The Most Amazing Person

"God, I'm so sorry."

The first thing he noticed after he entered Fuyumi's apartment, was the worried and drawn expression on her face as she hastily ran to bring tea. "I didn't know. Why didn't you tell?"

So, Natsuo had finally told the entire truth.

"I thought, he should tell it." Enji still felt claustrophobic in this small apartment, even after Fuyumi urged him to sit at the living room table. First, he looked to All Might the sunflower. It was of a dirty brown color now. He truly couldn't say if this shriveled, dead version of the plant was fitting better or worse to its namesake than the healthy, vibrant flower in summer. "It wasn't my place."

"How was it not your place?" Fuyumi seemed distracted as she hurried from the kitchen back to the living room. "Here." She placed the green tea in front of them, then sat opposite Enji. Her eyes were nervous, still flitting across the room, even after sitting down. "They almost killed you."

He picked up his cup. "Would you have believed me?"

It was a simple question, and his voice didn't hold any judgement. Still, Fuyumi reacted with an embarrassed downward turn of her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she said again. This time, there was an expression of regret, and not of compassion like the way it had been before.

"No, no… It's alright—"

His daughter immediately interrupted him. "How is any of this alright?" She shook her head, taking her own cup of tea and still avoiding eye-contact.

Enji lifted the cup to smell the thick aroma of the matcha. The bitterness from his first sip was still lingering on his tongue: the ginger was quite dominating in its scent, but left only a faint note in the actual taste. This was a new mixture.

"In any case, I'm glad it was a false alarm. Sorry for worrying you." She sounded relieved, as if now in hindsight her worries had been entirely unfounded and laughable.

He knew better than that. It wasn't just that he had felt that same, very real worry when he ran up those stairs to the roof of the dormitory, but…

Ide's words were still ringing in his mind.

"What is it with you Todorokis calling so late? Your son just called an hour ago."

"Yes, we spoke about this deal, but he never considered it before."

"No, I don't know why he suddenly took it. I can ask him tomorrow when we meet."

"Yes, I'll have an eye on him."

For days, those words replayed in his mind. Fuyumi had every reason to worry. She had been searching for Natsuo for four hours before she'd even contacted Enji. And, according to Ide, Natsuo had only called her to share his decision to take the deal bare minutes before Enji had arrived. What had Natsuo done on that roof for four hours?

When Enji had decided not to share Natsuo's collaboration with the League with the police, he had been trying to protect his son. But had he made it worse instead?

"You were right to worry."

Fuyumi's eyebrows furrowed. "Why?" Her fingers played nervously around her cup. "You didn't tell me how you found him. What happened?"

Enji wanted to answer, but his jaw was clenched tightly, his lips sewn shut. He swallowed dryly.

"Dad, you have to tell me…"

"I don't know." The words sounded pressed and tight. "I don't know. Just, keep an eye on him, okay?" He looked at her, pleadingly.

"Of course."

"Good. Ide will too. She'll see him almost daily now, and then the community service… That will keep him busy. Outside of that… just…" He dragged his hand over his face, massaging his temples for a short moment, before looking up again. "Keep him company, I guess."

Loneliness was terrifying.

"Yes, sure." She nodded. "As his annoying elder sister, I have to tease him anyway. I always told him that if he kept up with that grumpy attitude, he'll end up with a record."

It was a bad joke and she obviously knew it herself. Enji concentrated more closely on his tea.

After a moment of uncomfortable silence following her joke, Fuyumi coughed awkwardly and glanced toward the kitchen again. She made to stand up, maybe to get the food.

"Where's Azumi?"

She froze the second he mentioned her girlfriend's name. A whimpering sound of surprise escaped her mouth. Fleetingly, her gaze traveled back to the kitchen, as if she longed to leave the room. "She… uh… she'll be around." She crossed her arms in front of her chest. "Later… She's not late. We agreed she would come later. Yeah. Later." She added it as if she'd suddenly realized that she didn't want her father's first – or second – impression of her girlfriend to be that she was always late. "I asked her to… I mean, I thought we… you and me, we should speak alone first, right?" She gestured to the table and the kitchen in a way that made no sense to Enji. "She'll bring desert… I mean, she made it. She made desert."

"You're nervous."

As if to prove him right, she laughed anxiously, shifting where she stood. Enji watched her intently. The way her body language made it obvious that she wanted to run from the conversation as she drifted towards the kitchen. The way her eyes kept avoiding him. The way her fingers fiddled in front of her belly.

Tiredly, he closed his eyes, and as if she had just waited for this – for him to set her free – she immediately hurried back into the kitchen.

Enji didn't intend to listen, but the apartment was small, the walls were thin, and he could easily hear her muffled voice in the kitchen telling herself to 'pull herself together' and that she was being 'pathetic and ridiculous'.

