Midoriya Family Residence-Musutafu, Tokyo-December 27th, 201X
Inko Midoriya loved her son.
It was a simple fact that could never be brought into question.
The perfect blend of both her and her husband with a sharp wit and a brave spirit to match.
Every time she looked at him, her chest swelled with pride, especially after everything that had happened five years ago.
Granted, she was a bit concerned when he started bringing home dangerous and sometimes strange weapons and chugging down those syrupy sweet drinks from the Staminan series(which had astonishingly not been discontinued yet), but she got over it pretty quick.
She loved her son, after all, and as long as he didn't get himself hurt, she was okay with letting him have some hobbies, strange as they may be.
He was growing up well, so helpful to people around Musutafu and Kamurocho, and from what she heard, he never really asked for much, if anything, from the people he helped.
He had a bit of a swearing problem and his teacher had told her about his frequent spats with Mitsuki's son, which would worry most other parents, but one must take into account that she had, once upon a time, run away from an orphanage, joined up with a biker gang, started living with an ex/probationary yakuza and his ward(the traumatized son of a deceased yakuza patriarch), and had also developed a bad habit for swearing and smoking.
So yeah, when she thought about it, it wasn't really that bad.
What was bad, however…
Sigh…
"Oh dear, I know that sigh. What's wrong, Inko?"
The question snapped the doting mother out of her thoughts, bringing her back into the present moment, the scent of milk tea and cinnamon filling her nostrils.
"It's nothing, Mirei. Really."
'No, it's not nothing. That's your 'Izuku has a problem' sigh. What happened? Is it Mitsuki's son again?"
"If it is, I'll set him straight. The brat's head's only gotten bigger since he started junior high."
"No Mirei, Mitsuki, it's not Katsuki."
"Then what is it, Inko-san?"
The question came from the oldest woman in the group, Yayoi Dojima.
She was a widow who had moved into the apartment complex a little over nine years before.
Izuku, being the little ball of sunshine that he was, endeared himself to her and she, in turn, kept an eye on him whenever Inko or Majima couldn't.
For some odd reason, the older woman's eye twitched whenever the latter was brought up.
Regardless, she was a dear friend of Inko's and a great deal of help when it came to her concerns about raising her wayward, but beloved child acting almost like the mother that she'd never had growing up.
Which was why, even if she wasn't the type to burden other people with her issues, when the older woman shot her a concerned stare, she couldn't even resist.
She sighed once more, before beginning.
"It's not exactly a problem with Izuku, per se. It's more an issue on my end."
The other women waited patiently as their host collected her thoughts.
"I-I suppose that… I feel like we aren't all that close anymore. I'm always coming home a bit late and leaving early. He's coming home a bit later nowadays, whether he's out with his friend Yagi-san or workshopping ideas with Mei-chan or finding himself wrapped up in something strange, it just feels like we're worlds apart now. I miss him. And it feels like he's growing up so fast, and I just-"
She'd been picking the pace as she talked, speaking at almost top speed by the time she stopped herself. She took another deep breath, blinking away tears that sprouted at the corners of her eyes.
She hardly cried as much as she used to, but she still had her moments.
One more breath, and she steeled herself to finish saying what she had to say.
"I just… wanna be there to see it. To see him and be with him while he's growing. Like my parents couldn't. But he's so independent now that I just feel like I'd be smothering him."
And there it was, the true heart of the issue.
When she was younger, she used to spend a lot of time with Izuku.
When she was still getting settled and looking for a university to begin her professorship at, they'd spend a ton of time together, playing 'Hero and Damsel' or whatever other game they came up with. This happened even more when Hisashi ended up moving out to I-Island and Majima disappeared for Tojo business again.
Though after he started flying off to Okinawa for his summers, and she started teaching Hero Sociology, the time they spent together shrank ever so slightly.
Then he started wandering about town, finding himself caught in all sorts of strange and wacky situations, she ended up teaching philosophy courses as well, that time together shrank just a bit more.
Fast forward to the incident in Kamurocho five years ago, and his visit to Okinawa three years after, that time shrank to near nonexistence.
