RISE

by CoffeehouseSpadille

The origin story of Shota Aizawa: underground pro-hero, UA teacher, and father... but also, son, brother, friend, and flawed human being. A story exploring the implied history in my first MHA story, "Heart, Check." A story of the birth, the survival, the fall, the rise, and the ascension of a man of mystery and wisdom. Rated M for cursing, sexual scenes, and violence. Please R&R!

5. Ch 05 - A Gilded Cage

A/N: Hey, guys. Here's another chapter! Again and as always, I appreciate your support and comments! Don't know about all y'all, but it's getting cold where I'm at. Thank God for fall!

Anyway, here we go~

Please R&R!

Chapter 05 A Gilded Cage

Mama hardly slept last night. Shota could hear her pacing up and down the wood floors from foyer to living room to the iron-cold tile in the kitchen and dining room. There were moments she stopped dead in her tracks, coughing in a drawn-out wheeze that he'd often heard from Granddad when he smoked too much in one day. Shota chanced a glance down the stairs to see if he could see her, though he couldn't. No matter—he'd already predicted her appearance: matted hair with limp waves running loose to her chest (she'd cut it since marrying Tsubasa) and overgrown curtain bangs shading her eyes, lifeless hands swaying when she walked, eyes dulled until angered. Her chin would probably be stained by the old tracks of stray gin droplets. The ghost from The Grudge would be more appealing, though the resemblance was similar enough. She'd gone out to the verandah around four in the morning, just as the birds woke. Shota waited for her to settle before he let himself drift off to sleep. Just in case. Always just in case.

Of what, he'd forgotten for some time now. But it had to be something akin to his undying care for her, no matter how bitter his mind continuously grew. A fungus inside him, nauseating him, infecting him, following him into each corner of his mind. Running seemed dependable; yet, each time proved the same end result he'd anticipated, but never wanted to accept.

Smothered, then left too bare to rot too suddenly.

When he woke around six, Jig was knocked out across his stomach, snoring away. The inside of Shota's room had always been cool, cooler than the rest of the house—not that he minded much since he slept better in chilly air. He looked down at his brother and ran a warm hand up and down Jong's back in the quiet. Shota swore he'd heard Jong trying to wake him somewhere between the realms of blank sleep. He sat up, dazed by a newfound pain that'd plagued his last summer and never seemed to remain in one place long enough to be worth mentioning. Today, it loomed over his elbows and his ankles. He figured he'd needed to slow down between classes; Hosubana gave short time for walking about the halls. Especially for the child of a failure, working down the exact path that his mother had been booted from. The irony was suffocating, but he was sure to move faster than everyone's words.

Or tried to.

As gently as he could, he wiggled out from under Jong and moved his brother to the mattress, covering him with the blankets. The hallways were always his least favorite spots in a house, aside from whatever room Tsubasa frequented. Tsubasa's rooms easily transformed into the punishment room as soon as he breathed the air, as he plopped down to rest his feet, as his cane found its resting place within perfect reach. But the hallways, or all hallways, guaranteed uncertainty; anyone could be lurking around the corners, waiting, watching. They could lead to other too-exposed rooms or blatant nailed-shut doors. They could close in or expand in their cruel parallelism at any given, irrational, and inconvenient moment. Over-constricted or target-sighted. But he braved them anyway. Each morning and every night, the smoothed wood settled too automatically, a transition undesired and unnatural. A trivial thing for others, but a tribulation unspoken of for him. Tsubasa always trapped him in the corners with questions and boy-if-you-don't's. It was Saturday—Saturday morning—Tsubasa always went bank fishing with his drinking buddies. On a good day, he'd bring home rainbow trout from the lakes or mackerel, if he went out to the sea. Grateful as a child could be to have a good meal, Shota always dreaded deboning the fish, gauging out the eyeballs, raking off the scales, clawing out the guts… He had to hold back fearful tears and heart palpitations every time.

He'd been careless enough only once to let anyone see his discomfort—Jig—and had been rewarded with an extensive berating. Tsubasa had even acknowledged Jong as the audience and outwardly made an example of Shota's cowardice, somehow linking it to the biological inferiority of the "Quirkies." His stepfather had forced him to ring the undersides of the fishes' gills and stick his thumbs down the throat until his nails grazed the stomachs. When Shota trembled in a terrified stupor, he was made to hold the fishes there for three minutes in the middle of the kitchen, slimy cool blood dripping all around him. He couldn't break his eyes from the nothingness in the death-stares of the fishes in his grasp. Tsubasa watched the entire time, arms crossed and scowling searing holes into the child's skull. Shota had been nine.

But today, at twelve, he knew better than to be so free with his expressions, the next craft since he'd already mastered how to move silently for his mother. And now, the issue was that he "had no soul" or, as Yoko once scolded him during another time he'd found a way to screw up, had a face that no one would like in its lacking emotion. Name-calling and disgusted observations were better than the hitting. Or at least, less a chance thereof; sometimes, Yoko took his unresponsive expression as demeaning and would bring a hand to the side of his head, catching his ear. His watery shock would be enough to "put him in his place."

Peeking into the living room, where the TV had been left on and nearly-muted, no trace of Yoko or Tsubasa existed. No scent of alcohol, no cane marks in the carpet. The kitchen's tile gave no echo of limping or grunting. So, Shota went into there, navigating still in the same silence. Noise never meant anything good. He reached for the sliding shoji door leading to the verandah, where Yoko must have been sitting.

"Shota."

His hand fell. Every other part of him rose with stubborn tension that had just barely settled overnight.

"Come out here." From the streetside of the house.

Credited to years of expected and obeyed obedience, he made his way to the front, turning the knob there, uncaring for shoes. "Yes?"

Tsubasa sat on the step, spitting tobacco into a corned beef and hash can. He looked up at the child standing at anxious attention. "You went to bed before I got home the other day." On purpose, naturally. "Never got to hear more about your pansy school. Your mom says you're a helluva singer. That true?"

"Mama… says a lot," Shota said, retracting into himself to surface more words when Tsubasa narrowed his gaze, "o-of nice things… about me. She's… being supportive."

"That didn't answer my question."

"Oh. Sorry. I guess… that I'm all right." Shota balled his fists. The lines of his palms were reddening dents where his nails intruded. "Mama says I should be grateful for my gift. So, I am."

Tsubasa hummed. "You are, huh?" He shimmied his cheeks around, sloshing soggy tobacco around for its spicy relief, before spitting out a dip's worth. Shota watched the brown algae fly. "Guess it'll be handy to use on the ladies once you're older. Sit."

A morning-chirping silence washed over them. "How's… your hip today?" Shota fisted the material of his pajama pants. He counted the sub-beats between each note of birdsong, trying to match the pitch to a note. But reading music as opposed to doing music always plagued him. Then again, trying to translate while someone was yelling at you never helped anyone.

"Fine," Tsubasa answered at last. He scratched his thick stubble, an itchy sound complementing the tread of his nails grazing skin. "What're you doing up so early, anyway?"

Shota shrugged.

"Did your mom keep you up?"

Nod.

"I see." The man leaned on his hands, savoring the stimulation of tobacco leaves and saliva wafting fumes through his nostrils. "I'll tell her to keep it down."

"No, it's okay." The last thing he wanted to draw attention to himself. That never meant anything good. "I just worry that she's not getting enough sleep."

Tsubasa seemed to understand, stuffing another dip in his cheek and running his tongue through the plug. Wafting through the morning fresh air, a sightless fog of intriguing smokiness made its way to Shota's nose. He wondered to himself what that brown dirt-like crap tasted like. It looked like soil. But something about that smell piqued his curiosity. His stepfather didn't bother looking at him, merely staring ahead at the inactiveness of the street before them. "What?"

Shota flinched. Over the hum of distant early-bird traffic, he replied with a microscopic, "I, uh…" A thousand words could easily set his stepfather off in a violent, but meticulously low-volumed rampage. He ran his next words over in his mind, then his tongue, a few times before speaking. "I was… wondering… what that tastes like." He looked at the tin in his stepfather's wide, pudgy hands. "I'm not gonna do it. But I was wondering."

Mid-sentence, Tsubasa's fingers cradled a mound of the thick powder. He held it to Shota's face. "Open and see for yourself." A moment's delay and a pair of suspicious brown eyes guided him to add, "This ain't a test. You wanna know, you wanna know." He moved his fingers closer.

"Mama'll kill me."

"Naw, she won't know."

"Granddad and Grandmum say there's no good in drugs."

"Well, I'm your father, boy. Try and see for yourself."

Shota fought down the rise of hellfire that those words ignited. Daddy was his only father. But Daddy died. Because he was a hawkeyed, housetrained soul, he did as told and opened his mouth, pretending not to see the flicker of Tsubasa's eyes that dared him to say the words his heart raged: You're not my father. A lure flinging straight for an early morning beating. The tobacco-marinated fingers dove into Shota's mouth and a cluster of muddy matter splayed across his tongue. By instinct, his body jerked at the threat of vomit.

Tsubasa gave a patronizing pat on the back. "Don't you spit that out. Suck it till there's juice. Spit the juice, not the dip."

Nodding, Shota held a hand before his mouth, as though it would fend off whatever would come out of him if he did throw up. But he did as told, separating mass from liquid with his tongue like a band-aid. Gray and black as the only descriptive terms he could formulate in his head. He tried to ignore the gut-twisting taste, but some gray-black found its way down his throat to which he had no choice but to swallow it. "Why do you like this?" he asked, holding his stomach when it growled in horror.

Luckily, Tsubasa was staring off to the left side of the property, watching birds peck at wormholes. "'Cause I'm a man."

"Oh." At twelve in body but much more in mind and experience, Shota knew there was more to the explanation than a simple coincidental decision of genetic makeup. He knew addictive and dissociative habits all too well, functional or not. But he didn't care to disagree out loud. Risking whatever peace might be roaming about the house today—he never knew—he asked, "How was fishing?"

Tsubasa shrugged and spat out a clump of tobacco again.

