Chapter Two
It seemed like the whole school was at her funeral. Aizawa spotted kids wearing their uniform that he'd never even met before and teachers from different classes. There were cousins and aunts and even one of the pro heroes that had rescued him. Everyone tried to give their condolences to Chitose's parents, but there were so many people that one of her uncles had to step in to greet the attendees in their stead.
Even though he didn't recognize most of them, they all seemed to know who he was, staring at him for too long and turning to their neighbour to whisper. Thankfully, no one tried to approach him. He stood off to the side, ignoring the pitying glances and unable to look anyone in the eye.
The afternoon air was thick, sticking in his throat and permeating into his body with heaviness, or maybe it was just him. One person started to sob quietly. He wanted to run away from it, from the expressions of devastation and sadness in all these strangers' faces. He felt like a stranger himself. He had no right to be here, mourning her like the rest of them.
Everyone assumed that he and Chitose had already been in the store when it was attacked. No one knew the truth.
No one knew it was his fault.
"Ah, Aizawa," someone said.
It was Chitose's mother. She looked worn, threadbare, with deep circles under her eyes that he didn't remember from his visits when he was younger. Nevertheless, she smiled at him.
He looked down. "Hello."
"Chitose's father and I were thinking, we were wondering, if, you see…" She seemed to get choked up, but recovered and carried on. "You two were such good friends. We just wanted you to know that you are welcome to visit for tea, when you like, if you want to talk about Chitose."
He nodded, still staring at the ground. He couldn't get his eyes to focus on any particular thing.
"We are so thankful… that she wasn't alone. So bright, my little girl. But at the very least, you were with her..."
The heaviness tightened, constricting his throat, a sudden claustrophobia. "I'm sorry," he choked, and slipped away.
He returned a few hours later, when everyone had already left.
Almost everyone. There was one person hunched down by the grave. Their large body looked a bit silly folded down in a cross-legged sitting position. It was All Might, the pro hero that had rescued Aizawa and defeated the villain.
All Might was not wearing his hero costume, but a black suit for funerals that made the usually colorful hero look serious and somber. Upon spotting him, Aizawa paused, but All Might sensed his presence and beckoned him closer without looking.
Aizawa joined him to sit by the grave.
To his surprise, All Might had tears flowing freely down his face.
"I want to apologize to you, young man," All Might said. "If I had gotten there just a bit earlier, I would have been able to save you both. You have the right to be angry at me."
Aizawa hugged his knees to his chest, looking at the kanji engraved in the tombstone. Chitose. Some part of him did want to be angry at All Might. What was the point of making such a flashy entrance if he didn't get there in time to save one girl? Why had he taken so long? If only he'd just -
It was tempting to pin the blame on someone else. But, he knew, deep down, that it wasn't the hero's fault. Not when Aizawa had been the one to rush stupidly into danger, thinking he could save people.
My fault.
I'm sorry, he thought, looking at the grave. Not like that would fix anything. He hugged himself tighter and buried his head in his knees, his eyes burning with tears.
Would she blame him for her death? Would she be mad? Or would she just laugh at him like when he fell off the skateboard?
All Might placed a hand on his shoulder.
In halting, disjointed sputters and starts, Aizawa told him everything.
It wasn't the last time that Aizawa lost someone.
After Chitose, there was Oboro, and after Oboro, there were other hero colleagues that fell in battle, and all the civilians that Eraserhead didn't arrive in time to save.
Each loss was one more dent in his emotional armour, one more fragment of resolve chipped away. Luckily, Eraserhead had more layers of armour than most. His tendency to keep people at arms' length spared him a lot of the grief suffered by his more easily attached colleagues.
Losing people, he soon learned, was just a part of hero life.
Eraserhead specialized in stealth and in one-to-one combat. If he was first on scene, he used the element of surprise to take the enemy down as fast and efficiently as possible. If there were other pro heroes around, most of the time no one even noticed his presence or his intervention. Later, the other heroes would recall what a happy coincidence it was that the villain's quirk malfunctioned at key moments in the fight.
Whether solo or in a team, he left as soon as the threat was removed and the police arrived, disliking the attention of cameras and the adoring gratitude of the public. Himself and his quirk had to remain as secret as possible to maximize his effectiveness.
At first, he thought his hero agency would object to this modus operandi – being unknown was, after all, not great for merch sales – but they were accommodating. The agency agreed to indulge his preference and let him slack on the public image side of things if Eraserhead took less breaks. This suited him fine. Most pro contracts included long yearly breaks to be with their families and recover from the physical and emotional toll that hero work took by its nature. But Aizawa didn't have friends or much of a life outside of work, so he was happy to trade that privilege away.
He didn't take a break for ten years.
The passage of time was marked by his losses. One more person, one more dent, one more scar. But he kept going, in memory of the girl who had first believed in him. Anyway, what would he do instead of hero work? Knit?
