"WHAAAT?"
Screaming was certainly not a rare verb in Bakugou's house, but the yell that had come out of the throat of sixteen year old Katsuki had something different from all the other times.
"Come on, stop doing so much scene. How long has it been since we invited Izuku and his mother to lunch?"
"As far as I'm concerned, they can stay where they are!"
"Katsuki, stop making noise, I told you."
"And you stop saying bullshit, menopause made your brain go mush!"
A terrible slap hit Katsuki's hair.
"I gave birth to a rude son! Are you implying I'm some old woman?"
"Old shrew, yes!"
"The little angel spoke!"
There was a lively concert of sparks between mother and son, so Masaru, the only docile member of that crackling family, got up from the sofa and tried to make peace.
"Katsuki, your mother is right... How bad is it if we invite Inko and her son?"
"It's that I have to suffer Deku five days a week, and I just need to find him in my way even on Sunday!"
"Still with that hateful nickname, Katsuki?"
His mother had tried, first with the easy and then with the hard ways, to make her son forget the cruel nickname of "incapable" he had given him even before going to elementary school, but in vain.
The praise the blonde received outside home far outweighed his mother's reproaches, and his father's peaceful attempts to make him a kind person.
"Don't bug me, he has chosen it as a Hero's name, you can call it too if you like!"
Katsuki was pouring rice into his breakfast cup. Usually, he would leave the dormitory on Saturday afternoons to spend Sunday with his parents.
"If you say so..." Mitsuki muttered with a grimace, very unconvinced.
She put the coffee cups for herself and her husband on the table.
"Anyway, cut the crap: you will invite Izuku and Inko to our table for next Sunday, and woe to you if you make me do some sorry figures, have I explained myself?"
She lifted the spoon and waved it in front of her son's nose.
"Okay, stay calm." he had surrendered then, lowering it with his finger.
Masaru chuckled, and raised the cup to his mouth.
With extreme reluctance, that same afternoon Katsuki took his cell phone and pressed on the dusty name that for years had been almost completely unused in the most remote meanders of his sim.
He would have left him a simple message.
"My mother invites you to lunch next Sunday."
Done. No frills.
Katsuki sighed and threw the cell phone on the bed, then put his hands in his pants pockets and left the room.
After a few hours, the explosive blonde heard the "beep" of the phone.
"Okay, thanks. What should I bring?"
"Tape to close your mouth, possibly." thought the rebellious Hero, but didn't write it to him, even if he was tempted.
"Whatever you like."
Izuku read but didn't reply anymore, except after twenty minutes he delivered a meaningless message, a jumble of letters.
"Eeeeejjs."
"What is it, Deku?"
"Sorry, I had my cell phone in my pocket and the keyboard must have unblocked."
"He's a nerd, but he is not very practical with the phone..." the bored blond promptly thought.
The next day, during training break, Katsuki noticed that Deku was massaging his left shoulder.
Not that he cared much, but it flashed in his mind that the madman had trained with One for All in his house, with his mother a few meters away.
It wasn't so, of course, but the reason he had a sore shoulder was somewhat bizarre and he understood it from some excerpts of conversation he listened to from a short distance away:
"Midoriya, what's wrong?"
It was Mineta's voice.
"Yesterday I moved some heavy boxes, I must have made a wrong move."
"Hey, but how? Do you get knocked out by pieces of cardboard?"
Sero had placed his elbow on his right shoulder and was likably making fun of him.
"Spring cleaning, Deku?" Ochako asked him.
"Yes, we have a closet full of odds and ends... My mother's old purses, plastic bags and then..."
He had suddenly stopped; it was as if a cold and dark wind had lashed his face, and had isolated him from the playful context of just before.
"... Nothing at all... We resume training, break is over."
Izuku had been in a bad mood for the rest of the day.
Katsuki had noticed that the contents of those boxes was something unpleasant for him, even if he couldn't understand what his mother might have accumulated over the years to annoy him.