Shota followed him and spat his bunch when his stepfather moved the tin toward him. Scraping the fabrics of his mind for anything else to say, within reason, he pretended to be interested in the trail of ants marching from crevice to grass. "Jong said he wanted to go with you next time."

"Let me guess: you don't."

"Oh, uh—"

"I'll take him. Tell him next weekend. You," Tsubasa said, finally turning to look at Shota and his already-forming pout, "be here to help your mom make the dinner."

Meaning the deboning and disembowelment were completely on Shota's shoulders. Again. Tsubasa told him that disgusting work like that did not concern women—therefore, it concerned Shota and Shota only. And it did concern him. He despised the gutting process when it came to fresh-caught fish. Loathed it. But making Mama do all the work—granted she's sober and awake—would fill him with more dread. Seeing the threat of an already-forming "correction" in his stepfather's eyes, Shota lowered his gaze to hide any fear present in his eyes and nodded. "I remember how you showed me."

"Good." Tsubasa spat out another chunk of tobacco, digging his finger in his mouth to scratch a caught dip in his back teeth, before standing up and stretching. "Do your homework." He clapped a pounding hand on top of Shota's head, scrubbing the latter's morning hair to a larger, wavy mess.

Smoothing down the extra root volume, Shota followed him into the house, branching off to his room to do as ordered while Tsubasa flicked on the TV in the living room. He was snoring in minutes. In Shota's room, Jong's snoring matched his father's, but at a lower volume. Harmless in its rise and soft in its release. Shota sat on the bed for a bit, watching his brother—quiet for once, thank Jesus—clutch a bundle of the comforter and sheet to his face. He'd had a nightmare late last night and tip-toed his way to the arms of his big brother, who, as insomniac habit would have it, sat awake and scowling at the ceiling fan. With his brother beside him, Shota had dozed off minutes after Jong had. Shota got up as quietly as the cheap springs in the box would allow, gathered his school bag full of school crap, and stealthily left the room, shutting the door, and going downstairs to the kitchen. He studied until the dawn birds yawned into song and started breakfast the moment Jong's tiny feet could be heard racing to the bathroom and Tsubasa and Yoko gave each other a first-thing kiss.

And Shota… he learned to finish his homework in a matter of minutes. Just the bare minimum, but he figured out a way to write concisely and to try just enough on math to show that he had tried. The correct answer was another story, but at least the effort was there. Or appeared to be. He had to get dressed and fresh-faced. Mama's rule ever since Hosubana: be painfully, perfectly presentable.

The next days—Shota's classmates always said, thank God for three-day weekends, but right now he despised the extra day—were reserved for the county's annual Shima no Shosan, or Island Praise, a Komatsushima-exclusive festival and dance occurring every September. This included the town's neighbors, Longdon and the city of Tokushima itself.

A procession of fish and kiwi showcasing: fishes, each dancer assigned one type to carry, in over-the-shoulder rattan hanging baskets braved by male performers in conical hats, dressed in flowing indigo hamagi: a long-sleeved top, wide at the torso and sleeves, but fitted at the wrists, matching hakama wide and airy toward the fitted bands just below the knees, its entirety concealed by long straw skirts, and bamboo-reinforced sandals that truncate just before the heels; green, firm kiwis stacked with precision in hemp palm basket-plates, requiring two hands, gifted by female performers in sturdy flower- or fan-comb and two-pronged updos with gentle smiling faces painted to adorn their features, quilted by form-allowing yukatas that reflect the sea foam in color and the wind in design with open, streaming sleeves, turquoise silk obi to secure the waist, white tabi socks and thonged geta sandals that matched the men's bamboo make, but were of smoother, polished finish.

The elderly men and women were given gold-hemmed haori. The adult men and women, silver.

The order was definite: eight monks lead the march in a pyramid formation, the high monk in front holding Buddha with careful, strong hands, two Shintoists behind with cleansing incense and prayer beads, and finally the five in the rear, all sporting oni masks to fend off negative spirits and energy for the entirety of the festival. In their hands, rare gold kiwis native especially to eastern Shikoku—in the countryside of Tokushima just before Longdon, of course—persimmons from the island's northmost region, oranges from its westmost, and peaches from the southmost. After them, the elders in front of the civilian dance wave to set the pace and captivate the gaping audience with Zen-sympathetic exercises of slow dance, the women behind them to tend to the needs of those before and after them with rhythmic, careful dance steps, the men in the middle of the line to enervate the spirits and permit a much more upbeat celebration, the girls tailing the men with smiles and tokens of good fortune and health to the observers, and the boys supporting the tail-end with dances of veneration and strength that promise the maintenance of the entire tradition.

The boys' dance—the Fish Tackle—was the action-packed punctuation, complementing the men's Fish Pursuit, the action-packed introduction. A sequence of dance-injected martial arts narrated by a select few boy dancers, armed with a pole and a hooked line, the hook dulled to a harmless rounded end. Agility, balance, smooth transition, and, truthfully, the ability to fall were necessary skills of these select few. Of course, that's where Yoko required him to be, so that's where he was. She'd talked him into harsher dancing lessons, thanks to an old contact in the performance art field, alongside his singing lessons with her in the finals' seasons of sixth grade. And, to teach Shota how to fall, Jong relished the idea of getting to shove his usually-sturdy brother to the floor. Shota would've thought it fun as well if he hadn't known what Yoko had coming for him. Her expectations, as usual, drilled holes in the carefree madness that playing with his little brother ensued.

Flutes blown at strategic, ever-so-often intervals, hand drums beat steadily without excitement, stringed instruments whining and growling to mimic the push and pull of the shore, and bells and designated singers to project sea birdsong—all outlining, never blocking, the procession. All members of this lined dance moved as a single whole, down to their inhales and exhales to amplify the draw-ins and lead-outs of the ocean's tow.

The procession would end at the shore, each member bowing in respect and gratitude to the ocean in heat or chill, in low- or high-tide. They would kneel there for the Prayer to the Moon. Half an hour. It was a southern Shikoku tourist magnet, much like Tokushima's Awa Dance festival.

…both of which, of course, Yoko had signed Shota up for on the performance end. For weeks in the boiling, punishing heat of the entire summer, Shota had been subjected to two separate performance trainings, sweltering in cotton, dark-colored happi for Awa Dance and cotton, dark-colored hamagi for Island Praise on solid pavement, racing from Tokushima City to Komatsushima, the former an hourlong drive north from Longdon, just to make practice after practice. Between Awa Dance in August and Island Praise in September, Shota immediately associated the summer-autumn transitional period to be the actual embodiment of Hell Month… or Hunting Season.

The morning of Island Praise began with noise. Lots of noise and noise without pause. Shota's gentle dream of his parents smiling and holding hands, of his sister and brother chasing each other on a beachfront, of his grandparents cooking up summery food was interrupted by Yoko's shaking him with a too-quick hand and Tsubasa begging at the mercy of Jong's tantrum over wearing a yukata. "Go, go, go," Yoko chanted at every member of this early-bird unit, scooting Shota into the bathroom to tend to his hair, clapping at Tsubasa and Jong to quit their parent-child fury-dance in a mess of kicking legs and wailing, and clapping a dry-cleaned, plastic-wrapped, hanger-ed costume to his chest and shoving him toward the door. In minutes, Shota found himself washed up, fed, and dressed too pristinely on his way to the car, which still blasted cool air in wake. On the drive, his peripheral made note that Yoko downed a miniature of gin in the light-dark intervals of fluorescent street beams and their lack on the highway.

By late morning into high noon, the festival kicked off in a color-filled rage: streamers, banners, sparklers, yukatas with aquatic appeal, steaming and frying food on open grills and pots wafting through the crispy shoreline air, the display of men and women with their boats—some retailed, some generation-ed—planted firmly on loose sand, the crisscrossing of children in caffeinated play in barred-off streets. Flicking the festival in collective awe the Island Praise procession.

Children announced variant adjectives of "pretty!" and self-explanatory exclamations of "wooow!" as the line shimmied by, at the height of which the male dancers leapt, at the frozen-smiled, bouncing grace of the female dancers. Laid to the rest was the appreciation of the Shintoists and the elderly artists.

Flashiness sold, always. A lesson Shota learned by observation years ago, especially among Quirkies—among Quirk users, he meant. A learned double-take. But he knew it well enough, the game of how Quirks are valued. The one with the coolest… fill in the blank. Cool meant massive. Meant colorful. Meant loud.

Nothing practical, really, but each could be useful in whatever situation called for them. Each Quirk had to have a use, he was sure: his mother's and grandmother's allowed them to slow their digestion in the event of some desperate survival scenario (so what if their twin Quirks lie dormant 99% of the time); the only difference: the length of time spent on starvation mode would cause Yoko's hair to very slowly stand on end, lock by lazy lock, which would become edible like a light carb; his father… Shota didn't know, but he knew that, like his own drawback, Yori's Quirk ceased the moment he blinked; and his grandfather's Quirk was touch-based, causing whomever he laid a resting hand on to surrender the ability to use a Quirk. Even Emi's gift of drawing (involuntary) laughter from people had its uses.

But his unknown Quirk… who could say? His Quirk only made him look like the dilophosaurus from Jurassic Park. But that was it. That, and the too-harsh recoil of an irate case of dry-eye if he wasn't careful. An inconvenience, more so, than a Quirk. Even Tsubasa and Jong, in all their Quirkless pride, couldn't help but agree that his Quirk had no real use. A fluke. Appearance-only. An extreme error in Quirk heredity; another smeared stain on the Aizawa lineage, his mother's maiden Fuse line caught in the crossfire, but equally exposed all the same. Better to be Quirkless…

Upon landing, Shota maneuvered up to keep moving when he saw grass-green hair and forest eyes with white cores. He quickly averted his eyes to the dancer in front of him, face reddening more in a fluster unrelated to the scalding heat. He pretended not to see her, but when his fraction of the Fish Tackle group passed by her, he heard her voice. "That's him, Mom! Dad, look! That's my best friend! Hey, Shota!"