She was tired of it.
The movie marathon that they'd had on Christmas Eve was the most time they'd spent together in months and even then, she'd hardly seen her son in the three days since then!
Something needed to change before he started high school or she would actually lose her mind.
Or her son.
Neither choice was acceptable.
And from the hard looks in her friends' eyes, they believed so as well.
"So you wanna get closer to him, yeah?" Mitsuki began.
Inko nodded.
"Well, try gettin' into his hobbies. He likes video games, right? Well, see if Hisashi left his old console here and give it a whirl. Blow the kid's mind with your knowledge of retro games and shit. He'll be eatin' outta the palm of your hand in no time."
December 28th
1:20 P.M.
"Okay… All the cables are in the right place, I've got a working controller… I think. And the cartridge is in. All that's left is to start the game."
She pressed the button on her console labeled 'POWER' and watched with anticipation as the screen in front of her lit up and the words on the screen flashed to say 'ARAKURE QUEST III'.
She had chosen this one specifically because she remembered how much fun Izuku had when he'd played it as a child.
(She also vaguely remembered poking fun at Hisashi for being so invested in it when they were teenagers, but that was so long ago.)
This was it. All she had to do was press 'START' and she'd be just one step closer to being able to bond with her son.
She had at least five hours before Izuku came home, she would get as far as she could into the game in that time and then discuss it with him over dinner.
A foolproof plan, one where absolutely nothing could go wrong.
I'm honestly kind of ashamed that I didn't think of it myself.
She chuckled to herself and pressed the 'START' button.
Two Hours Later…
Two rings was all it took to reach Hisashi.
"Hey hon, what's up?"
Her loving husband. Even being as many miles away from her as he was, for as long as he was at that, he still did his best to be there for both her and their son.
Which was good, she really needed some support.
"Help me."
"Huh?"
Okay, maybe she needed to give him a bit more to go on.
"Arakure Quest, Hisashi. How do I play it?"
"You wanna play Arakure Quest?"
"Yes."
"Pfffft-snrk!"
Ah yes, Hisashi. Her asshole husband who was absolutely no help during her current situation.
He's lucky he's cute… and many nautical miles away.
He gave a few more barely contained snickers before continuing on with the conversation at hand.
"Alright, sorry, sorry, just remembered something funny. Back to your problem, though. It's been years, so my memory's a bit spotty, but I remember enough to help a beginner. So which one are you playing, One or Two?"
"Three."
"... I'm sorry. What was that you said? I seem to have misheard you."
"I'm playing Arakure Quest 3." She enunciated each word slowly.
A deep intake of breath followed by a slow exhale.
Oh, dear.
She knew that sigh. She'd heard it time and time while Hisashi was preparing his thesis. And even more so when the time came for him to defend it.
If she wasn't so oddly sure that she loved the man, she probably would've strangled him at some point (the fact that she had recently decided to go cold turkey on cigarettes, and had her own thesis to worry about, likely didn't help the situation).
Though she had no idea what her husband's stress sigh had to do with a video game of all things, she figured if she waited patiently, she'd get an answer.
She figured correctly.
"Inko… out of all the games in that box, you picked the absolute worst one to pick up for a casual experience."
"Huh?"
"Ara-Q3 is the game that destroyed the Arakure Quest series. Before it came out near the end of the 80s, the first two games were considered a worthy opponent for Dragon Quest, and the hype for the third was so great, that on release day, people of all ages were actually stealing copies from each other just so they could have it if they missed the line."
Okay, that's a really great story, hon. What does that have to do with the situation at hand, though?
"And then came the issue… the game was shit!"
Woah, that was out of left field.
Hisashi never swore. It was strange, especially when you considered the fact he lived with two incredibly foul-mouthed individuals in his adolescence, and amongst yakuza during prepubescence, but that's just how it was with him.
She could count the number of times she'd heard him spouting foul language on one hand, all of them in front of a TV, with a… controller in his hand…
Oh...
So that was a wash.
She'd never thought video games could be so complicated.
