill level are performed by large groups of people. It’s not like Kaina can see herself and Yagi performing from the outside – in fact, no one can or ever will watch them perform, that is for sure – so it doesn’t matter that the movements lack in impact when it’s just the two of them, but… it still feels lonely, somehow. Not like it is meant to be.
Couple dance is meant for just two people, her mind unhelpfully supplies at one point.
Something she’s never going to suggest they try out. Because even the thought of the close proximity they’d need to be in, the way she’d need to place her hands on Yagi’s body, his hands holding on to her…
“Here.” Yagi hands her a water bottle, concern clear on his face. “Don’t overheat yourself. We can take breaks at any time.”
Well. At least her burning face can be easily explained away by the exertion from dancing.
“It’s just an idea, Tsutsumi-san, you’re not obligated to anything. But I was thinking…”
Yagi’s hesitancy puts Kaina on edge. With all his previous hobby propositions, it never needed to be said that she could decline his ideas if she wanted to.
If he explicitly states it now, just what kind of suggestion is he going to make?
“I learned that U.A.’s flowerbeds are supposed to be rebuild, now that all the structural and functional damage has been taken care of. Technically the bots are supposed to do all the work, but I thought… we could use this opportunity to try out gardening. Ah, we wouldn’t be able to do any of the planning work however, as that has been set down already. Just the physical aspect of the work.”
Why U.A. needs flowerbeds on its campus, Kaina fails to understand. Even with the necessary rebuilding efforts completed, it still sounds like a superfluous task.
And another aspect has her stomach clenching with unease. If she works on flowerbeds on U.A.’s campus, that automatically means that she is within sight of everyone who might walk by.
Until now, she has stayed cooped up in the dormitory that U.A. kindly gave her temporary shelter in, only leaving to try out another hobby at Yagi’s request. But still, the places he led her to were never so out in the open as campus flowerbeds will likely be.
She feels horribly exposed just thinking about the situation.
“You don’t have to accept. Only if you want to.”
The way Yagi says these words, so gently, gives her the impression that he knows exactly what she is thinking in that moment.
And, well.
It would be easy to take the way out that he leaves open to her like this. It’s tempting to say the words.
However, Kaina has been many things in her life against her will – and she does not want to add “a coward” to that list of things.
So she squares her shoulders, tilts her chin up and tells Yagi, “No. Let’s do this.”
The date Yagi settles for their undertaking is the next weekend. Kaina doesn’t know whether that makes the situation better or worse; the students might freely roam the campus after all, but at least they are not sitting in the classroom whose windows are next to the flowerbed.
As Yagi has said, they have an already-drawn map of the flowerbed, telling them where each flower or bush is supposed to be placed. The bots are taking care of the delivery of the plants and other supplies they need, like soil or hedge clippers. All they have to do is to embed the plants in the bed.
“Alright.” Kaina puts on the gardening gloves that Yagi hands her, then grabs the nearest shovel. “Here we go.”
The first turn of the shovel is harder than she expects. It hasn’t rained in a while during their summer, so the soil is dry. Her first move doesn’t have enough force in it to sink into the earth, and when she manages on her second try, the soil cracks ugly into large, hard chunks instead of something like the smooth, fresh potting soil that was delivered to them.
Kaina continues shovelling, making a mess of the flowerbed, until she thinks she made a hole that’s deep enough. Then she strolls over to Yagi, who is setting up planters in their designated places, to look at the map and see which plant she is supposed to put into the hole she made.
It’s a gnarly, prickly shrub that she doesn’t know the name of. It’s not pretty-looking in the slightest, and if Kaina interprets the map correctly, it will likely be a filler to accentuate some of the more charming plants.
The day grows hot very fast, the sun beating down on their heads, necks and arms. Kaina is very grateful for the sun hats that Yagi suggested they wear.
When she kneels down on a knee cushion to better work the soil around a plant, she immediately learns that it was not the best idea to wear a dress for gardening.
Yagi and her should have figured out a better, more systematic approach to planting the flowerbed, because the bags of soil are too heavy to be carried back and forth. Eventually, they open a second one so they have one next to them each, figuring that they’ll need to use up all the bags provided anyway.
Each new plant that is put into its place reveals more of the bed’s projected shape, and whoever planned it all out certainly knows their work because it looks very good, Kaina thinks.