"Emi," the mother said, an adoring laugh ladling her words. "Don't jolt around. You're messing up your bun."

He chanced a glance at her when she spoke. Only a glance.

Draped in a light blue kimono and hair in a supposed updo, which now required the attention of her mother, Emi beamed back at him and waved with the hand pinching a takoyaki stick. "Hey! You look so cool!"

Heat threatened his face and, thankfully, the performance proceeded along, so he couldn't answer her. Goddamn it, he thought, hoping his internal wincing evaded shifting his leveled expression, she probably actually thinks I'm lame or something. He followed the other boys into a collective flying kick motion—the resistance of the fish-chase—to which he heard Emi gasp and announce him to be her best friend again. Flustered, he hurried his focus back to the dancer in front of him, the one beside him, falling back into perfect step to avoid standing out again. He was surprised that Emi recognized him, dressed in traditional wear with a concealing conical hat curving over his eyes. His nerves forbade him from pondering over this much longer. Least for now. If Emi happened to notice anything special about him, that was on her.

The procession swayed and slid on its merry, uniform way.

He spotted his nodding and cooing family near the end of the parade—or the rest of them. Yoko had been following him the entire time with her phone held horizontally and at the ready. Emi. Instantly, his stomach caved, retreating deep behind the chambers of his ribs, willing them to close as if slammed shut and held shut by God-pleading hands. What if Mama saw Emi? He nearly crashed into the tall dancer in front of him, a quiet, sturdy boy of fifteen. His gasp at a misstep that nearly sent him flying forward when the routine called for a punctuating, emphasizing step-and-weight-shift. The older boy glanced directly at him when the reverse maneuver—an imitation of rural fishermen tugging along nets full of sea-meat on their backs—in a casually-threatening way under the shade of his conical hat. Shota dodged his glance and focused on the routine, for once praising the Lord that the circumference of the hat covered his scarlet-illuminated ears, as his hair had been yanked back, gelled, secured by a hair tie and waves of bobby pins, and gelled again to nonexistence under the hat.

After the too-long Prayer to the Moon at the shore, the approach of night chilled Shota's soggy feet and exposed hands with each sea breeze, testing his resolve to keep still for the length of the tradition. A stray wavy-curl snuck its way from the gel-bobby-pin purgatory under his hat and bounced back to life just by his ear and he instantly dreaded Mama's reaction once she saw it. The lock kept tickling his neck and irritating his ear, but he kept his eyes focused on and his hands clapped in respect to the dumb Moon that looked like that hippie cheese Mama kept in the fridge for too long. It was hardly a moon to begin with on this celebratory night. Just a moldy, jagged, half-assed C. Shota caught himself losing character with the rise of an unimpressed, dragging-eyed stare on his face. He fixed it just as Mama aimed the camera, by the prickling embarrassment nipping at the residual heat on his back from all the movement in the cotton hamagi. The stupid straw skirt raised fiction hives on his ankles and he was pretty sure sandflies and mosquitoes were making a buffet out of his hands and ankles—probably his feet, too, through his socks as if the barrier hadn't existed to begin with.

Which meant his grandparents would hot-spoon each bite once they saw. If his mother had any hidden complaints about his head voice or his resonance, surely the union of hot metal from a steaming faucet to mosquito-saliva welts would improve his opera. Just the thought of it raised the hair on his arms to full attention.

The Prayer ended with resounding silence that only was to be interrupted once all the performers turned to the crowd and bowed in gratitude for their participation and observation. The cheers rattled the coastal town all the way inland where the forests waited. Each home on coastline, hillside, forest cage, and industrial corner signified a sort of choosey participation by a single, approving porch light or kitchen light. Some flickered, others kept steady. Each markers that commemorated the passion and perseverance of Shikoku.

All the dancers and performers returned to their families—dads who clapped their sons' backs or stroked their daughters' faces with sparkling eyes, moms who sniffled hard to hide proud crying expressions, grandparents nagging about back-in-my-days while sipping kiwi moonshine and lemonade, children with sparklers and fried calamari or plastic containers of garlic and oregano steamed mussels and crab claws.

For Shota: a patronizing kiss to the brow from his mother and no sign of anyone else. Jiggy. Granddad and Grandmum—or Dad and Mum, as he used them interchangeably now. Emi. No one.

Just Mama.

Shota removed the conical hat from his head, holding it before him, and looked up at his mother, waiting for her eyes. She tapped away at her phone, flicking her thumb up and down over pictures and videos of the event. "Mama? Can I go?" She grunted, kept her eyes focused on the phone and its contents only. "I saw my friend earlier. And I promised Jiggy that I'd sit through the fireworks with him. He gets scared—"

"Uh-huh." Yoko continued scrolling through the pictures and videos she took throughout the procession on her phone, her thumb hovering over the screen. "No. Your brother's fine."

"That's n-n—… not what I said," Shota said, shoulders dropping.

"Pardon me, ma'am." A pair of couples—one young, one aged—gathered by the two, prompting Yoko to finally look up from her phone. Shota looked up at them, eyes attentive, and bowed his head a bit in respect. The adults nodded back, and the man spoke first, glancing at the elderly couple, presumably his parents. "Pardon, Janne? You're Janne, are you?"

Yoko squared her shoulders and raised her chin a bit. In a thinned, but straightforward voice, with a leveled, daring expression, she replied, "Yes."

The man and his wife exchanged light smiles, as did the elderly couple. The elderly woman gave an admiring sigh. "Oh, you have such a lovely voice, miss."

The wife interjected, "We have Pilgrimage on repeat in our house the entire year through!"

Yoko finally smiled, a gentle, relieved grin that confessed to too many public mishaps unsaid. "Thank you. You're too kind."

"Do consider returning to the stage, miss," prompted the elderly man. "You're quite talented."

Shota wanted to smile, too, in support of his mother. Her dream re-realized for her liver's sake. But the moment he shifted to swat at a mosquito flirting with his ankle just where the sock recoiled, his mother glanced at him, as did the pair of couples.

"And this gifted young lad." The elderly man gave Shota a one-over. "Ain't he trouble. Gonna have the birds linin' up. Look at that jawline! What's ya name, son?"

Shota scowled. "Don't call me son."

Yoko gathered him by her side, grasping his shoulder in both affection and warning. "This here's Shota. Say hi, love."

Shota curled into himself, dipping his chin to his chest. "Hi."

"Ain't he cute…" his wife cooed, squeezing Shota's chin a bit with wiry, too-thin fingers. The creases in her smile deepened as she inspected him.

Shota glanced at his mother for help when the elderly woman said the bloody trigger word. But Yoko only nodded in agreement to the elderly couple's words.

The husband nudged his side. "Be a finer chap if ya smiled!"

Instead, Shota glanced away with a stubborn square expression and a setting and unsetting and setting of his jaw.

The wife: "He's quite the little opera singer, too, ain't he, miss?"

Yoko immediately resurrected. Her hands, once bunched before her in trepidation of what her former stage name might incur, spread into open palms that cupped her hips. Bragging for all to hear, she announced, "Yup. You must have seen him in the paper. He's won so many recitals, I can hardly keep track."

Shota staggered when she grabbed him to stand in front of her, her nicotine-stained hands clapped on his shoulders. Heat tore at his face, so he dropped his gaze to the light gravel at their feet.

The young man nodded and looked Shota up and down before returning his attention to Yoko. "He's got a gift, all right." Beside him, his wife's priorly amiable expression shifted to a granite, unrelenting stare. Soon, his own countenance became investigative. "How many recitals?"

Yoko chirped, "Oh, if only I could count on my own hands alone!" The adults all laughed.

"Mama."Shota's temperature sky-rocketed, his heart assaulted his ribs, his head thrashed.

"I ask him about his day," his mother boasted, bringing a hand up to gently rake her nails through his hair, "and he sings it to me!" He frowned, glared up at her and this untruth. She returned with a doting, sympathetic smile and tapped his nose with her finger. "Oh, don't be embarrassed, baby boy."

"But I don't—"

"He has so much potential and natural talent that there's hardly room for him to think about anything else."

"Mama." Water interrogated his eyes. "Please stop."

Yoko aw-ed at him. "I'm so sorry, honey. You must be so hungry from all the performing. Let's get you something to eat." The show went on, always. At curtain call, he heard his mother announcing some celebrity fake affection to the other family, holding his hand. Once the family turned away, she dropped his hand and freed her hair from the wide clip. A delayed silence passed before she glanced down at Shota…

…who glared maces and daggers at her. Where honey brown drifted into black pupils, crimson sparked and his hair started to twitch. "Did you have to do that? Bragging and—"

Yoko moved some hair behind an ear and checked her phone's lock screen. "Wipe that look off your face or else."

"Why'd you tell them all that?" He grabbed and tugged lightly on his mother's arm, insisting more when she tried to jerk away. In response to her stop-fussing-Shota-I-swear, he gripped her arm with his other hand as well, eyes wide and pleading to be seen now. "You lied."

"You have piano lessons tonight. Come on." Yoko shoved her phone into her purse, wrung free of his grasp, and started in the other direction, purse slapping against her back. "Mr. Kani said to come right away."

"Now?"

"Yes, now."

"Do we have to, Mama?"

"Yes." Yoko finally looked down at him, eyes stern and non-negotiable. Those expectations, gravid with premature irritation, glazed over with sips of alcohol. "We do. Don't backtalk me. Come on." Off she went, heels gnawing the floor with each step.

Shota pouted. In truth, festivals and fireworks and crowds were indeed difficult for a shy child like him, but he wouldn't object to staying. At least for a moment longer. He could go track down his brother and his grandparents or Emi and meet her parents. Everyone could just be normal, pretend that he was just—for once, just—Shota. But instead, it was piano lessons. Mama wouldn't be satisfied until her personal agenda bled with checkmarks and additional notes on his progress and shortcomings. She wouldn't sleep until he stood at attention while she dished out criticism and next-time's.

And liver-spotted, gummy-toothed Mr. Kani.