Maybe broaching the subject so directly was a mistake. So, when she came back, he started talking about the work he did with Shoto and they both did their best to just ignore the topic that had brought him here in the first place.

"It's already February, how haven't they made a decision yet." They started talking about his license and the likelihood that he would get it back after he started his third serving of rice. He wasn't actually all that hungry, but she had shoveled another portion of rice into his bowl and quickly started a conversation on a new topic before he could protest.

"I didn't expect one until March at the earliest."

"Yeah, but…" she shrugged, then she pushed a bit of carrot in her mouth and chewed for a while. "Nothing?"

"Nakamura suggested they might ask for a psychological assessment," he admitted. He had talked to the lawyer earlier this week and Nakamura had mentioned something along those lines. Enji hadn't been particularly interested, truth be told. He still wasn't particularly eager to get his license back, and if one of the conditions to get it back was a psyche evaluation, he'd rather decline.

Fuyumi glanced at the clock above the door. It was a big wooden thing, too big for that small place between the door and the ceiling. "Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing," she said in a distracted tone.

Enji's brows furrowed. "No, thanks." He shook his head, picking up the last bits of fried chicken. "What for?" He hadn't been asked for a psyche evaluation since…ever, really. At least during his professional life, nobody would have ever dared to question his mental fortitude.

"I mean—"

"I know what you mean." His voice was gruff and unfriendly. He didn't want Fuyumi to spell it out to him. It was one thing to know some suits in impersonal offices in the capital doubted him like that, but to have his own daughter question his sanity was something else entirely.

"I just—"

He cut her off a second time. "When will Azumi come?"

Again, her eyes flickered to the clock. "You're deflecting."

Enji couldn't help but snort. "Who's deflecting?" he shot back. "You wanted to talk in private before Azumi arrived, and we haven't spoken about it at all."

"It?" She glared at him, daring him to give 'it' a name. Simultaneously, though, her head ducked a little bit.

"So, you're–" For a moment, he doubted himself and had to pause. Was 'gay' or 'queer' too generic? 'Lesbian' too specific? 'Homosexual' too impersonal? - "lesbian?" He ended up choosing, pronouncing the word as a question as if to give her the room to deny it still.

There was no way for him to interpret the vague dip of her head. What is a nod, a shake of her head, or something in-between? His eyes narrowed as he tried to read her. She didn't give him much.

"Talk to me."

She shifted in her chair. "It's not easy." Her finger tapped against the wood of the table. If he didn't know it any better, he would've almost interpreted it as boredom. The glance back to the clock above the door. Impatience? Did she want Azumi to come?

He frowned. "What isn't?"

Her eyes snapped back from the clock. There was an exasperated twitch on her lips. "Coming out."

Enji realized a bit too late that dry laughter wasn't the right reaction. "You're already out," he reminded her.

He watched Fuyumi's shoulders sack in resignation. "Yeah… that wasn't supposed to happen."

Did she want him to just stay ignorant? But instead of asking, he let her continue.

"Not like that, I mean."

He nodded. He could understand that much at least. If he were honest, it still saddened him that she hadn't said anything to him.

"Did you tell your mother?"

Fuyumi shifted again, turned half away from him, and crossed her arms over her chest. "Yeah. She knows." Her voice was small, embarrassed. She was right across from him and he could still hardly hear her voice. "I told her right before Christmas…"

Enji didn't know if the fact that she told Rei but not him hurt him even more, or if he was glad that she could at least talk to her mother about these things.

"I wished you'd have told me," he said honestly. In truth, this was all he had to say about the subject. It was what he came here to say. He wished she'd trust him with the important matters in her life. If he had realized one thing these last few weeks, then it was that he didn't want to find out about his children's lives through the media.

Shoto telling him about the people he saved in the living room on Saturdays after they finished their work for the day was much preferable to reading about it in the papers. Learning about his daughter's girlfriend by coincidence through some niche gossip magazine was a new low.

The way her shoulders hunched, the way her posture lacked any sort of confidence… He realized suddenly, what she looked like. He hadn't seen her like that since she was a child, sitting quietly at the dinner table, her head ducked low as if she was terrified to get any attention. She seemed… lonely.

He emptied the last bit of rice from his bowl, before pushing it away. Fuyumi didn't react at all. With a small sigh, he pushed himself up and walked around the table. After only short hesitation, he sat back down on one of the chais right next to her.

It was pathetic how he had no idea how to deal with this situation, but he resolutely pushed this feeling of inadequacy down. This was not about him, after all. The rare glances at the side of Fuyumi's face aside, his eyes were mostly fixed on the table in front of them.

