They Say...
On his way back from a routine appointment at the dentist, Enji picked up a bag of tangerines at a local market. He hung the bag over his wrist and already started peeling one of the fruits; he wasn't hungry, but it would hopefully get rid of the disgusting aftertaste from the appointment. And they had really looked delicious as he walked past the fruit vendor.
Juice and some of the peel stuck to his thumb, coloring his nail yellow. He ate the first piece and grimaced as the citrusy juices of the fruit mixed with the lingering aftertaste of toothpaste. The longer he chewed, the more the toothpaste-taste vanished. He took a second and a third piece, balancing his taste buds out.
"…most disgusting thing I've ever seen."
"… leave me…"
Children's voices reached his ears just as he was about to leave the market. There was some laughter, rumbling and other noises he couldn't quite place. There was a sound like metal grinding on stone. Enji ignored it all at first. A few children playing in a back alley didn't concern him much.
"…had your quirk…"
"…it back…"
"It's ugly…"
He was about to pass the alley when their words and tone of voices started reaching his ears more clearly.
"How do you even leave the house like that?" A boy's voice laughed. "Look! That's the ugliest mug I've ever seen!"
Other different voices joined his mocking laughter, but among them Enji heard the muffled hiccups of repressed sobs. One voice quickly overpowered the others. This child's hooting laughter sounded like the barking of a dog. It sounded mean, Enji thought.
Then another undefined sound, only this time Enji had a good idea what it might be. It sounded like the deep oomph of a person getting the wind kicked out of their lungs.
Curiously, he peeked inside the alley, still not sure if he had heard right or if these were just a couple of rough playing kids. He was surprised when they were further away than he had thought. From how loud their voices reached his ears, he had expected them to be just around the corner— instead, he saw the gaggle of children standing around the dumpsters all the way on the other end of the alley. Frowning, he tried to assess the situation, but he could hardly make out any details. It seemed like they were watching and speaking about something or someone that was lying between the dumpsters, but Enji couldn't see what it was. For a moment, he hesitated, his gaze drifting away from the children and back toward his way home. Just for this brief second, he considered leaving as this really didn't concern him, but his body had already taken the first step into the alley.
One of the children – from the distance, Enji'd say it was one of the older ones, maybe twelve or thirteen years old – was leaning over whatever laid hidden between the dumpsters. The boy suddenly straightened up at him. He looked right toward Enji, with furrowed brows.
"What are you doing over there?" Enji asked in a demanding voice, loud enough that they would be able to hear him. The kid didn't answer, instead tapping one of his friends on the shoulder as they quickly exchanged words. Endeavor didn't hurry. He had no intent of capturing or punishing the children, or whatever, he just wanted to make them stop what they were doing. When they collectively turned to leave, it was just as well for him.
Curiously, he trudged the last few meters towards the dumpsters, looking after where the children had left around the corner. He couldn't see or hear them anymore; but he could hear something else when he passed the different colored garbage cans. Muffled breathing and crying. Quietly, he peered into the small gap where three containers had been violently pushed away. One of them was overturned, the other two leaning precariously against the wall and the other cans. Trash had spilled all over the narrow street. And there, in the middle of all that trash, was a young boy— hands firmly clasped over his mouth and eyes opened impossibly wide in a mixture of fear and surprise.
Damn, he cursed to himself. He wasn't good with children, he thought not for the first time. And of course, he had to stumble upon this incident.
Enji gave the child a quick once-over checking for injuries. He saw a small bruise peeking out between his fingers on the left cheek. The boy's clothes, hands and face were dirty, and his trousers were torn at one knee. Enji didn't see any blood, though. That was something, at least.
Still, his frown only deepened. The way the child wouldn't move, hands firmly covering his face despite the other children being long gone was concerning for Enji. Had he hurt his mouth?
"Are you injured?" Enji asked, still looking down at the boy.
The boy might be eleven, Enji guessed. Twelve at most. The clothes were mostly unremarkable. Sure, they were torn and dirty, but that seemed to be the result of the previous incident from what Enji could deduce, and not the normal state of the clothes. Subconsciously, Enji checked the child over for other telltale signs that something might be wrong. He seemed well-fed, even a little overweight through the thick wool sweater. He wore brown sneakers that showed clear signs of wear. He had big, black eyes, not showing any white, but there was a clear blue-tinted reflection in them. His hair style was one Enji could only describe as a bad copy of Best Jeanist's style. It looked atrocious, but he guessed, if a child was a Best Jeanist fan, maybe they wanted to look like that. He had tears brimming in his eyes, and through his fingers, the boy's cheeks looked a little puffy. Enji's eyes wandered over to an overturned blue schoolbag next to the child, and a bright neon winter jacket haphazardly thrown to the side. He could see stationery supplies and schoolbooks lying among the trash.