The flowers that are put into the planters are so delicate. One slips from her grasp as she tries to transfer it, splattering on the ground, spraying soil everywhere. They luckily succeed in picking up the fragile seedling and plant it nicely next to its brothers and sisters.
There are even some twiners that are supposed to grow there, and setting up their supports is a tricky challenge but incredibly rewarding once she managed it.
At first, she is hesitant about using the hedge clippers to cut an errant branch or two of the bushes and saplings so they all fit together nicely. Once she did it the first time, however, it becomes easier the more she does it.
Yagi is the one who sits down from the exhaustion of their work first. Kaina orders him to stay put, catch his breath again and drink enough water while she finishes up the last tasks. The flowerbed has been nearly filled and everything came along nicely.
Eventually, when Yagi has recovered again, she asks him to fill up the watering can at the closest sillcock. It’s not that far to go but it’s around the corner, out of sight and range of the bubble their flowerbed has been in. Naturally, Yagi cheerfully agrees and heads off.
When he hasn’t returned after ten minutes, Kaina grows both concerned and annoyed. She debates with herself for a while, but after five more minutes, she resolutely grabs the second watering can and follows after him.
After rounding the corner, she immediately sees how he has been held back. Yagi is deep in conversation with several of his students, both sides talking animatedly about a lesson they had.
Kaina’s heart pounds. Her steps falter but she manages to continue walking without stopping. She slips past the cluster of people without looking at anyone – but at least nobody looks at her either, or makes any kind of remark in her direction.
It’s the same on her way back.
“I’m so sorry,” Yagi says immediately when he returns a few minutes later, his watering can now sloshing with water, too. Kaina has already emptied her own but the water wasn’t enough for all of the plants, so it’s good he hasn’t returned empty-handed.
“No big deal,” she meanwhile says in response to Yagi’s apology. “Talking with your students is super important, I get that. Here, I’ve watered the right side already, you take care of the left.”
“Of course,” Yagi agrees. “Ah, Tsutsumi-san, don’t—”
Kaina halts in the middle of wiping the sweat from her forehead with her arm. “Huh?”
“You have—well, there’s a smudge of dirt on your skin that you’re actually making bigger with the movement.”
“Oh.” Kaina lowers her arm but also shrugs. “I’m probably filthy all over.”
Yagi hums in sad agreement, eyes trailing over her. “I guess you said you didn’t mind dirtying your clothes, but still…” He chuckles awkwardly. “I honestly don’t know if your dress can be given to the cleaning bots for the washing machine, with the way it looks.”
“Never mind that.” Kaina looks down at herself.
There are indeed many patches of dirt and soil on her dress, and also a water spot from her trek with the full watering can, which sadly only made even more of a mess than helping with washing away the dirt. Her arms and legs don’t really fare much better.
There are clumps of soil in her shoes, between her toes somehow.
She also has dirt underneath her fingernails, despite wearing gardening gloves while she worked.
Kaina is really, undeniably filthy all over.
She remembers being filthy, from before.
How she would come home from a job, feeling foul and disgusting, every second that passed torture until she could jump underneath her shower and scrub her skin raw for the following two hours in her attempts at getting clean again.
In comparison to that—
“It’s great.”
Kaina fears she might come off as a maniac with how big she’s grinning and the way she’s inspecting her dirty fingernails.
“I’m glad.”
But then she catches sight of Yagi’s expression and his eyes are shining with such warmth that she forgets about every worry she ever had.
“Do you have any plans for today?”
Kaina snorts. “You know I don’t. So, what’s your suggestion this time? Are there any more planting actions for us to take care of?”
Somehow, Yagi has the audacity to wink. “Wouldn’t want to spoil anything. If you’d like to follow me…”
Kaina does, although she starts growing more and more unsettled the closer they get to U.A.’s gate.
“Yagi-san, you know I can’t—”
“I’ve arranged everything with the principal and security,” Yagi reassures her as he fills in a form a guard at the gate gave him. “Our little excursion has been okayed, so don’t worry about anything.”
Then he extends his arm to Kaina. She accepts, and then she’s suddenly outside of U.A.
Outside of any walls and barriers. For the first time since… she doesn’t bother calculating.