Yoko grabbed his wrist. "Sho-ta, I said let's go." She pulled him toward the parking lot, where Tsubasa waited. Shota immediately searched for Jiggy—oh, right. He had been turned over to Sheeran and Yoona, who were hosting a sleepover with some other noisy seven-year-olds. "Don't make us late. I have wipes in the car, so wash off and change your clothes."

"Yes, Mama." Shota stared at his hanging hand, strangled lifeless by his mother's grip on his wrist. Behind him, there was noise. He glanced at a posse of boys chasing each other around with a soccer ball. Two of the five of them in traditional wear, but uncaring for the dirt and mud staining their geta. Laughter—constant laughter. One of the boys executed—kimono and geta and all—a near-perfect bicycle kick, sending the ball to the sky and his friends sprinting toward wherever it might fall. "Whoa."

"What?" Yoko turned and followed his eyes to the boys. She scoffed and quickened her pace. "They'll be sorry they wasted so much time. Should be preparing for a good future. Pay them no mind." She unlocked the car. Tsubasa placed a wide hand on Shota's shoulder blade and pushed him to the backseat.

The door closed. He was too old to play, anyway.

##

Thwack!

Eyes flinching shut, Shota only let out a gasp as he jerked his hands to himself, rubbing the sting from his palms' beds and jamming his lips together to keep from talking back.

"For the third time: wrong." Mr. Kani grumbled. "Your wrists are up." He grabbed Shota's wrists, pulling them from him, and placed them in the proper playing position. Only his fingers, which rested lightly on their tips on the white keys, were allowed liberal movement. His wrists and the flat of his hands were to be straight and strong, dignified and stubborn. Perfection, again. "Fingers loose. You are not caressing the keys. You are the master of the keys. Make sound!" Mr. Kani demonstrated by pressing middle C with purpose. The median note echoed throughout the empty house—empty, save for Shota, Mr. Kani, and his granddaughter, whose nickname was Tipsy.

Shota had heard her play flawlessly before, cursed her for it for the sole reason that his mother had heard, too. Lectured him on the car ride home for not trying hard enough and letting a four-year-old outshine him. But though pitted against his mother's jealous competitive nature and her constant requirement that he maintain her new habit of bragging about him, Shota couldn't think to become cross with the talented toddler.

Only, he sympathized with her. Empathized, too. Children trapped by their own talents by birth—by some good grace and good intention of God—and trapped yet again by the greed and pride of their greedy, prideful lineage. And as bratty as Tipsy was—and yes, of course, as was natural to four-year-olds—he also found himself deeply impressed by her easy acceptance of her own gift. Her pride in it. How she bounced at the bench as she dished out Moonlight Sonata on a casual Sunday evening after church. How she snickered at each of his mis-presses and slouching posture as if she were a weathered pianist teacher, post-career. A four-year-old retiree whose pastime contained naked dolls with too-long hair or Nerf guns and tennis rackets that tallied each room of the quaint house. Very clearly, she'd deemed the house to be a house of her own.

More perfection. Shota knew Mama would kill for a Tipsy of her own, and that's where she had placed him. The lesser Tipsy. The sometimes-stubborn, resistant Tipsy. The Tipsy that required rigidity for his own good and the threat of consequences to focus, as opposed to birth-habit that catered toward easy success and the thirst for it. Where Tipsy blossomed and indulged in praise and victory, Shota obfuscated this idea of self-pride and his natural gift with a wincing scowl. He'd reduce to a child again and pull on Yoko's shirt to implore her, as her look-at-my-child's-success habit only worsened, to please stop bragging about him.

She never listened. And her expectations of perfection landed him in a thick-aired house with a thick-aired old man on a holiday. He took the extra time of Mr. Kani's lecture on correct hand positioning to rub the switch mark from his palm, nodding to appear attentive.

Mr. Kani's crabby hand rested on the piano's lid with a lighter impression than he had displayed upon the keys, eyes glancing at the lid prop that matched the same polished beech wood as the rest of the grand thing. "Make your mistakes scarce." With his thumb, he ran his unkempt nail lightly against the blackheads on his chin. "You did everything perfectly last week."

Shota dodged his eyes when the latter moved to meet in an understanding gaze. Juvenile denial evident in the hollowing of his shoulders and bodily aversion, Shota knew his piano instructor saw through his undisciplined mind. "I'm trying as hard as I can."

"You're pretending to try as hard as you can." Mr. Kani extracted a cloth square from his pocket—champagne, but darkened with spots of liquid—and wiped the corners of his mouth in the least cordial manner possible. With his mouth hanging with great weight in a vertical direction—Marley the Ghost without his head scarf holding together his jaw—he said to Shota, who peeked guiltily at him, "You can't fool me and, in time, you'll find you can't fool your mummy neither."

From the floor, Tipsy nodded with great purpose, though she had not been priorly following the conversation much. Her readiness to rally and be rallied reminded Shota of Jiggy. So ready to please, to participate, to be part of some greater force. He nearly smiled at the comparison, but it died too soon in remembering that he'd left the festival before he could fool around and play with his brother. He wondered if Jig missed him or noticed their forced distance as much as he did.

Naw, he rallied each shooting nerve of his brain for this thought. It's fine. Jiggy's probably stuffing himself with calamari right now with Granddad and Grandmum. He's probably pranking everyone we know with his friends. That's enough.

"Pay attention," Mr. Kani instructed, hands floating by his face, eyes closed. He started humming in-tune to the practice song, flowing along the scale with gentle, rhythmic waves of his sun-spotted hands. Tipsy watched him, half-mindedly, but perfectly joining in the humming and pitch.

Shota rolled his eyes and stared at the creepy Western grandfather clock that ticked, stalled, ticked, staggered, ticked, and stuttered. He wondered why—why, God, why—the face of the antique clock stored a soul-staring, molding portrait of some random European person: a woman with large eyes that peeked over the clock's hands as they twitched, with a flat-line mouth that screamed incarceration from within the cage of time and time lost. He looked away, but the eyes grated at the side of his face.

Jiggy's having fun. It's rational to be happy for him. I'm his big brother. It's enough. Shota sighed and frowned to chastise himself to believe this as reality. And reality it became the more he scowled. It's enough for me. It's enough.

"Useless little roach," the old man mumbled with such bitterness that he nearly frothed venom at the corners of his mouth. Shota nearly stuttered an apology when Mr. Kani jerked a hand to cut him off. "Are you listening?!"

Shota hurried his gaze back to his instructor and muttered, "Yes."

"Maybe if you cut your hair like a proper gentleman, you'd hear me better!"

"Oh."

"Don't you go to a performance school?! You have no discipline!"

"My mum's not paying you by the insult," Shota muttered, louder, averting his eyes. He stared at the keys with nothing but pure distaste. Dizzying distaste. Suffocated distaste. Disgusted distaste. He frowned, frowned so hard that his temples ached and his eyes tingled with the threat of his Quirk. "And I don't want to be proper either. I don't care about that school—I hate this!" Once he voiced it, heard it escaping his mouth, his eyes fogged up with cathartic tears. "It's a waste of time."

"You have a natural talent," Mr. Kani nagged, pointing a swelling finger directly at Shota's eye level. "If you'd try, it would enough for you. Stop being petulant."

"I don't want to do this."

"Nonsense. It's just a bad day. Now, practice the—"

"No!" Shota turned and glared at the old man, his Quirk nearing dangerously close to activation. His hair raised and flowed, though his eyes stayed dormant at a smooth maple. Mr. Kani drew back for a moment at the sight of the defiant child before him, glancing at Tipsy and motioning for her to inch to the next room. "Didn't you hear me?! I hate this—all this! It's two hours almost every day with you!"

"You should be grateful!" Mr. Kani forgot the unknown threat that was Shota's Quirk. Liver spots and all, his face reddened and bulged with veins in offense. "I am teaching you art and you turn away from it! Look at what I've done! At what my little Tipsy has done!" With this, he gestured at the various trophies that decorated the room—all lacking even a speck of dust and rust on the polish. "This could be you, too! If you would try!"

Shota's hair raged faster, whipping about. "I don't care! Who the hell would want to be you?!" He gestured at the entirety of his instructor, as if a single hand movement with enough bite in it could cover the vast disdain he felt for the old man, for piano, for fuckin' opera! "You're mean and you think everyone owes you something! Get over yourself!" A passing silence revealed the height of disrespect in Shota's words, and, in recognition of this, he calmed himself as to calm his Quirk and said nothing more.

He heard Tipsy cackling through an ooooooo moments before Mr. Kani hissed. "Hands open. You have no respect..."

Shota scowled and let out a growling, impatient sigh—a sigh unusual for a shy, polite, and patient little thing like him—pushed his hands together with the palms up, glaring holes into Mr. Kani's cataract-infested eyes.

Thwack!

"Agh!" Shota pulled his hands back to himself, closing his hands to dull the sting. His instructor had struck harder than usual that time. "Jeez…" Glancing over the new pink mark across his palms, he let his piqued temper diminish and told himself that he'd deserved what he'd gotten. A thin rattan stick was better than Mama's spoon or Tsubasa's belt and cane. He closed his palms into fists and dropped them to his lap. "Sorry… I'll try."

Stupid Tipsy got a full-lung's laugh out of that.

"Claire De Lune." Mr. Kani stalked back to his steaming mug of hot prune juice and dry crackers. Between two thick, callused, ashy fingers whose dip into the round tin enough to conceal a veiny, sallow wrist, two oval ginger snap crackers—Bustin' with You-Friendly Fiber! read the label boasted—found themselves fractured in the slightest way from the old man's grip.

Shota pulled a twisted, cringing face, amusing himself, at the white collections bubbling at the corners of the old man's lips when they parted, as to receive the two fiber bombs. His amusement halted the more of those crackers Mr. Kani inhaled—they would have to escape his bloated figure eventually, on some stride of fiber-induced passing wind.

"You want another smack, boy?"

Shota startled at his voice, eyes shooting to the staccato keys and his hands hovering obediently over them.

"Play."