From what Enji could tell, the kid was physically fine and clearly conscious. So why was he still sitting there with his hands clasped over his mouth, looking positively terrified.
Enji's nose wrinkled a little in something halfway between pity and annoyance. He looked back to where the other children had disappeared around a corner, but there was no trace of them.
"What is it?" he asked in his regular, rough voice, turning fully towards the child who hadn't yet answered his first question.
Now that Enji gave him his full attention, he saw the boy's eyes widen slightly in fear. Instead of formulating an answer, or finally lifting his hands from his face, he pressed his back further into the brick wall behind him.
Enji scowled at that. Why was the kid so afraid? "Is your mouth hurt?" he pointed directly at the child's face, then used the same hand to mimic the boy's posture over his own mouth.
The boy flinched. He then shook his head, finally answering one of Enji's questions.
"Then why…?" Enji muttered again, gesturing with his own hand over his mouth, before deciding it was probably not important. There was no point wasting his time if the kid didn't want to talk to him. "Are you hurting anywhere else?" He asked, just to make sure. He was certain he had heard the noise of a fight here, and the way the trash cans were partly overturned, partly pushed aside, also suggested that somebody had violently shoved the child against them.
The boy shook his head again. Then, finally, he moved— stretching one leg in an attempt to catch his schoolbag with his foot and pull it towards him. He winced as the movement apparently aggravated some injury or another.
Enji sighed. "Okay, where does it hurt?" He asked impatiently, accompanied by a roll of his eyes. Now he knew for a fact that the kid wasn't alright.
When the kid silently continued to fumble with his feed and the bag, Enji wondered if he might be mute or otherwise have problems communicating. Realizing he wasn't going to get an answer like that, Enji crouched down, picking the schoolbag up along with the school supplies he found lying around.
"I'm Todoroki," Enji said, picking up a Bento box. One of the children must have stepped on it during the altercation, as the lid was splintered. Enji closed it as best as he could and shoved it back into the bag. "What's your name?"
He wondered if he'd get any answers out of the boy. If the child was mute, of course he wouldn't answer, and any attempts to make him speak would be futile.
However, as he held the school bag for the child to take it, the kid flinched again – violently this time. "I'm sorry!" the boy shrieked.
Taken aback by the frightened tone, Enji quickly retracted, taking the school bag with him. Was the kid afraid of him? He tried remembering his actions, everything he had done to cause this reaction, but couldn't find an explanation.
"Hm," he wondered out loud, "for what? I was just asking for your name."
The boy's reply came quickly, in a trembling and utterly unintelligible voice. To Enji, at least. It sounded like Fumio or Fumito, but other than the first sound being a 'Fu,' he couldn't be certain.
"Fumio?" he asked.
The boy shook his head and repeated himself, slower this time: "Fumihiko." It was only due to him speaking so slowly, that Enji understood him at all. Something was off with the child's voice. Enji couldn't quite put his finger on it. It was as if the child's own teeth and tongue got in the way of his talking. A speech impediment. There was too much saliva in his voice.
"Fumihiko?" Enji repeated what he had heard not commenting on the odd manner of speech. This time, the boy nodded.
Glad he had his answer, Enji tentatively stepped closer again. He held out his hand with the school bag, trying to make it as clear as possible that he only wanted to give the kid his bag back and not hurt him. "Is your chest hurting or your neck?" He asked, worrying that his speech problems might've stemmed from an injured lung or throat.
The kid snatched the bag from his hand when he was close enough, only lifting one hand from his face for a split second. Enji thought he saw something odd on his face, but before he could take a second look and check what it was, the kid had already clasped both hands over his mouth again, his school bag lying forgotten in his lap. Fumihiko shook his head then.
"My belly," he said instead, and again Enji had a lot of trouble understanding him. The boy was, however, clearly trying to articulate his words well. "Shoulder and leg." He rolled his shoulder and moved his leg as he spoke. Fumihiko grimaced a little at the careful movement. It struck Enji how uncertain the child sounded.