Their journey is short but Yagi does not reveal where they are headed the entire time. Finally, they come to a stop outside of a building. Kaina frowns when she reads its sign.
“An animal shelter?”
Yagi nods and holds the door open for her.
“What are we doing here?” It’s probably a stupid question, but Kaina cannot help asking.
“Seeing if we find a pet that you connect with,” Yagi replies as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Before Kaina can respond to that, he is already talking to one of the shelter’s workers, who agrees to show them around.
“Do you have a preferred kind of pet? Dogs, cats, birds…”
“Dogs are fine,” Kaina answers. Her head is spinning.
Somehow, they end up in a yard where some of the shelter’s older but amicable dogs reside. They were also offered to visit the puppy section, but Kaina said that she doesn’t mind adopting an older dog, which made the worker glow with joy (literally, likely because of their quirk).
Kaina feels slightly guilty for saying it, seeing as she doesn’t intend to adopt any animal whatsoever.
Once she has entered the yard, however, she’s nearly swayed in her decision. Several dogs come trotting up to her to inspect her, all of them seeming friendly and curious; there’s a dachshund that nearly jumps into her arms with eagerness and a collie and slobbering bulldog and a beagle and she doesn’t know all of their breeds but they are all just too cute.
“You know I can’t adopt a dog,” she says to Yagi after the initial excitement has died down. The worker has suggested that they play a bit with the dogs to get to know them, so currently she and Yagi are picking out toys from a large toybox while the worker distracts the gang of rascals. “So why did you bring me here?”
“You don’t have to adopt a dog, or any other animal,” Yagi agrees. “This shelter also has an option, for example, to regularly walk a dog. If that’s rather something you want—”
“That’s something I can do even less,” Kaina states dryly, thinking about her agreed confinement to U.A. “I have to say, in your pursuit to finding a hobby for me, this has been your first bad choice. Taking care of an animal is never a hobby, it’s—”
“A commitment. I know.” Yagi clears his throat and sinks to his knees to pet an excited poodle which evidently came up to them to see what they’re doing. “This whole time that I’ve suggested you get a hobby and thought about suitable ones, I’ve drawn from my own experiences with my retirement and suddenly having too much free time and uncomfortable thoughts on my hand, I’m sure I’ve mentioned that before. So of course I can be easily wrong, but… I thought back to that time once more, and I realised what actually helped me the most wasn’t the new activities I took up, but rather the commitments to the world I still had. I still had to train young Midoriya and all the other hero course students, and I needed to get a grip on my life and fast even if only for their sake. So I just thought…” At this point, he trails off, gaze travelling around the pen.
Kaina purses her lips. “I can see where you’re coming from,” she admits. “However… You were a hero, too. You know why so few heroes have a pet, don’t you? Because the chance of not coming home one day are just too high, and if you don’t have a good enough support system with people who could take care of it in case of your potential demise, the poor animal is just going to suffer. And I might not be a hero anymore, but surely you’re not blind to the fact that I nonetheless don’t have such a support system that would permit taking adequate care of a pet.” She vehemently tries to resist the urge to pet a terrier that came over to sniff her shoes.
“At U.A., you’ll always find more eager volunteers to help with your pet than you know what to do with. Even if it’s not about taking care of it in an emergency. I’m certain that a dog or other pet could even be a bridge between you and the other residents.” Yagi’s knees crack audibly when he stands back up. “Also, I am naturally willing to help out myself whenever you need it as well.”
“Oh, given that this is your very own idea, it’s so good to hear that you offer a helping hand yourself,” Kaina quips, trying to be snarky, because she can feel the cute dog eyes directed at her from everywhere slowly but surely eroding her resolve and her reasoning.
“I do.”
Ostensibly, Yagi’s attention is still on the dog at his feet. However, Kaina notices the way he angles his hand towards her. It’s an invitation, a very subtle one which he can retract without awkwardness if it isn’t perceived or well-received, but there nonetheless, and Kaina notices it.
Happiness bubbles up in her chest, finding its way onto her face in the form of a smile.
“Well, in that case…”
She reaches out for his hand and takes it, carefully lacing their fingers together. He squeezes slightly, as if to confirm that her hand is truly lying in his, that this is real
“Thank you for the helpful aid.”