He lost count of how many villains he took down and of how many civilians he saved. Eraserhead knew he was getting tired and reckless, but he kept going anyway.
It was Midnight who talked him into becoming a teacher.
Later he wouldn't be able to recall the arguments she used, and he wondered whether he'd really been that tired, or whether she'd sedated him with her quirk without him noticing. Either way, it was probably a sign that he wasn't doing as well as he liked to pretend.
He wasn't sure he was suited for teaching, though. He was too pessimistic to inspire any sort of heroism in a bunch of bright-eyed kids. Eraserhead was pretty much the opposite of the hero ideal in everyone's minds. Someone like All Might would do a much better job.
But Midnight thought otherwise, and apparently so did UA. Aizawa accepted the offer.
If all he could teach was the grey reality of hero work, then he would at least teach it well.
{}-{}-{}-{}-{}-{}-{}-{}-{}-{}-{}
The girl opened her eyes. She sighed.
She was lying on the floor in a cold, dark room. She could hear two voices yelling from downstairs– a man and a woman. By the sound of things they had been going at it for a while.
She slowly stood up and looked around, wondering what was the cause of death this time.
It became obvious immediately. Empty bottles and packets of pills were littered all over the floor of the bedroom. The girl sighed again. She was used to tragic deaths by now, but it still made her so sad to wake up in the body of someone who had taken their own life. "Wherever you are, I hope you're happier," she said to her hands. She clenched them into fists.
Sad as it was, she couldn't change what had already happened. Rather than worrying about that, the girl set about figuring out the identity of the body she now inhabited, and where on earth she had ended up this time.
Huh. The voices downstairs were yelling in –
Japanese.
A thrill of excitement ran through her. The last time she'd been in Japan was as Chitose. How many years ago had that been? It was hard to keep track sometimes. Four for Anabelle, and Oskar five, and Abimbola five as well, so was that – fourteen years? Oh, she'd forgotten Ming - had Ming been before or after Chitose?
Well, either fourteen or sixteen years, anyway, it worked out. She'd been meaning to return to Japan. That many years was more than enough time for Aizawa to recover from Chitose's death.
The memory of the stoic, awkward boy who had been her friend in that life was soft and warm but also full of regret. She'd been so happy to finally find someone with an erasing quirk, but she hadn't expected to like him so much. And he'd ended up becoming a soft spot, to the point where she'd put off her own plans just so she could watch him grow. That poor boy had no one, he'd needed a friend. In the end, Chitose had died a lot sooner than she would have liked.
The room was small, but it was decorated with cute things, hero plushies and posters and school supplies. The notebooks were labelled with her name. Kodai Yui. Fifteen years old. On the desk, there was a family picture, though the faces of the people in the picture were scribbled out with angry black scratches. There was also an envelope and a box. At first, she thought it was a suicide note. She hesitated to open it. Whoever Yui had meant it for, it certainly wasn't the person now inhabiting her body.
But she couldn't let its intended recipients read it, and it would be sad if Yui's last words went completely unheeded. She would do her best to honor any last wishes expressed in the note.
It turned out not to be a suicide note, but an acceptance letter from UA. In the box was a recording commending her for her success. By comparing the details on the letter with the calendar on the desk, she worked out that her first day of school was tomorrow. Once again, she felt a pang of pity for Yui.
You had your whole life ahead of you. You must have been in so much pain.
There was a mirror in the room, so she turned the light on and assessed her new body. Yui was a pretty girl, with a button nose, black hair in a cute bob cut and beautiful green eyes. She was wearing pink pyjamas patterned with white clouds and rabbits.
More banging and shouting from downstairs interrupted her observation.
She turned away from the mirror. There was another angry shout. An insult.
There was little that could phase her after living through as many strange and tragic experiences as she had. But thinking about Kodai Yui, a slow, cold rage climbed up her veins. She sidestepped the pill packets and headed downstairs.
Yui's parents didn't even realize she was there, so busy were they yelling at each other. The mother called the father a useless parasite who might as well die. The father called the mother a cheater and a bitch.
"Enough," Yui said.
Both parents stopped yelling, surprised at seeing her there.
"You are both horrible people. You are so focused on yourselves you didn't even realize your own daughter was suffering and needed help." She sighed. "Get a divorce, it'll make everyone happier." After that, she went back upstairs, cleaned up the mess of pill boxes, and got into bed.
She had a first day of school to attend tomorrow. She smiled, a little bit excited despite herself. Her past few bodies had all lived and died very young. She hadn't got to start high school in a while!
A part of her was impatient for something else, though. Now that she was finally in Japan, she urgently wanted to find Aizawa. She wanted to make sure he was okay, and she was also curious. What kind of adult had he grown up to be? Probably a super serious and humorless potato. She giggled at the thought.
Tomorrow, she thought with a yawn, and sunk into sleep.
A.N.: Guys please review :) if there are parts that you didn't like / thought were kinda lame, let me know too! I can only improve if I know what I'm doing wrong.