Enji nodded. He wondered if maybe a belly injury could cause a speech impediment— in any way, punches to the belly could have bad consequences. "How bad is your belly?" However, he already had a different theory about why the kid spoke the way he did. He hadn't gotten a clear look at his face, and it had only lasted for a very brief moment… but he wondered if what he had seen might have been a fang. If the kid had long fangs, that might explain why he couldn't pronounce certain sounds.
Fumihiko's eyes scrunched a little in concentration. "It's okay," he said then, but Enji worried he might be lying.
"Why did you apologize earlier?" Enji continued to ask, not lingering on the severity of Fumihiko's potential injuries. "You didn't do anything."
At that, Fumihiko looked down, a little embarrassed. It was the first time he averted his eyes. This time, Enji only understood the child after he repeated it twice. "Thought you were angry."
Enji frowned, but didn't ask what'd made Fumihiko think that. The frustration of having to ask him to repeat the same sentence more than once had made it so he hardly even cared about the answer anymore.
He retreated from the child again, to also pick up the jacket. Meticulously, he smoothed out the material and wiped off some of the dirt and garbage that had stuck to it. "Don't keep sitting in the trash there." He held the jacket towards the boy, just far enough away for him that he had to stand up to get it. "Come on, get up."
Fumihiko didn't hesitate long, but even as he stood up, he didn't once remove the hands from his face. It really started bugging Enji. Now, the young boy stood in front of him, looking up at him with an anticipation in his eyes, as if he wanted Enji to just throw the jacket over him, instead of him having to remove one of his hands from his face to take it.
Enji scowled and held tight on the jacket.
"Do you want a tangerine?" he asked, remembering the bag of fruits still hanging at his wrist. Maybe he could distract the child a little.
Fumihiko's eyes widened at the question, and even more so when Enji used his free hand to fish out one of the fruits and held it towards the boy next to the jacket. He didn't know what it was that made the boy finally remove one hand from his face and take the tangerine. Maybe he really liked them a lot, or he was hungry, or it simply seemed impolite to reject the offer. But he soon held the fruit in one hand, looking down at it helplessly, before carefully and slowly removing the second hand from his face too. As he started peeling the fruit, his eyes kept glimpsing at Enji as if assessing his reaction.
And Enji tried very hard not to react at all. He immediately understood why Fumihiko was hiding his face. It was unsightly. He didn't just have fangs. He had huge, claw-like… almost appendages growing out of his upper jaw, with the teeth reaching all the way down past his chin. It reminded Enji of a spider's mouth, and then he realized that that was exactly what it was. The fangs were moving just a little bit, as if subconsciously, while the boy peeled the tangerine.
A spider mutation quirk. And an ugly one, at that. The mutation only affected certain features, like his jaw and beady black eyes. Just from seeing Fumihiko's face, though, Enji couldn't tell what other spidery characteristics the boy had.
Enji didn't want to say anything about the mutation. It wasn't beautiful, but he had seen worse. However, the longer the silence stretched, the more he could see Fumihiko fumbling with the fruit, as if he was expecting a reaction and getting more and more nervous for every second that he didn't get one.
"Is that why you hid your face?" Enji asked. He thought it was a stupid question as it was obvious, but it also seemed inconspicuous enough. It didn't give away anything he thought about the quirk.
Fumihiko nodded after a moment's hesitation, ducking his head as if he expected scorn.
Enji sighed. "That's why they hit you and laughed at you?"
The boy shrank in on himself. His mouse-grey hair in the Best Jeanist style was tussled a little. Enji saw a piece of plastic stuck to it, which must have come from the trash cans. Absentmindedly, he picked it off and flicked it away.
"It's disgusting," Fumihiko declared, with self-deprecating certainty. Enji was getting increasingly used to his speech impediment. It was easier to understand him now.
"A bit." Enji admitted with a shrug. The boy had tears in his eyes; he was far too sensitive for Enji's taste. "I've seen worse." He didn't think the boy would believe him if he told him he was beautiful or other such lies. And he wasn't about to coddle the boy. That wouldn't help him with his confidence nor with handling his bullies. Clearly, regarding general beauty, Fumihiko wouldn't win any competitions anytime soon. Enji knew it, and the boy knew it too.