But then Hisashi had gotten into 'system RNG' and 'shitty mob spawn/variation' and 'crit chance', she suddenly realized just how out of her depth she was. And that was only the beginning of his 90-minute rant.
Video games just weren't her thing.
But that was fine. Her first plan failed, but she still had a back-up.
I'll get it next time.
She pumped a fist while a fire raged in her eyes.
Only to quickly compose herself as she heard the door open.
"Tadaima!" Her son called, it made her smile.
"Okaeri!"
Next time.
"The video game idea is a pretty good one, but I don't think that it'll work out the way you expect, so just in case, I have a suggestion..."
Inko was always glad for Mirei's input.
"You both like to read, right? I helped you two put together that bookshelf last year. Well, if that's the case, why don't you just borrow one of his books, read it, and then discuss it with him?"
December 29th
5:00 P.M.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
"Izu, are you in here?"
No answer.
Good, she'd been banking on him being gone for this.
She opened the door and stepped inside.
She never really walked into her son's room anymore, partly due to the fact that he was a teenage boy and she didn't even want to think about what he did in there, but also due to lack of time.
So while she could've moved straight to his bookshelf and picked out a book, as she had planned, she instead chose to take in the sight of her son's lair for the first time in a while.
The walls used to be pretty plain when Izuku was younger but over the years dozens of posters of the Yakuza Sunset series, heroes (most predominantly All Might and Miruko), and a vast array of weaponry including, but not limited to: a polearm, nunchucks, a light-beam staff, and (his most recent addition) a katana.
His computer sat off to the side. It had been the family computer when Izuku was little, but after she got her laptop, she couldn't find much use for it and let Izuku take it for himself when he was six.
"Can I really have it?"
"Of course you can, sweetheart. It's all yours!"
The memory of the stars in his eyes made her heart swell.
Deciding that she'd observed enough, for the time being, she finally turned her attention to her primary objective.
Izuku's bookshelf was a thing to behold.
She and Mirei had bought and built it for him a year ago.
Six shelves with two drawers at the bottom, and Izuku was making good use of all of them.
The top three shelves were filled end-to-end, with a number of different manga.
Shounen to crime to seinen, with the occasional shoujo colored the shelves like a miniature rainbow. It was almost cute.
The bottom three shelves were an entirely different story.
A good number of thick, well-worn books lined them. A few were bookmarked with index sticky notes.
Among them were a few titles that Inko recognized:
'The Art of War by Sun Tzu' sat with a few colorful notes sticking from its pages.
'Candide by Voltaire' had even more, despite being so much thinner than the previous.
'Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky' was the most annotated of all the books on his shelves.
The book that caught her eye most was one with no annotations or notes, the least colorful volume on the shelf.
"Mom, what's evil?"
A sharp intake of breath as she whipped around to look behind her.
A boy with green hair, no older than thirteen, stared back at her.
He had a book tucked under his arm.
He was getting so tall, he'd likely tower over her by the time he left Junior High.
She smiled back at him softly, it wasn't the first time he'd asked her a question like that out of the blue.
"Evil is doing something morally wrong even when you know you shouldn't. Well, that's what the dictionary says anyway."
He frowned at her- no, not at her, he just… frowned.
His eyes were red, he'd just heard the news about Kiryu-san a week ago.
He didn't leave his room for three days after he heard. Didn't speak for twice that.
His eyes flicked down to his book and then back to her and he opened his mouth to say something, likely to ask another question, before seemingly thinking better of it, turning on his with a muttered thanks, and leaving the room.
Inko blinked. She'd been alone this whole time.
It was so strange, but that book made her realize something.
The way Izuku had been acting before he'd gone to Okinawa, he was distant for a bit.
Not cold, just reserved. She had been so focused on getting things ready for her next semester, and he had started to become so independent by then that she thought he'd just come to her if he wanted to talk about anything.
Looking back on it, she could have done more. Kiryu was important to him.
Just as important as Goro, now that she thought about it. And when they thought he'd died, Izuku was a wreck.
And what did she do then?
Nothing.
