Oh no, things are happening.

Izuku's hair was green.

It was a brilliant dark green forest color, only visible in direct sunlight. It wasn't a incredibly interesting fact, it wasn't even the most interesting thing about Izuku himself, but Shouto took pleasure in just another random detail about his friend.

Nearly a week had passed since that afternoon. It was well worth the harsher training he endured after getting home so late. For the most part, it was very much like their meetings in the dark. There had just been sunlight on their clothes, bright pigments of green, and streets full of people surrounding them.

Shouto had caught himself smiling about it a few times, walking the halls of his school absentmindedly. If his peers noticed the soft upturn of his lips, they didn't dare comment.

He was doing it again, he noted. The teenager glanced away from the lecture before him, covering his mouth with his hand as he stared out the window to his left. It was math, the last class he had before lunch. There were only a few minutes left until the bell, obvious from the growing restlessness of his classmates.

He remained silent and separated in the back corner of the room until the bell rang. Everyone rushed to their feet, filing out of the room with bags thrown over their shoulders and loud conversations filling the air. He quietly packed up his things and grabbed his bag. He decided upon the library again today, wandering to the cafeteria to collect his food before he turned back into the deserted halls.

Shouto sat at his usual back corner and logged into one of the computers while he inspected his food. When he glanced back at the screen, he was met with a message asking if he wanted to restore his previous webpages.

He couldn't remember what he had even been looking at last time. The last several lunches had been spent on an English essay, always his worst subject. Fleetingly, he clicked restore anyway and was met with an error screen.

Suddenly, staring at the screen, he remembered the video, the forums of strange stories, and the mystery villain, All for One.

Yet, according to what was in front of him, the video had been removed.

The post couldn't be found. Shouto blinked at the sideways frowning face for a moment, trying to remember the details of the video. He recalled there was something he wanted to look up afterwards when he got home, but had ended up being distracted by Izuku and, later, his father.

For a few minutes, Shouto tried searching for the video in other places, but came up with no results. It seemed to have vanished completely from the Internet. When he looked up All Might, he scrolled through his long list of previous conflicts for anything that involved the villain couple, but found nothing there either. It was only when he was reading the series of names included in All Might-involved incidents that he remembered the name.

Her name: Inko.

Shouto quickly opened another tab and typed in just that, slurping some noodles while he waited for it to load. Immediately, the first results included several articles concerned with the death of a woman and her son. Shouto read the first headline.

Mother and son killed in apartment building explosion near Musutafu.

He didn't understand immediately why Inko warranted these types of results, maybe the villain had been responsible somehow. Maybe the explosion was a result of her quirk. All of the articles were from about a year ago. He reached for his drink as he clicked on the first link, bringing him a full-length page.

The first line repeated the article's headline in bold font again, along with the author and published date. He scrolled down to read further and met with two photos side by side, presumably the mother and son.

His milk carton fell to the floor.

It was Izuku.

In the photo he was wearing a typical black gakuran that made him look too small. It was probably a school photo, from the basic background and uniform. His smile was thin, subdued from what Shouto was used to seeing, from what belonged on his face.

He seemed paler, darker freckles standing out on his skin. His eyes were dull, hiding, hesitant. He looked a little younger, but it was undeniably Izuku. Green hair and all.

He was dead.

The woman pictured next to him was undoubtedly his mother, with the same dark green hair tied back and the same big green eyes. The resemblance was uncanny. Her picture was a little happier. She gave him a digital smile through the screen.

Shouto felt sick. The screen twisted and morphed as he tried to force his eyes from the two photos. He attempted to read past the pictures, scrolling down to the rest of the article. His vision was blurred, for some reason. He spread his fingers on the table, trying to steady himself. It took excruciatingly long to make sense of the words before him.

Midoriya Izuku and Midoriya Inko died a year ago. According to the fire officials, it had been a random gas explosion with no evidence of foul play. An accident destroyed their apartment and the couple surrounding it at about two in the morning. There had been a few others injured, but only they had died.

The boy he had spent almost half of a year getting to know was dead. The one he had seen just last week, with gold in his eyes and green in his hair.

He had been dead for a long time.

Shouto's hands were shaking as he pushed away from the computer. His foot bumped the spilled carton. It skidded across the floor. At first, he dizzily thought he was going to throw up, but the feeling died into an empty shock. He stared at the floor and the growing pool of milk, head swimming.

What the fuck?

What the fuck?

Was he insane? Was Izuku even real at all?

It wasn't like his family didn't have a history of mental illness.

Perhaps he had seen the article before. He imagined the boy without even knowing it. Maybe it was the result of some head trauma, courtesy of his father's training. He had hallucinated every conversation, every word Izuku said.

It had felt so real.

When he told him those things, when he laughed. The sound gracing Shouto's ears sounded real. When he touched him, gentle and caring. When he smiled at him, drawing strange feelings out of the icy depths of his heart, ripping down every wall Shouto had crafted.

Shouto left his lunch on the desk, carton on the floor, but managed to remember his bag and his phone as he scrambled to his feet. He didn't even close the tabs on the screen, rushing out of the library without a word.

No one batted an eye as he ran out the front doors of the school. Plenty of students left for lunch. Shouto was just one of them, typing Midoriya Izuku into his phone as he emerged into the city.

O-O-O-O

Aldera Junior High was a medium-sized public school.

It was a plain building, surrounded by a plain wall and on a plain street. Their lunch must not have ended yet, with students in matching uniforms lingering around the gates aimlessly.

It was on the outskirts of the city, a forty minute walk from Shouto's school. Families who lived in the suburbs and the apartment buildings he had passed on the way here probably sent their children here. It wasn't anything like Shouto's school, an expensive private school his father payed a great deal of money to for him to skip his afternoon classes.