"Yeah," Fumihiko muttered doubtfully, "thanks." He put the first piece of tangerine in his mouth. As his jaw opened to eat, Enji was fascinated by the subconscious movement of the fangs.
Honestly, he was at a loss for what to do. He didn't want to give the kid even more reason to hate himself for the look of his mutation. On the other side, he also didn't want to lie to him. Enji had never thought that a quirk was supposed to make their holder beautiful. To him, it was important whether they made one strong. Those were two entirely different categories. If Fumihiko wanted to look beautiful, Enji telling him how to use his quirk in battle wouldn't help.
"Come," he finally handed the child his jacket. "I'll walk you home. Your parents will be worried."
"I can walk by myself," the child replied with a healthy bit of weariness in his voice.
Enji couldn't help but snort at the sudden distrust and annoyance in the kid's voice. "Sure," he agreed, "but you wouldn't tell them about being kicked in the stomach. A doctor should check that out." Enji was probably overreacting a bit, but the way the child winced with every movement was concerning.
"I don't need a doctor," Fumihiko protested as Enji had expected he would. "And my parents won't be home anyway. They're working." Despite his words, he took a tentative step forward finally moving away from the dumpsters.
Enji looked after him, scrutinizing Fumihiko's back and the way his body obviously tried to alleviate the pain by making small, hobbling steps. "Then I'll bring you to the doctor," Enji declared catching up to the boy.
Fumihiko didn't seem happy about this development, but when they left the small alley and stepped back out on the market place, his unhappy pout vanished behind the collar of his jacket, as he pulled it all the way up to hide his face. Enji didn't comment about it. It reminded him vaguely of how he had ineffectively tried to hide his face from the public after he'd lost his license. Only that he had abused his wife and children for two decades and had been hiding from scorn that even he had to admit he mostly deserved. This kid hadn't done anything wrong.
"You're a Best Jeanist fan?" he asked. He put a hand on the boy's healthy shoulder and steered him over the marketplace towards the closest doctor's office he knew. He was aiming for a general practitioner.
Fumihiko followed without making fuss, and looked up at him in surprise. As he angled his head like that, his collar slipped a little revealing part of his mouth. He quickly pulled it back up again. "How did you know?"
"You look like him." Enji said, flicking at the boy's hair to emphasize what he meant. "Your hair."
Fumihiko blushed slightly, ducking his head further into his collar while patting down his hair. "I look nothing like him."
Enji scowled at the repeated reminder that the boy thought himself so ugly that he couldn't even once forget about it.
"You know, hiding your face in your collar like that, only makes you look more like him." He felt accomplished when he heard a tiny giggle from the boy. "Of course, even more so, if you wore a denim jacket."
"I have one a home. One just like Best Jeanist's," Fumihiko bragged. Enji could hear the smile in his voice even despite his speech impediment. "Official Genius Agency Merchandise even. With his signature stitched on the back."
Enji didn't try to burst the boy's bubble by telling him that official merchandise clothing with signatures on them rarely ever had real signatures. Even Jeanist, who technically had the quirk to do it, wouldn't have the time to personally stitch his name onto each of the jackets his agency sold. Fumihiko was ten, he reminded himself, twelve maybe. He'd realize that truth sooner or later.
"Why don't you wear it?" Enji asked, curious. Normally, he wouldn't expect fans to wear their merchandise on a normal day, never mind in early March when it was cold. But Best Jeanist's jackets came with the convenient collar which would likely make it much easier for Fumihiko to hide his face, than the more conventional jacket he wore.
Apparently, he had asked the wrong question. The boy's mood immediately dropped. He nuzzled his nose into his jacket.
"What?" Enji asked. Together, they left the market and walked up a busy street with shops and businesses lining up along the road.
"Nothing," Fumihiko quickly said. "Just… they always laugh when I wear it."
"They?" Enji repeated with a frown on his face. "You mean the boys who were just beating you up? Why would they laugh? Best Jeanist is cool, isn't he?" At least, up until recently, the last time he'd checked, Best Jeanist had ranked number one in public approval ratings. Even his over two-month long disappearance, when he was assumed to be either dead or kidnapped or hurt much worse than anybody would admit – following a three-month long recovery period – hadn't knocked him off his throne.
"Yeah, he's cool!" It was the most passionately Enji had heard Fumihiko speak, yet. "But I'm not. I'm going to be a villain, so they say I can't dress up like a hero."