Just like when his dream was shattered all that time ago.
"Can I…be a hero, too?"
What would she have done if Goro hadn't been in the picture?
You already know.
Yeah, she did.
But that's why she was here now, to avoid that.
She ignored the books on the bottom three shelves, she didn't want to mess with any of his notes, and she wanted whatever conversation they made to be a bit lighter than the nihilistic themes presented by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
She reached for the top shelf and grabbed a manga directly from the end. She looked up and saw that he had a lot of manga by the same name. Must've been pretty long-running. She also remembered him talking about them, something about the work of an enemy stand or was it Stand?
He seems to like this series. Alright.
One Hour Later...
I can't get into this.
The art was nice, the story was alright too, she just couldn't get into it for some reason.
So the blonde one's the adoptive brother and he's a complete prick. The main character's pretty nice, wish he'd be more assertive. But what about those Stand things that Izuku's always making jokes about? I thought they were important.
She eventually decided that this plan was a wash as well, returning the volume to its place on the shelf and not a second too soon, for as soon as she entered the living room again, she heard the front door unlock and open.
"Tadaima!"
"Okaeri!"
Alright, tomorrow. Tomorrow for sure.
"Ladies. I'm going to have to weigh in here."
The three younger women turned to Yayoi, who had been rather quiet for the majority of the spitballing session.
The older sipped her tea, before leveling a matronly look on the Midoriya in the room.
Inko sat straight and paid the old widow the attention she was owed.
December 30th
6:56 P.M.
Inko sat on the couch, one of her shows playing in front of her. It was one of Izuku's favorites too, especially since it was based on his favorite movie series.
Yakuza Sunset 0.
They never got to watch it together, but they both liked it enough to rate it five stars on NexFlix.
They both liked it enough for it to be the next plan.
The older woman looked her right in the eye and said, "There's no need for all this surreptition. Just talk to the boy. As long as I've known him, Izuku's been a reasonable boy. I'm certain that if you just said that you just wanted to spend some time with him, he'd drop everything just to be with you for a while."
7:00 P.M.
She heard the door unlock and open.
"Tadaima." His voice was quieter than usual, he must've been tired.
"Okaeri." She kept her voice down, watching from the corner of her eye as he made his way into the living room and plopped down next to her on the couch.
They didn't say much after that. As much she wanted to say, she felt comfortable just sitting there and watching TV with him.
She felt something fall into her shoulder. She knew exactly what it was.
She reached her hand up and slowly, gently, ran her hands through her son's soft, green locks.
This is nice.
For a few minutes, the TV playing was the only sound in the living room.
"Hey, Mom." Izuku's voice was so soft that she wouldn't have heard it if he hadn't been on her shoulder.
"Hm?"
"I know that you're busy, but do you think that, before school starts up again, you could teach me how to cook?"
Well, that's random. But also rather convenient.
"Of course, hun. We'll start tomorrow."
Izuku yawned, "Thanks, Mom."
"No problem."
And silence again.
Eventually, she heard his breathing steady and she listened close as he began to snore lightly.
She carefully laid him down on the couch, getting up to go grab him a blanket.
In the back of her head, she thought that even if she couldn't be by his side as much as she used to be, being able to do this every once in a while would be enough.
The first out of five stories to be updated in the next week or so.
Also, a few announcements to make and a question to ask.
First off, this story is officially a year old! Who would've ever thought that we'd get this when I posted that first chapter last year in June. This leads me to the next announcement.
There's another long-form story that I'm gonna be releasing next month. It was actually the story that Mad Dog of Shizuoka ended up replacing while I reworked it for a full and after the reveal of a certain sniper in the manga, along with a lot more experience in writing for an audience, I'll have the first three chapters (5,000+ words apiece) ready for release by the end of August.
And that's not all, I'll also be releasing a short crossover piece that'll turn into a full story down the line, it'll sorta work like a pilot (Proof of concept, basic plot details, and things subject to change before the full release.) A prize for anyone who can figure out what it is. (Your one clue: Jackpot.)
Stay tuned folks.