"Thanks for the food. It was really tasty," he started. "So, what did you want to talk about?"

When Fuyumi shifted again, he felt it more than he saw it. Her anticipated response didn't come.

He continued after a moment of silence. "I know, I haven't been…" he started, but his voice died out, his sentence unfinished. He coughed and started again. "I guess you have no reason to believe that, but I won't judge, I swear." He looked at her with a small smile. Fuyumi blinked back at him in confusion. "You know, no matter what you told me, there couldn't be anything that would make me judge you. Tell me anything." His smile broadened into an encouraging grin. It felt awkward and foreign on his face.

Suddenly, Fuyumi snorted in the most undignified way. Snot came down her nose, and she immediately raised a hand to her face blushing bright red. Quickly, she grabbed a napkin and wiped her nose. "You're ridiculous."

"You invited me over, to tell me I'm ridiculous?" he quipped with an exaggerated frown back on his face. It made her snicker again. Then, he gave her a slight nudge with his elbow to the side. "Well, what is it?"

"I'm bi," she finally said.

Not lesbian, after all. He needed a second to reconcile this new information with what he already knew.

"So, you like men and women?"

She nodded. Then she giggled in an almost childish way, shaking her head. "Well, currently, I only really like Azumi."

"Ah. Tell me about her?"

As Fuyumi started talking more freely, he found himself stunned at how well that went. And if there was a slightly breathy tone to her voice and an almost imperceivable wobble in the way she strung her words together, he easily ignored it. "She works in a comfy little café just a few streets away. Café Ao, that's where we met."

"There's a cliché somewhere in there," Enji chested.

"You'll like her. I think," she quickly adjusted her statement, "or not. Or you'll hate her. I guess the chances are about 50/50 on that. But she makes the best Kuzumochi."

"I love her already," he declared. He loved Kuzumochi. "What else?"

"She really really hates water," Fuyumi laughed. "Who hates water? I mean, the ocean, she's afraid of it. And she's bad with names and sometimes she speaks to her plants. Oh, and she has like…no taste." She made a somewhat vague gesture across the apartment.

Enji laughed at that. It had been evident the first time he visited Fuyumi here. "But you like it here regardless?"

"Uh-huh." She nodded. By now, her eyes had started tearing. Her voice had grown huskier with every word.

"So, I guess…" he started, and he couldn't quite help it that he sounded a little disappointed, "you're not going to move back in. Back home, I mean." He was ruining the mood, he thought, and immediately added a half serious, "Well, Shoto and I turned your room into a temporary boxroom, anyway."

At that, she boxed him against the arm, as if she actually felt offended at that. And then she broke down completely. Suddenly his daughter turned into a sobbing and sniffling mess.

Enji didn't hesitate to take her in his arms, hold her tight, until her head lay pressed against his chest.

"I'm so-orry," she sobbed. "I didn't even know wh-why…?" She shook her head against his chest, smearing tears and snot all over his shirt. "I-I was just so afraid-aid. I thought, I could-could just p-push it down. Like it wasn't w-worth the risk." She continued explaining something, but her voice quickly became impossible to understand between her sobs muffled in his shirt. He just continued to hold her.

When had he last held her like that? Had he ever held her like that?

After what felt like an eternity, she seemingly calmed down a little. Just enough for him to be able to understand her again. "I don't even know what I was so afraid of. Just, for so long, I didn't talk about it or think about it… or even consider what it meant." Her voice was still husky, weak from crying, but he understood every word. "It was easier just to pretend that there was nothing wr—different with me. I just didn't want to cause any trouble. But then, after I moved out, it all came back. And I didn't know how to handle it."

Enji waited several seconds to see if she would say anything else, but she didn't. As the silence dragged on, he shifted his arms a little. Carefully, he swiped some strands of her hair out of his face where they were tickling him.

"Dad?"

There was anticipation and insecurity in her voice, and he only now realized he was supposed to say something back. He hesitated for a moment on what to say. He held on to one of her few red strands that sprinkled her otherwise-white hair. Not for the first time in these last few months, he wondered how he had managed that. Not that it was much of his own doing. Who knew where Fuyumi had found all these perfect little bits that made up her person?

"You're amazing." It was easy and probably one of the truest things he had ever said. "Truly amazing. Sometimes, I wonder where you got that from." He softly twisted her hair in his fingers. "You're kind and compassionate and caring." He choked a little. "You see the best in people. Your Azumi must be the luckiest person on the planet." He laughed quietly. "Thanks for—"

At that moment, he heard the door open. He glanced at the clock, but he didn't know what time Fuyumi had agreed upon with Azumi. He could hear her silent shuffling steps from the corridor.

"Thanks for telling me," he whispered to Fuyumi and then let go of her. "I think your girlfriend is here."