Enji stopped short as he heard that. His thoughts had grinded to a complete halt. He saw one of the other pedestrians stare at the boy too, but she quickly rushed off as if not wanting to concern herself with what she had just heard. And Enji almost wished he could do the same.
Fumihiko stopped too, glancing up at him carefully while simultaneously hunching his shoulders.
There was so much going wrong here. Enji didn't know how to react to that, or where to start untangling that knot of misconceptions. Quickly, he gave the boy a slight nudge and then sped up a little on his way to the doctor's office. He watched Fumihiko give his personal information at the reception. After that, he made the boy call home, just in case one of his parents was there, but the call went to voicemail.
Only when the kid was about to enter the public waiting room, did Enji stop him with a hand on his shoulder and steered him towards a different room. This room was much smaller, only offering seats for up to four people. He checked if it was empty before they entered. Fumihiko looked at him curiously.
It was the heroes' waiting room, as it existed in almost every doctor's office and hospital that also treated heroes and sometimes other celebrities on a regular basis to protect their privacy. He was no hero anymore, so he shouldn't be here, but really, he couldn't care less at the moment. If he was found, maybe one of the doctor's assistants would give him a short scolding, but he could deal with that. He needed privacy.
Fumihiko started looking a bit worried when Enji pushed him down onto one of the chairs and then scowled down at him, trying to find the words to start the conversation that needed to be had.
"Why did you say you'd be a villain?"
The boy scowled back up at him, but behind that scowl there was thinly concerned fear. "It's obvious," he answered assuredly, "look at me!" His voice trembled a little in agitation. This also made it much more difficult to understand him. "I already look like a villain!"
"Nonsense." Enji shook his head, his brows furrowing. "You don't look like a villain. Who told you that?"
The boy crossed his arms, averting his eyes and glaring at the door. "Everybody." From his pout, Enji wasn't sure if Fumihiko wanted Enji to believe it and also say it, or whether he just wanted him to drop the issue. In any case, neither would do.
"Then they're idiots."
"Yeah, how would you know?" Fumihiko crossed his arms, still pouting and looking for all intents and purposes like the pouty, somewhat standoffish pre-teen he was. "You've probably never looked at a villain."
Enji couldn't help the snort. "I've seen more villains than you, believe me. Or all your friends who say you look like one combined. And none of them looked like you."
"You're obviously lying." Fumihiko sounded certain of that. "How would you know how many villains they saw!?" Enji had to strain now, to understand the boy. "And there are villains who look like me! Spindly, he looks like me."
Enji groaned. Of course they had moogled spider-like villains and ended up with the only example even Enji could come up with himself. Spindly did have a spider-mutation quirk, though it was much more prominent than Fumihiko's – as it seemed – simple jaw and eye mutation. Most prominently, Spindly had eight spider legs. All of that didn't matter, though, because Spindly had been an adult and a thief. Fumihiko was neither, as far as Enji knew.
"You're nothing like Spindly," he said.
Fumihiko, to Enji's surprise, answered by opening his winter jacket and then pulling up his sweater. Enji was confused by this development until Fumihiko spoke. "You mean because I don't have the spider legs?"
Below his sweater, instead of a shirt or undershirt, he wore bandages tightly wrapped around his… stomach? The uneven shape of it made it obvious what he was hiding there. Down on one side, the tip of a spider leg looked out of the bandage. He had four extra spider legs growing from his spine. The way he tightly compressed them with bandages had to be uncomfortable.
Enji realized that he hadn't successfully hid his shock when Fumihiko looked down with a red-hot blush and quickly pulled his sweater back down again. He zipped the jacket up, even though it was warm in the room. "See?"
Enji rubbed his forehead and temples in frustration. "I didn't mean the legs," he clarified. The kid wanted to make it difficult, didn't he?
He perched down until he was below eye-level with the boy, crouching on his own heels. He put his hands on the sides of Fumihiko's chair to balance himself in that position. "Look, Fumihiko, do you want to be a villain?"
Fumihiko stared at him as if he was being ridiculously stupid. "Of course not, but it's not my choice!"
"But it is your choice," Enji retorted. "You don't become a villain because people say you will, or because maybe there is some resemblance you have with one villain or another. You don't look like a villain. Villains don't look a certain way." He quickly continued when he realized Fumihiko was about to interrupt. "And even looking like a villain doesn't make you a villain."