The teenager glanced at his phone. Izuku's dull eyes stared back at him.

He would have been a second-year here when he died. If he was alive, he'd be a third-year now, like him.

Shouto spent an uncomfortably long time staring up at the building. He wanted to move, to storm the school and demand answers they probably didn't have. Instead, he stood frozen. He might as well have been encased in ice, from the chill in his bones and the stiffness of his joints.

He searched the face of every student he saw, wishing he'd catch those bright eyes, hear someone affectionately call his name.

Strangers' conversations floated around him.

Some of the students were talking about him, probably wondering who he was. It washed over him like a distant, garbled mess of hushed words and accusing sentences. Clearly, from his uniform, he wasn't from around here. He assumed the bell would ring soon and they would finally leave him alone to stare in insane peace.

Instead, one of the boys dressed in black stalked up to him. He wore a glare, with spiky blond hair and crimson eyes.

"Who the fuck are you, Half-and-Half?"

"Are you a third-year?" Shouto asked instead of answering the question, serving to only irritate the blond further. His eyes moved deathly slow from the building to the boy, nearly ignoring his presence entirely.

"Yeah, why the fuck does it matter? Why have you been weirdly staring at our school for like fifteen minutes?" He snapped.

"Do you know who Midoriya Izuku is?"

There was a visible change in the other student. His eyes widened a little, his posture stiffened, and his mouth bared in a snarl. He clinched his fists and for a moment, Shouto thought he was going hit him.

The blond, instead, leveled him with an odd, serious expression. "Where did you hear that name?"

"The news." The taller teenager lied, eventually turning his full attention to him. "You know him, right?"

"Fuck off." He growled in answer.

Shouto frowned, hesitating before he spoke again. "Did he... Is he really dead?"

In a second, the blond was reaching for him, a loud explosion sounding somewhere his face. It was probably a good thing that he couldn't feel half of his face anymore. Shouto stumbled backwards, twisting out of his burning grasp and raising his right arm to defend himself. He heard the footsteps of other kids, a few boys running up to the blond.

"He didn't mean it, Bakugou!"

"Calm down!" One of them grabbed his arm before the blast could land.

Bakugou gritted his teeth, furiously glaring at him while his friends restrained him. "Fucking bring up Deku again and I'll kill you, Halfie! I'll fucking kill you!"

Shouto frowned, a good distance away from him. "Who's Deku?"

The blond struggled again, but the bell behind them rang loudly. His friends managed to convince him to leave, half-walking, half-dragging back toward the school building. Shouto stared at their backs, left only more confused.

A girl cleared her throat next to him, earning a little flinch. He hadn't noticed her walk up. He wondered if she'd try to hit him, too. "Deku and Bakugou were childhood friends. He didn't really take his death well." She said in simplistic explanation.

"Deku is Izuku? Why would you call him something like that?"

She nodded with a shrug. She looked like she was going to keep walking past him toward the school, but paused awkwardly. Her hands bunched her skirt nervously. "We didn't actually want him to die, you know. All those times we said that, it was a joke, you know? I mean, he was a real weirdo, but nobody actually wanted him dead."

Shouto had no idea what that could possibly mean. Before he could ask any more questions, the girl already had caught up to Bakugou and the other students.

O-O-O-O

He had hoped going to his middle school would answer some questions or give him some type of explanation. Instead, he was left wandering the streets, even more confused than before.

More than that, he was scared. He didn't understand anything anymore. He didn't know if Izuku was real, or if anything was.

Everything had been so great and now he was left out of his mind.

Shouto studied everyone who passed him, wishing to catch a glance of him in the crowd again. Even if it was fake, he did get some type of comfort in seeing his face.

He wasn't sure where exactly he had wandered to until he recognized the store. This was one of Izuku's patrol paths. They had walked it plenty of times together. Shouto looked up at the sign above the glass door, ignoring the irritated people moving around him like a river. He inspected the sale posters in the windows, shelves inside stacked with colorful products.

Then he noticed the girl behind the counter, scrolling through her phone with purple hair tied back in a ponytail. He was moving before he realized it, shoving the door open. The overhead bell loudly announced him as he walked up to the cashier. For a long minute, he just stared.

Her wings shifted a little as she looked up, suddenly noticing him there. "Um...can I help you?"

"Do you remember me?" He asked blankly.

She looked bewildered, leaning back as Shouto spoke. "Uh-"

"I came in here, in the middle of the night, was I alone? Did you see the boy with me?" The teenager stressed.

Her eyes flickered over his face while he held his breath. Finally, she slowly nodded. "A few weeks ago, you bought snacks, right? At like three-am."

Shouto nearly melted in relief. "Was I alone?"

"No, there was some kid in a green hoodie with you. With bunny ears?" She guessed, gesturing to her head as he nodded frantically.

He wasn't crazy.

Izuku was real. He wasn't dead.

Shouto quickly thanked the woman, giving her a thousand yen just for her answer. She looked even more puzzled, but took the money without protest. The teenager left the store with a smile, his faith in his mind restored.

He hadn't imagined it all. He wasn't insane.

Halfway down the street, Shouto faltered. His excitement died a little as he was unfortunately faced with a new question.

Why did the world think Midoriya Izuku was dead?

The next couple chapters will be characterized by Shouto drawing very funny conclusions about Inko, starting with:

Inko is one half of an evil villain romance that fought and nearly killed All Might. (somewhat true, but not really)

Inko has an explosion quirk. (no, shouto)

Inko killed this mother and son in Musutafu. (oh, if only they were actually dead)

More to come :)