Izuku knew it, but he hadn't felt like revealing it to his companions, because it was a part of the past that nobody knew.
The mysterious object was only one, it was... a tie.
A black tie, apparently insignificant, thin.
A piece of cloth curled up on itself, so wispy as to appear almost the waste of some tailoring.
And it had belonged to his father.
And it was exactly like his father: forgotten, secluded.
And it was exactly how his father had fulfilled his parenting duties: unsatisfactorily, shamefully.
Izuku wasn't an easily angered boy, and in any case his anger vanished after a while, but Hisashi Midoriya, the man who had assumed his wife's surname after the wedding, had the power to make him lose his temper like no one.
What memories did he have of him? No one, because he was never at home, had done nothing with him, had no photograph.
Of him, Izuku only knew that he had light brown hair, pale blue eyes, that he worked abroad on oil rigs and that his Quirk was Fire Breath. Nothing else.
Any stranger could have provided more detailed indications of its life.
When the green-haired boy found the tie, he grabbed it angrily and showed it to his mom, who was moved to see it.
"Oh, this was worn by your father on the day of our first date... He was always so elegant..."
Inko touched her full cheek and moaned slightly, thinking back to when she was a girl in love.
"My father? I hope you're joking!"
The green-haired woman was troubled by the abrupt tone of her son and stopped thinking about the past.
"Izuku..."
"How do you call him a father? He is never around, he is not even a husband!"
Taken aback, Inko gasped.
"I want to know why he never telephones, why he never sends a postcard, or... Oh, of course, why he doesn't take a plane and comes to visit his family for once!"
"He's busy…"
"Oh, without him oil won't be extracted?"
"Izuku ..."
"I'm tired, mom. I don't have his phone number, and neither do you, because you never call him. Is he still alive, at least?"
"Y-yes."
"Good for him."
It had been a one-way fight between the two, and Izuku had felt strange to attack his mother in this way.
He had felt a little like the Kacchan of the situation.
That Monday evening, mindful of that discussion, he had dinner quickly and wanted to retire early to his room, but walking at a march pace and looking on the ground he had collided with Katsuki, who had returned to the room for a moment to retrieve the headphones.
"Be careful!" he had blown against him.
"Sorry." Izuku had murmured, poisonous, as if that had been a "f-word" instead of a mumbled apology.
He had slammed the door and the blond had stood for a few moments staring at the silent wood.
Shortly thereafter, he sat on the sofa and tried to listen to some music, but hard rock and heavy metal, unlike usual, didn't relax him that evening as they should have.
"Anyone know why Midoriya rocketed to his room? Kacchan, do you know anything?"
"He may be sleepy, Battery."
"But it's eight o'clock!"
"..."
"In fact, I saw him a lot down..." Momo said, worried.
"Maybe some cheese would cheer him up..." Yuga proposed.
"Forget it... Better a slice of high calorie cake!" Rikido countered.
"How many useless bullshits..." Kacchan thought instead, tired of that chatter with no rhyme nor reason.
He then got up from the sofa, after unplugging the headphones off his cell phone.
"Hm? Are you leaving too?" Denki asked.
"Yes."
"Oh my, such old men you are..."
Katsuki said nothing, his mind was clogged with thoughts and what seemed... curiosity?
Curiosity for Deku's life, for that detail that put him in a bad mood.
No noise came from the green-haired's room. He must have fallen asleep.
Katsuki, however, at midnight was still awake, to reflect.
As a child, he had practically never been interested in Deku's life, on the contrary... If he had disappeared from his group of "followers" he wouldn't have regretted him.
Now why did he feel on his toes for him?
And why did he have a bad feeling about that situation?
The ticking of the alarm clock went on and on, so much so that in the end, unnerved, the blonde took it and put it in the drawer, where he would have continued to tick without busting his nuts.
Alas, even without a loud alarm, Kacchan's sleep would only have come around three o'clock.