Fumihiko stared at him as if he had just said something utterly absurd. He didn't believe him.
Enji sighed. When he spoke again, he was clearly exasperated. "Look. Do you know Gang Orca? He's repeatedly voted into the top three of heroes who look most like villains. But he's still a top-ranking hero, right?"
Suddenly, Fumihiko's eyes widened. He nodded, then shook his head, and scratched his head in a frantic way that ruined whatever resemblance his hair still had to Best Jeanist.
"No matter what people say what he looks like, he's a great hero."
Fumihiko shook his head with a distraught expression on his face. "But I can't be a hero!" he asserted. "Everybody says I can't be."
"Well, then everybody's an idiot. Do you want to be a hero?"
Even while he nodded to his question, he still tried to find reasons why he couldn't be one. "It doesn't matter, I can't be! Why would they say that if it's not true?"
Enji shrugged. "Maybe they're cowards who are afraid of spiders," he joked half-heartedly, "or they're just jealous cause you're a mutation type and thus already stronger than most of them physically. Maybe both. How many were they? Four, I think I saw four. Four people to beat up just you. They're cowards."
Fumihiko giggled at that. "Yeah they are," he agreed. "And it hardly hurt!" Enji knew that was a lie. After all he had seen the boy hobble all the way to the doctor's office.
"If you want to be a hero, that's a hard path," Enji said, "it's not easy, and there are many times where you might fail, but don't give up just because people who have no say in it anyway tell you to."
Enji could see the boy's eyes glimmer. Suddenly, he felt trapped in that moment, stuck as if time had frozen. As if he wanted it to freeze. He had saved countless people, but nobody had ever looked at him like that. Nobody had ever looked at him with these sparkling eyes as if Enji had saved their entire world. And he hadn't even done anything.
Embarrassed at his sudden confusion, Enji stood up again, backing half a step away. Maybe it was the wrong move, as Fumihiko's sparkling eyes dimmed immediately. As if he feared Enji embarrassment and subsequent retreat happened because he regretted his words.
"You think I could be a hero?" the boy asked doubtfully, angling his head up to look Enji in the eyes.
"You tell me," Enji said. If he had thought the boy would give him a bright-eyed grinning response, he was severely disappointed. Enji sighed at the silence. "Yes, I think you can." He didn't allow any doubt in his voice. "Whatever else your quirk might be, it's certainly useful."
"How would it be useful?" Fumihiko still doubted his words.
Enji's brows furrowed. "It's a mutation quirk, so I assume you have certain skills that spiders have?"
"You mean that I'm half-blind?" Fumihiko grunted sarcastically.
Enji winced at that. Bad start. "But you find your way along places well enough, so your other senses seem to compensate well. Do you rely on touch and vibrations? That's useful if you want to work in the dark. Not just villains act at night. You're strong?" When Fumihiko nodded, Enji continued. "Those extra legs can always come in handy as well. Even if you don't have extra hands, you can still control them, right? That's an advantage. Your jaw is strong. Useful both in rescue and attack, even if you don't see how yet."
Maybe that was the comment, Fumihiko finally couldn't believe anymore. Before he seemed curious, now he just looked downtrodden again.
"You're just joking."
"I'm not." Why was the boy refusing to believe him? He seemed to have eaten up whatever those bullies told him just fine, so why couldn't he just accept what Enji tried to tell him?
"Yes, you are! Or else you have no clue!" Fumihiko's voice rose now. The next thing he said, Enji didn't understand. Then Fumihiko's shoulders slumped again. "You're just saying that to cheer me up. I appreciate it, but I'm not stupid. I know what it takes to be a hero."
Enji snorted, annoyed. "No, obviously, you don't. People have told you a bunch of nonsense that has nothing to do with hero works."
"Well, how would you know?!" Fumihiko jumped up, about to run to the door.
"Because I was a hero," Enji said, surprised the boy hadn't recognized him yet. Fumihiko hadn't made a single comment about him being Endeavor. While Enji hadn't wanted him to figure it out – he didn't know how anybody who was obviously into heroes couldn't recognize him. He hadn't believed it. Hearing it now confirmed, that Fumihiko had no clue who he was, was surprising, nonetheless. He would have liked to enjoy that anonymity a bit longer, but right now, revealing who he was seemed to serve a greater goal. He just hoped it would work well.