So, Shota played. He heard Mr. Kani, as he stalked into the next room for a napkin to catch crumbs, mumble to himself, "Naughty, bastard child."

Once he got home, Yoko pulled him to the kitchen. "Get a spoon," she said, opening the cabinets above the stove.

Shota slugged over to the drawer beside the stove where cooking ladles and wooden stirrers were kept. He handed his mother a flat-front wooden spoon, eyes on the floor and worried. "I'm sorry."

Yoko glanced at him, then the spoon, then at him again—more so the second, his downtrodden posture. She took the spoon and put it back in its place. "Not that, love." She quickly kissed his eyebrow, surprising him. "You're not in any trouble."

"I… figured Mr. Kani told you I did bad today." Shota felt heat and water threatening his face at his mother's attentive, slightly-flat expression. He gripped and un-gripped his fists, eyes dropping. His instructor's words echoed in his head—Naughty, bastard child—and slowly, as his residual annoyance faltered, they carried the connotation of logical truth. He had been a bit of a brat today at lessons and his parents did conceive and birth him before they remarried. Can't argue or resent the facts. But the guilt for his difficultness, now in the face of his staring mother, weighted against his temples in an anxious migraine. "I knew you'd be angry."

"Look at me." And he did. Yoko tapped his chin lightly and tomboyish smile spreading on her face as she pushed some hair behind her ear. "Everyone has bad days with something. Natural or not." She nodded toward the eating utensil drawer. "A tablespoon, please."

Shota glanced where his mother nodded, then back at her once the realization struck him, thus confirmed once she extracted the honey bottle from the cabinet. That. His entire posture sagged. "Egh, Ma…"

"Don't get emotional. Get a spoon and get over here." Yoko turned around and met his eyes, raising a brow as she waited. In the eyes they matched, Shota wondered if he could ever get his stare to be as intense and gnawing as his mother's. Maybe that'd make people stop messing with him everywhere he went. He went to the drawer and got a silver tablespoon, handing it to his mother and shrinking away back into the counter. He'd down Pepto Bismol over mounds and mounds of honey any day.

Yoko scooped a thick, tall serving of the gooey brown-gold home medicine into the dip of the spoon with easy focus, despite her hair reeking of alcohol. Once satisfied with every inch of the spoon being covered in honey, she held the spoon up to her son's mouth. "Open."

Shota's stomach dropped at the sight, the slight, but chalky smell of it. "Mama, do I have to?" He inched further back.

"Yes."

"I barely like honey. And we did this two days ago, too."

"I don't care, young man. It's good for your throat."

"But—"

"Sho-ta Aizawa. I said, now."

Appearing for an instant—God forbid, a mere instant—like a child his actual age, Shota's brow furrowed and he gave a jutted bottom-jawed pout, raising creases on either side of his nose. He half-expected his mother to break out into hives in a full-length, merciless lecture about "getting smart" with her.

But instead, she raised her eyebrows and gave a short chuckle as the spoonful of honey began to drip back into the jar. "Your face is gonna get stuck and you'll be sorry." She re-scooped the honey and held it back up to his face. "For that face, you get a little extra. Come on, baby."

Shota's glare hardened.

"For Mama?"

That question alone widened his eyes, cleared the displeasure and annoyance from his mind and replaced them with the urge to please. He stared at his mother in his usual way when it came to her: ingenuous eyes enlarged with as much love as there was concern, lying wait for some way to help or to satisfy that were miles away from wherever his mind might take him. Waiting, searching for something to admire. Validation sought after, scarcely granted. But patiently waiting. Reasons as such applied—he opened his mouth.

The over-coated spoon raced into his mouth as if in fear that he'd change his mind. The metal clacked against his back teeth, and the dull, yet piercing sweetness targeted his taste glands, pinching the receptors in its overabundance of richness. Shota dry-heaved when his mother pulled the spoon from his mouth, despising the flavor and the odd thickness of it oozing into every crevice of his mouth.

In the next room, Tsubasa cackled to himself. "Just swallow it, boy. Get it over with."

"Don't even think about spitting it out." Yoko washed the spoon, using the rough side of the sponge to scrap any stubborn remnants of the honey. "You'll thank me one day, baby boy. I promise."

So, he did. Flinched the entire time, but he swallowed the honey with everything he had in him. He pulled a nauseous face in the private of his turned back, but instantly cleared it when his mother cleared her throat and beckoned him with a finger.

"Open. Let me see." Timidly, he showed her his mouth. "Good. Like I said, you'll thank me." She patted his cheek and left the kitchen.

Shota cleaned up.

##

It came during lunch period. Hosubana's cafeteria courtyard imploded with sounds of gasping laughter from the visual department and delighted riffs from the performance department, all mingling in a singular synergy of dreams in the making and hopes held high.

Shota, to be honest, never thought about dreams. He never had them, not that he could truly narrow down on. He'd expected himself to have some on the premise of his parents coming back together, of Chi coming home with their father holding her hand. But… nothing. No dreams. The only thing closest to thereto were in his writing, a hobby—a rational hobby, mind you—he'd started during the third grade. Little scribbles of short stories he'd drafted for Jong, creating worlds and adventures for his little brother's favorite stuffed animals, and narrating them to him at night as a bedtime story. Jong always waited patiently, cuddled up with to his big brother's side with a Rottweiler plush tucked under his arm, whenever Shota stuttered or mispronounced before doubling back and falling into a stutter again. Sometimes, the younger child would simply sound out the word for his brother and urge him to continue the story.

Quiet moments like that while their parents haunted the downstairs.

Besides that, cooking. Rational, safe cooking. Everyone had to eat. Someone had to make the food. Logical. In the kitchen, in that apron, hands warm with work, cheeks dusted with powders and spices, set by aromatic rising steam. Mama would always stumble by, sober or sagging, with one of her old bandanas and tie his hair back, chiding lightly, "Don't forget next time." But he always did, and she'd always come to secure his hair anyway. In the kitchen, the world waited in an evened temper and simply watched him create. A bystander. And he could finally breathe. Inside his creations, his joys, his pains, his rages, his sorrows, and, by far, his love—all in great silence, always in silence, from within him to his crafts. Recipe-ripened once, but never twice. Each dish and pot and platter were gravid with his Heart in its rare, mute manifestation. He never smiled much these days, if at all, but the proof resided in the brightening of his eyes when he didn't care enough to hide it. Only Tsubasa would notice: Finally have a good day?

Shota sat at his usual spot under a willow tree in the corner of the courtyard and started to read The Magic Hour by Kristin Hannah—an American writer whose Quirk allowed her to write fiction simply by the tone of the tune she hummed. Sometimes, if Shota allowed himself to be devoured by her flowing diction and addictive syntax, he could almost hear each crescendo and diminuendo, each thrusting vibrato and wispy falsetto. This book made him wonder—as dangerous as such an irrational thing as wondering may be—how life would be if he were in the same shoes as Alice, a feral child with only hints of humanity, always on the defensive, ready to strike without concern for anyone else's regard than his own. Or Julia, tasked to watch over a child of unknown but certain trauma and abuse.

And that's where his wondering stopped. As if—as if—he'd ever be a parent. As if he'd ever be a good parent. As if a child with any past injuries would be trusted to someone like him and expect healing or care. He could hardly take care of his own mother, could hardly shield his brother's eyes to the goings-on of the Aizawa-Hoga house.

Recovery stories like that were only rational for irrational fantasies. Stupid dreams shirked from the gray gravitas of real-life. There were no such things as miracles. You either work hard and rationally for what you need or you don't. Simple. After too soon, Shota grew tired of running his eyes along print and closed the novel, resting it on his lap and staring up at the graying sky that concealed an exhausted sun. Rain would come soon and it would come without pause, only harden into hail or snow. He closed his eyes.

Shota didn't mind the cold—sweaters and scarfs took care of that. What he worried about was seeing the entire family. Holidays meant relatives and vague remember-when's that he could never quite pinpoint. It meant Yoko showing him off again at every given moment, snatching to stand by her side while she bragged about his pending opera career. He would have to excuse himself over fifty times to the kitchen to proceed cooking with Grandmum and Granddad. The rest of the night on every holiday, he would shrink under the watchful eyes of each aunt and uncle, be scowled at by every cousin for their parents' comparing Shota's achievements to their mere getting-through-school.

One occasion when he was nine, his third cousin from his mother's side purposefully tripped Shota while he was moving dishes to the round table, causing him to spill a bit of the hot pot broth onto his wrist. The boiling sting made him yelp in alarm and his eyes water and spill over in seconds, but he held onto the electric pot firmly until it was safely on its base. Unfortunately, his poor footing caused garlic chili paste to slide from the tray to the table and splatter on his Aunt Ume's silk blouse. Shota, holding his scorched hand to his stomach to dull the pain, hurriedly apologized for his stupidity and moved to get a damp dish rag and napkins. The skin by his thumb had already started to rise in the lattice of splashed fire.

The scar only just started to fade.

But he remembered his cousins' backhanded laughter, his grandparents' worry, how Yoko raced to make excuses that Shota's clumsiness was still "a work in progress," how Jong raced to guide him to the sink for cold water, but was cut off by Tsubasa. Ordering Jong to get the dish rag and napkins for Aunt Ume, Tsubasa snatched the side of Shota's neck, pulled him upstairs to the bathroom "to tend to his burn," and instead belted him over the sink for embarrassing the family.

When Tsubasa left, Shota's godfather, Yori's younger half-brother that Grandmum and Granddad never failed to invite, came in after a brief knock. When he saw his godson hurrying to wipe away tears from where he sat on the cold tile floor, holding his burnt hand to himself, the godfather's heart fell.

Shota saw him enter and immediately tried to run. But, quickly realizing that he was trapped in the bathroom, gave up and remained facing the wall. "Don't come in here, please."

His godfather lifted him in a tight hug and slipped him a red envelope. "I have a present for you. Don't use it on anyone else. It's for you."

"I don't—" Shota said automatically. To avoid disrespecting his godfather by handing back the packet, he had no choice but to hold it to himself and hope his words would be convincing enough. "Please, don't. I'll get in trouble." He sniffled the last of his tears from the yosenabe burn and Tsubasa's chastisement, and tried to stand tall like an adult. "Thank you. But no. Sorry."

His godfather, Sachio Aizawa, sat on the closed lid of the toilet after locking the door, and held Shota's elbows as the boy stood before him. "Shota, you're nine. Chill." Sachio sighed at the exhausted, red-rimmed eyes that stared back at him, at the hands hardened by cooking and cleaning, and at that same face that belonged to Yori as a child. Same strong chin, glistening black hair, proud nose, and full eyebrows that complemented sleek-angled eyes. But those waves in the hair and those bourbon eyes… Yoko. The bitch that made his brother miserable, caused him to lose so much weight, piqued his temper beyond recovery that that rage had become a permanent part of his personality. But this child here, the bastard child of a too-good man and a woman who couldn't love, never failed to pull at Sachio's heart. Unfortunate as life could be for the family, he'd accepted work at an accounting firm in Hokkaido. He met Shota's eyes. "Are you okay here?"

"Yes."

"Is your mum taking care of you?"

"Yes."

"And your stepfather?"

Shota averted his eyes for a moment, knowing his godfather had heard the ordeal between him and Tsubasa minutes ago. "I was being stupid. But we're fine."

Sachio looked nothing like Daddy, Shota observed. Not really. Only the carefulness of his eyes and the coal color of his irises. Daddy was lean and tall with wide hands and broad shoulders. Glasses. Goddad was stout with mixed brown and raven hair kept short, perfect vision, and a hoarse voice that never seemed to be alleviated, no matter how much soup or tea he savored. "You know you can always come stay with me."

Shota tried not to look relieved. He wiped his nose with his sleeve and dropped his eyes. "I should stay here. There's… things I gotta do. Mama needs me. Jong needs me. So do Granddad and Grandmum."

Goddad laughed without restraint. "You're nine."

Shota frowned. "I'm capable."

"I know, I know… I'm just saying." Goddad let go of Shota's elbows and leaned on his thighs, watching his godson. "I heard your stepdad go at'cha. Made me flinch. I'm surprised you're even thinking about anyone else." Shota's face instantly flushed and he turned away. "It's not your fault. I saw the whole thing."

"I need to go back to the kitchen."

"Come stay with me." Goddad was a bachelor. People-person. No kids. No wife. But casuals, sure—even Shota knew that about him. The man never cared for secrets or censorship, and in fact was proud of his blunt way of living. But one thing to love about this man was that once he loved someone, he never thought once about abandoning them. That's where Shota was. "I have room for your brother, too. And your mum."

Shota shook his head. "Thank you. But… we have to stay here." He sported his best adult expression and continued, "I have to focus on my future."

Seeing the resolve in the child, Sachio sighed. He knew that look too well. It was the look Yori had had on when he said he had to stay with Yoko. It was after Chi was born, then again after Shota was born. The gaze of signing up for your own misery. So, Sachio opened his arms to Shota again. Once the boy wrapped his arms around his godfather, the latter said, "You have my number, right?"

"Yes, Goddad."

"Memorized?"

"Uh-huh."

"What's it, lad?"

"555-865-9935."

"Right. And my address?" Sachio waited for their embrace to part before asking this, giving the child a stern look.

Shota sniffled, a symptom of sudden affection on his masked heart. "2342 Ezuro Street, Tarukara Town, Hokkaido. 33251."

Sachio patted his cheek. "Good boy." His thumb swiped away tear stains on the child's cheek. "You gonna be okay for dinner? Y'know, we can always dip. Cheeseburgers and milkshakes. Just us." He winked.

Shota dropped his eyes and pressed his hands into his thighs. Goddad would know he, in full-hearted truth, wished nothing more than to sit around in a car and worry about nothing. Maybe even ask some about his father—he only knew a handful of things about the man: his name was Yori Aizawa, they looked all-too-similar, he was an undoubtably kind, but hot-tempered man, and apparently, he was a piece of shit. Though the last part, he knew was more so Mama's opinion. But Goddad would know. The family would be broken apart again. So, he painted a face of certainty with leveled eyes and his best impression of Daddy's no-nonsense scowl. "I'm fine, Goddad. Don't worry."

Of course, he did worry. And Shota knew this. So, he took excessive pains to ensure his own mood was as neutral and pleasant and cordial as possible. He served the elders of the family with great care, silenced the rowdy younger members with gentle sternness, struck up conversation with relatives he barely knew about whatever piqued their interest, let Mama brag about his opera and about Jong's good behavior in kindergarten, poured tea for each member and refilled the cups with meticulous timing and accuracy to be the least bit distracting, and overall, only ate a single serving.

There was always more than enough food. It was the glint of satisfaction in Tsubasa's eye that nauseated him. An older cousin from the Hoga side leaned over and whispered something to Tsubasa, who responded in a low, but loud enough volume, "Sometimes, a good smack is all a kid needs." A mini offshoot conversation stemmed from that comment alone on the far side of the table, the focus of the topic being child-rearing. Shota tried to ignore them, but he could feel all their eyes on him, all the amused, power-tripping smirks that analyzed his "attitude adjustment" as a parental victory on Tsubasa's end.

Humiliated heat produced sweat on his neck and on the tip of his nose. But he only noticed when Sheeran gently, but firmly grabbed his sleeve as he poured his grandparents' teas. "You look like you're about to pass out." At that, Yoona turned to them, sending glances between them.

Shota shook his head. "I'm okay. Do you want more meat?"

"Shota."

"Wha— Yes?"

"What's going on?" Sheeran narrowed his eyes, studying Shota's every movement, breath, word, and body language. "Did Tsubasa—"

Shota forced a light laugh in dismissal. "Dad"—as Shota grew, the grands in Granddad and Grandmum only shrunk—"I'm fine. He just told me to be more careful." He poured oolong into Sheeran's cup as he said this, then turned to Yoona and did the same for her. Before either of them could say anything, he promised them he would get them both more meat and fish before racing back around the table to lightly swat the back of his five-year-old cousin Michiko's hand for overreaching her personal space for the oden hot pot ladle. "Michi, no," he said, directly, placing down the tea kettle and serving more fishcakes and fishballs into her bowl. "If you need help, ask. But don't reach over people. Is this enough?" Michiko squealed in delight at the abundance of fish product he'd given her and sloppily kissed his cheek in gratitude, and he gently dabbed a loose noodle from her cheek with a napkin. He muttered an advisement to her to behave herself so her parents could enjoy the meal. Even then, he could feel his grandparents' staring.

Nothing more was said.

Shota wished he wasn't such a good liar.

The sudden impact of a hateful shove awoke Shota. When he looked back at who had startled him from his unexpected nap, he saw three boys, eighth graders, standing there. By the stockiness of their shoulders, they were sound-tech students—visual and technical arts crew. The shortest one kicked him in the arm. "Lazy tosser. Just like his mum."

Another boy, one with a wide, long hands that were perfect for the discipline of hoisting up boom mics for hours at a time, flexed his fingers into balls, unflexed them into tendrils. "My dad says your mum should've spared you." He knocked the book out of Shota's hands. Shota dropped his eyes and remained still. "An abortion would've been better, huh, mate?" A large hand patted (more like, slapped) Shota's cheek, leaving behind a blueprint of pink with precise aim.

As calmly as possible, Shota turned around to gather his stuff and started contemplating a place to hide—from everyone: these assholes, the teachers, the aides, God. A foot planted squarely between his shoulder blades knocked him onto his face in the damp mud of the grass. His nose jammed into an exposed tree root. Instantly, water blurred his eyes from impact, so he dared not turn around.

Not that he could—the first boy kneeled on his back, knees stabbing into his diaphragm, while the others cackled. Around them, students from both departments sent gaping glances and dodging shrugs as they gathered and passed. "Can't sing without your lungs. But why don't you try?"

Shota struggled against the pin, ignoring the dull pinching of his lungs as carbon dioxide built up. He nearly got the stout boy off when the taller one stepped on his elbow, locking it to the floor.

The third boy—one with scheming eyes and a holier-than-thou expression of prissy calmness—approached, reeling his hand from the pocket in his uniform blazer to show a multi-use tool. The knife flipped from its corridor when he stood just over Shota. "Your ugly bastard face doesn't belong here."

"Don't call me a bastard," Shota growled, pretending not to see the knife, but watching it.

One of the boys pushed his face further against the grass, down to where lukewarm mud waited. In a higher-than-natural voice, the boy, who had Lit and Pre-Algebra with Shota, mocked Shota's accent in the usual overly-theatrical way Main Islanders tended to. "W-wh-wh-wha'd'yoo saiy, yoo dir'y bahstahd?"

Gamey, moist earth attacked Shota's mouth, but he persisted, "I s-said, don't call me bastard." At his swelling rage, his Quirk urged his hair to flow at full attention. His eyes remained in their natural brown hue, though ready to glow crimson, based on the growing dryness that caused them to water more.

"Don't like that?" the boy on his back taunted. He lowered to a knee and snatched a thick lock of Shota's flowing hair. Yanked it hard enough to make Shota wince. "Go back to your clay stove and log cabin, country bumpkin. Tell your whore-mom you don't belong here."

Shota watched the lock of wavy black hair fall lifeless to the grass just where he could see it. Watched one of the boys dangle the severed lock before his face just before dropping to the ground, letting mud and ants overtake it. Decapitation that rendered Quirk-trait hair to motionless regular hair. A removal. A necessary pain to achieve peace. The panic and horror of his mind and heart released… and Nothing entered.

The Nothing that was peace.

The stout one on his back snickered. "You can sell your dirty hair for tobacco. Or feed for your pigs." He dug the point of his knee deeper into Shota's diaphragm, causing him to choke and fight a bit harder before giving out completely. The boy smirked at Shota's hyperventilating coughs and gasping for air. "Aren't we charitable? You're welcome."

Another lock of hair fell into the grass.

"Hey, assholes!"