Indeed, it helped to stop Fumihiko on his way to the door. He turned around, frowning, scrutinizing Enji – who still stood just a step away from where Fumihiko had sat earlier. "No, you're not," the boy asserted with a wrinkled forehead, obviously trying to compare Enji to the heroes he knew. "What's your hero name, then?"
"I was Endeavor," Enji said, and felt ridiculously as he said it. He hadn't had to introduce himself like that in decades.
Fumihiko seemed to find this equally ridiculous and absurd. His nose wrinkled a little in thought, but then he shook his head and snorted disbelievingly. "No, you're not." He huffed an annoyed laugh. "I'm not stupid, you're not Endeavor. I've seen Endeavor on TV."
Enji guessed it was the missing fire beard and mask that made him unrecognizable to this eleven-year-old. Fumihiko was in fact eleven, he now knew after he had watched the boy fill out the formula at the reception. Thus, Enji activated his quirk, and let the beard and mask flicker over his face for just a moment.
Fumihiko screamed. He pointed right at Enji's face. "You're Endeavor! You're really him!" He backed away in surprise, then curiosity brought him closer, and finally he stood hovering at a respectful mid-distance. "You're really Endeavor?"
"Was," Enji corrected him.
"Right," Fumihiko said, as if he had just remembered that as well. "Mom said you did something really bad, so now you can't be a hero anymore."
Enji hunched in on himself a little. He hadn't wanted to turn the conversation like that, making it about himself. "Something like that."
"So, you're a villain now, if you did something bad?"
Enji understood the logic of that, but he shook his head. "No, I'm not a villain. But I gave up my license, so now I'm just Enji Todoroki."
Fumihiko's brows furrowed in thought. He obviously concentrated hard on what Enji had just said. "You didn't want to be a hero anymore?"
Enji shook his head. "No, that wasn't it."
"Then why did you give away your license?"
He didn't want to talk about this with an eleven-year-old, who couldn't understand. "The Hero Association told me to hand it in." He kept the explanation short.
Fumihiko nodded. "Because you did something really bad. But you also saved hundreds at Fukuoka and Sapporo, right?" Enji nodded, not really knowing what this kid wanted to say. "That's stupid. What did you do that was so bad?"
Enji coughed. "Well, in any case, it was bad enough that a lot of people thought I shouldn't be a hero anymore."
If possible, Fumihiko's brows furrowed even further. What was he thinking about? "Okay," he seemed to accept, "but did you… Do you want to be a hero?"
Enji's eyes widened at the question. What? Why would he ask this question? It wasn't about what Enji wanted, it hadn't been about that for months!
He knew his shock was clear on his face. He must've looked like an idiot, with his mouth hanging open and his eyes widened in stunned silence. He was suddenly glad that the kid was, as he said, half-blind. Still, maybe Fumihiko's other senses picked up on Enji's reaction. Enji could clearly see the triumph in Fumihiko's eyes – and for a moment, Enji considered if this kid could sense the vibrations of his fastened heartbeat or maybe, more realistically, the slight nervous shuffle of his feet.
"Because if you want to be a hero, that's a… a difficult goal," Fumihiko said. Enji had a sudden and very real sense of déjà vu. "It's not easy… eh… not easy and… uhm… you could fail all the time, but… uhm…" Fumihiko's face tightened in concentration, trying to remember Enji's earlier words. Enji already knew what he would say next. "So, you shouldn't give up just 'cause people who have no say in it tell you to."
And at that moment, just as Fumihiko finished the last syllable, and before Enji could even respond anything— the door was pushed open.
"What are you doing in here?" the physician's assistant asked with a grimace of annoyance masked under a veil of polite patience on their face. "The boy's name has already been called three times. And you shouldn't be in here anyway."
So, finally. I promoised you kids a few chapters ago. So finally, this is the first of several chapters with Enji and children...
I love how direct he is. I rewrote some of these scenes four times, just to make him a little more blunt at some time. He's not purposefully mean or insulting. But he's very blunt.
You might have noticed a pattern these last chapters. We're slowly slow-burning Enji towards maybe soon wanting to be a hero again. The next three chapters will all be connected to one same and big finale. I hope you'll like it, but for now, I hope you enjoyed this chapte and A happy third sunday of advent, to all of you who celebrate that... and those who don't, why not :D
Also...
Ohohoh! Did you see Mr. Compress? I mean... COMPRESS!