Emi stood tall before him, fists clenched and reverse-pupiled eyes set on the three other boys. "You wanna fight so bad? Fight me!" She raced into the schoolyard battle without hesitation, a whirlwind of maniacal laughter and well-coordinated swings.

Shota slowly sat up, too dazed by the sight of his severed bits of hair on the grass, by the remnant sting in his scalp from the boys' grip and the knife's sawing. He remained there for too long, staring at the black locks that shivered in the light wind. Mama would be furious if she knew. Tsubasa would call him something too harsh. Jong would be worried. Water rose in his eyes, but retreated back into his face. Even his own tears felt nothing toward him. He hardly did. There was nothing. Nothing. He only sighed.

"Are you okay?"

The Nothing surrendered to Emi's gaze, her question. Instantly, Shota craved nothing else but to be with her. For her to have nothing else to do but stay with him. Least for now.

Instead, he ran. Rationality opened its arms for him.

##

Pulling a cigarette from her lips, Mama coughed and flapped away the smoke around her head. Exhausted and sallow, Shota knew she still had the capabilities to do the same to his butt, should he speak recklessly. He played with his thumbs and stared at his ankles.

"Mama?"

She grunted.

"I wanted to ask you something. About girls?"

"What about girls?"

Shota took a breath. "I… U-um, w—… Well, there's a girl at school. A pretty one, and she said she likes me—"

Mama turned to him, oily hair falling in her eyes. Shota looked down. "You're not at that school to be fuckin' girls. You're there to show those other kids what's up. Unlike you, Shota, they don't got a famous mommy."

"W— I—"

"You what?" Mama stared at him in disdain. He dared not speak more. "You got a gift for performing, so be a man and think rationally about using it."

But, his soul ached. But something. He let out a steady sigh. "Yes, Mama."

"Who's she?" Mama asked after a guilty quiet.

Shota studied her body language, unsure. Wanting to tell her the truth, but not wanting to deal with all her possible, hell-shattering responses. "Emi. Emi… Fukukado."

His throat swelled when she scoffed. "That bastard doctor's girl? Damn it, Shota…"

"Wh—… Is something—"

"Your little girlfriend's daddy is what's wrong." Mama shook her head and sucked on the cigarette for a long time. Smoke peppered her breath as she spoke, "Dump her ass and focus on your singing."

No response.

She looked at her son, taking note of the fear and panic in the widening of his eyes, the gulping in his expression, and the squeezing of his shoulders to his body. Ready to run. But stubbornly—defiantly—remaining on his feet, staring her down with expectant eyes, urging more information, unsatisfied. "Okay." A reel. Anger heated her paling skin and she stabbed out the cigarette into a handcrafted bowl Chi had made in kindergarten. "How about this? That doctor is the one who ruined my career."

"I thought—"

"You thought? No." She held up a finger at him. "Let me tell you what to know. Dr. Fukukado was supposed to help your dead father and I get through hard times. Instead, he called me a drunk and blabbed about it after one public misdemeanor. One!"

Shota rubbed his elbow. "I'm sorry, Mama."

Mama's scowl hardened at the same time her eyes became wetter. "You date that girl and you're sabotaging your own mother."

"But Emi's not like her dad," Shota defended. He calmed himself and let his tongue fall loose as to not sabotage him. "She showed me. She knows who you are and the first thing she said was, 'Is she okay?' Emi's nice."

Uncomfortable silence—the silence that plagued his early childhood—returned between the two. The tangible silence that gathers in closed fists and covered ears. Un-erasable. Inescapable. She cleared her throat and steadied herself with an annoyed, challenging stare pasted on Shota. "You remember when my career took off?"

Shota stifled an annoyed huff. "You were sixteen. By nineteen, you had already performed at the New National Theatre Tokyo. Twice." He shifted his weight, watching his mother cough out smoke.

"You're twelve. You have four years. So, focus on that. Not some rich bastard's daughter."

He let a disinterested, dread-induced haze screen his vision. "Yeah."

"Us gifted folk are better off using our voices on the stage than in someone's bed." She took a moment, eyes distant, anywhere else but there on the verandah. "Shit happens after that."

His chest caved in, crushing him into himself, shrinking him back to the silent five-year-old he may as well have still been. He stared at her, trying to remain as leveled as possible. Nothing hurts, he repeated to himself, waiting to watch his fingertips disappear, ashes spreading up his arms. Be rational, and nothing will hurt. But with Mama, he couldn't disappear, couldn't think about 'rational' or anything else but the knives in her words. "I understand."

"—bunch of crying babies you never wanted." She took a swig this time of her usual gin.

Shota wanted to cover his nose, but he knew Mama would make him sorry. "I know, Mama. I understand."

"What a waste of my twenties. And for what?"

"M-Mama, please, I don't want…" to hear any more. Shota thought hard. "Her. Th-the girl, I… Just never mind." He kicked himself for letting a single sniffle out when he held himself.

"Oh, my God!" Mama flicked her cigarette ash roughly. "Boy, if you start crying—"

"I'm not," Shota defended. He turned away from her before the full truth could spill out, stalking off to the kitchen within the shade of the house in high dudgeon. "I'll start dinner, then."

"Fine. Stew."

"Bit warm for stew, innit, Mama?"

"I want stew. Pork."

"Yes, Mama." His chest now swelled and his pace quickened, his voice grew harsh that it preceded his entire disposition. Jiggy looked up at him from his DS when he passed, staring at the uncharacteristically livid expression on his face. Shota yanked the pot from the cabinets. "Yeah, I'll make sure to go easy on the potatoes, just for you."

Jiggy tilted his head in question.

Mama called from the verandah. "Make sure the pork's thawed and fresh. Blood's good for ya."

"You're already practicing in cannibalism, so what the hell." At Jiggy's snicker, Shota gave his little brother a smirk and winked. They both froze when—

"What did you say?!"

Shota gave his brother a hushing sign. "I said: remember when we went camping with Granddad and Grandmum? They made that curry." Mama said nothing, and the boys both hid their laughter.

Jiggy sat up on the counter, thumbs attacking the gaming console. "So, a girl? What makes you think she'd like you? You're too dorky."

Shota glanced at him, and took another take once he saw what he saw. "Jong." His brother looked lazily at him. So, he came over, lifted his tiny leg, and swatted the curve of his rear with a wooden spoon. "How many times have I said?"

His brother winced and held the assaulted area. "Ooooow, Shotaaaa! Mooooom!"

Amused, Shota mocked his squeaky voice—"'Moooom!' Shut up"—and put down the spoon before going over to his brother. He easily plucked his brother up, ignoring Mama's telling them to can it. "Off the counter."

"Let go!" Jiggy struggled, clinging to his game for dear life and trying to dig his nails into his brother's arm.

Shota dangled him by the waist and dug his fingers into his little brother's sides where baby fat still remained. "You let go. I told you not to put your butt where the food's gonna be." Jiggy's struggling turned violent, complemented by scream-laughter and kicking. His DS landed on the plush rug that was matted by time. Shota gently placed him on the floor and went back to setting up the countertop for prep work. He flicked the sink on to wash the vegetables.

Jiggy recovered, got clumsily to his feet, and pushed his pinkened face into his brother's hip, his arms wrapping around Shota's waist. A fond, wet hand messed up his sand-colored hair. "I wanna do something!"

Shota looked down at him and smiled a little, though still injured by Mama's words. But then Jig returned the smile, widening it to expose missing front teeth, and all her bitterness curled up for the time being. With his brother beside him, under the safety of his arm, he knew that there was enough to his life the way it was. "Fine." He lifted Jig and kicked the kitchen stool before the sink. "Remember how to wash potatoes?"

Jig nodded and went straight to work. Shota minced squash and bell peppers before sparking up the stovetop.

By the time dinner was ready, his mind, his soul was at rest. The haze had cleared and aromas of melting meat and thick sauce overtook the space once occupied. Looking at the stew while Jong screamed up the house for their parents to come eat, Shota wondered to himself if maybe… just maybe… he could drop the opera thing—screw it to all hell—and just spend every day making food. He wondered for a long time, only snapping out of it when Tsubasa gripped the back of his neck in thank-you.

Everyone got two servings of the stew he labeled Dread during the process. "Meat's tender," Tsubasa grumbled in an unwilling remark of appreciation. Jong noted the meal to be meh, but sent a teasing grin to his brother that confirmed otherwise. Shota pinched his side in amusement, opting out of being any further a presence at the table. Mama… ate in a dense silence. But it was fine. They were fed.

Watching them eat Dread, taking portions of his haze in their own bowls and away from him, Shota finally breathed.

Tsubasa said it, and his heart fluttered with a surprise of welcomed affection: "That ain't the boy's job, Yoko." He immediately looked sharply at Shota, to which the latter, by muscle memory, shot his eyes down into his lap. "Very good dinner. You learn that at school?"

"Grandmum and Granddad," Shota muttered. Porcelain bowls designed with flowers and fish dancing along the trim flashed in his mind. Grandmum at the stove, stirring a pot with a gentle off-key melody sprouting from her chest. Him, standing on a stool at the counter next to a running sink. Large, callused hands hovering over his own, a cleaver looming over raw vegetables and meat. Tobacco-sprinkled breath, Granddad's voice in his ear: Watch your thumb. Don't saw. Slide. Shota forced himself from the memory as Tsubasa reached for a napkin. "I'm happy you like it." He said to his stepfather directly, praying that somehow this moment would prompt a sort of peace between them.

The test, he knew, would be the next time he angered Tsubasa.

##

"What happened to your hair?"

Shota pretended not to hear. He stared at his feet that dangled from the pillowy swivel chair. Kicked them to look preoccupied.

Yoko leaned over to see the side of his face because preoccupation never mattered to her. A spray bottle and a comb in her hand, she insisted, "Shota?"

"It was tangled." Shota clenched and unclenched his hands. A drop of water trailed down just by his ear. He wiped it with his sleeve. "I brushed too hard and it ripped."

"Well, don't. Jesus." Yoko continued spraying his layers. She squeezed product into her palm, rubbed it into her clapped hands, and raked through his hair to inspire waves and curls. "People would kill for your hair."

"People would kill for less, Mama." When she peeked at him again, he ducked and added, "History class. Just sayin'."

She slipped the comb through his hair, following it with her product-moistened hand. "Least it's still thick. Just keep it combed back. Or at least the lot of it."

"Yes, Mama."

It took another moment for her to finish. When she sat back to inspect her work, all she saw was a miniature, stubble-less version of Yori with kind, wanting eyes. Her eyes. But this time, there was a certain fatigue in Shota's irises that dimmed the honey color to simple cocoa. He looked even more like his father with his wavy-curling hair brushed back to a neat shine. She smiled when the faintest rebellion of his hair's natural flowing texture hinted return at the top and ends of his hair.

"All right, Mama?" Shota's eyebrows tilted up and furrowed a bit.

"Perfect, actually." Yoko stood and smoothed wrinkles from her skirt, a hand grazing the side of her face to move a lock of hair behind an ear – only to realize that she'd had it pinned in an updo. "You look smart."

Shota felt his shoulders sag, but he at least had enough sense to be meticulous with his tone. "Thanks." His blank stare was ceased by his mother leaning into his line of vision, so he gave her all his attention again.

"You know, love," she said, guiding his chin to straighten with pride by a mentoring finger. "You'd look even more handsome if you smiled."

Shota, taking advantage of his mother's rare sobriety and good mood, pulled an exaggerated scowl. His mother addressed his testing by tickling his ribs a bit. Arms shooting down to cover himself, Shota laughed and curled into the cushiony cradle of the chair.

Yoko kissed his nose. "And maybe you'll even come to… really see the beauty of your gift. This profession." Her eyes loomed over warm white lights illuminating wide mirrors, each breath drawing in scents of flowery perfume and wintery cologne. "You'll see, baby boy."

"How d'ya know?" Shota asked, righting himself. He looked through the mirror to see his mother already meeting him there in a wanting stare. She looked tired, but beautiful, as often was the case. But him: who even was that? Polished, head to toe. Hair brushed and gelled straight as to fall flat on the top of his head, not a single curl or fringe to be seen. Formal wear too starchy for twelve-year-old. "How d'ya know this's me?"

"Mama knows you," she said, placing her hands on his shoulders, kneading her expectations into his muscles.

That. That alone sufficed as enough reason to stifle his hesitance, his un-want, and his ache for free will.

Mama. Just Mama.

So, he went out there.

Planted by Mama's faith and dreams alone on that cold, yet scalding stage with no other distractions or obstacles to dull the eyes on him. The audience in the dark of the auditorium stated its presence by sniffles, throat-clearings, and whispers. If he really dared, he could make out faces, smiles, nods, lipstick-ed lips. But he dared not—the eyes. Eyes on him. Eyes that received for the comprehension of brains, connected by nerves and receptors. Perfect logical sense. But still, he needed to keep his eyes ahead, but numbed in the comfort of soft focus. Those eyes and brains could wait till he escaped the peeling spotlight. But unlike the eyes, the brains expanded, collecting and storing as was their nature. Brains that knew him, his face, his lineage. Bastard whore's son doomed to the same fate that his haunted his mother. Unmatched capacity in inherited and trained windpipes and an extensive range across the scale that rested in tenor… predestined to alcoholic, sleazy ruination.

The score stroked the still auditorium to motion. Music—its heartbeat of percussion, its tendons of strings,—flowed from Shota's thin frame, emotions exposed by lyric and vibrato settled and shifted naturally not entirely or obviously from his expression or bodily movements, but his eyes. His voice, flawless—but his eyes that frequented the soul of each spectator, that had a way of piercing and glazing even when averted elsewhere, that was complemented by the refined jewels of his voice that filled studying eyes and snatched every bit of consciousness from even the rowdiest of toddlers. No, instead, these toddlers found difficulty even thinking to misbehave and were left gaping or lulled to sleep. The grouchy elderly invigorated to curtly nod or sigh and place a delicate hand on their chest. The snooty rambunctiousness of teenagers hushed to a lifted-eyebrows and doe-eyed stupor and instant guilt for wasting their years scrolling social media.

From the audience, in a murmur, Yoko sang with her son. Everything turned out perfect, she was sure. The only error she saw: it was subtle, but he needed to learn to remain stone-like during the performance. Statuesque composure exuded a sort of aristocratic elegance that only the finest of the art of opera demanded. But once the song ended, she found herself breathless. Tsubasa held her hand and gave her a smile before looking back at Shota.

Unlike pride and astonishment, jealousy and prejudice lay dormant and silent. The applause lasted for three, unfaltering minutes. Shota, eyes wide and dodging, searched for his mother in the crowd. Once he did, the pleading in his eyes settled into the search for approval. Yoko smiled wider, lifted her eyebrows, and gave a demonstrative bow before nodding. He followed suit and gave a courteous bow to the crowd for their observation. Every photograph or website image released from regional news concerning the latest victory of Janne's kid. Each article, each televised report on the recital, somehow sprinkled implications of the supply of good fortune and talent that shorten by bits with each of Shota's victories.

However once regrouped with his parents, brother, and grandparents (and friends of the family who "just couldn't miss" the show), Shota was faultless. He hurried into his mother's arms, burying his face in her shoulder in defense from the anxiety that still remained in his heart. He let her pride in him calm him to exhausted silence. In the car, Yoko sat in the back with him and he fell asleep on her lap, holding her hand against his cheek while his head rested on her leg. She grazed his scalp with her nails and hushed Jong in the passenger seat to not disturb Shota.

The family ate out—the Aizawa-Hoga merged family and Sheeran and Yoona—at a seafood buffet, talking, laughing, stuffing themselves more than any holiday dinner could hope to. Shota could hardly stand the constant surges of compliments, success stories, and approving head nods from his family, so he busied himself with cracking crab legs and mussel shells and peeling and deveining shrimp for Jong. To further shield himself from being pressured into acting as if he were proud of his own achievements, he directed his brother to get more shellfish for him to open, giving excuses that Jong would have an ongoing flurry of crab-, mussel, and shrimp meat till his stomach protested. Jong, only focused on the steaming food and his brother's calm request.

But of course, that didn't stop him from stomping from his seat and abandoning his food excitement with a petulant, "Ugh, you're so bossy!" Only to return with a plate stacked heavenward with shellfish and a large side of butter in seconds. He placed the new plate in front of Shota just as the latter finished the previous, sat on his knees on the chair, gaped over the building stack of cleaned sea-meat on his eating plate, and bounced in joyful impatience at his brother's working hands.

Shota glanced at him from the side, smiled at his pleasant tantrum, and looked back at the crab claw that pinkened the pads of his palms and fingers. "Eat, Jiggy. Or it'll all be cold."

Jong never looked away from his steaming plate and butter. "Aren't you gonna eat?"

"Course." Shota stifled a wince when a claw spike nailed the web between his thumb and first finger, focusing instead on the smooth multicolored meat that slid from the arm he had teased open. He nodded toward Jong's plate. "Feed your face. Go on."

"Thanks!" Jong immediately dug into the sea-meat tower with two snatching hands, taking fistfuls of crabmeat and dunking them in butter bowls before shoving them into his mouth. Yoona noticed his quick movements and gently patted his leg—a silent reprimand to 1) sit properly at the table, 2) use one hand to eat, 3) use a utensil, 4) eat quietly, and 5) slow down. Jong moved his legs to sit on his rear, but that was all he complied to.

Shota noticed this with exasperated amusement, met eyes with his grandmother and her tight-lipped attempt to frown, shrugged, and continued peeling and cracking. He popped open two mussels at once when he realized Sheeran had him cornered with an unrelenting stare. Please don't, Shota prayed in his head, pretending not to notice as he combed mussel meat from its silvery home onto his brother's mound of food.

But nothing was said. Shota's nerves remained on edge for the entire night.

##

"Hey, Shota!"

Shota turned and groaned.

"You okay? I haven't seen you since you got beat up."

"Wow." Shota turned back around and continued on his way to his locker.

Emi swerved in front of him. "I didn't mean it like that!" When he stepped around her, she walked beside him. "Sorry. I have a habit of blurting rude things out."

"It's fine." It'd been a full week since they'd spoken. Shota took extra pains to hide his bruised cheekbone from her, dodging around tree planters and doors to avoid her. He knew she'd be searching for him. Emi was like that: loud, annoying… kind, nurturing in her bluntness and rushing around. So, naturally he pulled away. "Don't worry 'bout it."

"My dad said I should learn to speak like a lady." He noticed her thin brows bunched just above that button nose of hers. Then, she shrugged, stretching her arms out wide in the disposal of worry and self-consciousness. A blaring smile nulled how dim her eyes had been prior to this moment. "Apparently, my goddaughter's learning from me, too, but, you know, six-year-olds!"

"Yeah. My brother's seven, so…" Shota returned. The pit of his stomach eased out of its weighted prison of embarrassment and guilt for avoiding his one friend at the sight of her smile. So, he gave her one of his calm smiles, not nearly as radiant or infectious as hers. But enough to make hers expand. "I got the flu from eating a snowball. A really nasty flu, to tell the truth. Thought I was dying…" Emi laughed, but listened with an anticipating stare. "Jong—that's my brother's name, by the way, but I call him Jiggy, mostly. So, my brother got sick with the same flu the next day. Turns out he did the same thing. Ate a snowball."

"No way!"

"Ate… actually, two. Can you imagine?"

"Wow! Your house probably reeked of Vicks and Halls, huh?"

Shota snickered. "My house reeks of Halls anyway. Mama makes me suck on those all day, every day. Especially after lessons. That, and a spoonful of honey before bed."

Emi nudged him as they walked, clutching her bag's strap. "Honey's good, at least… I heard about that trick, though, from one of our classmates in Dance."

"I can hardly stand it."

"Speaking of honey, do you wanna go to that ice cream parlor by the bay? It's—"

"I'm not allowed to have cold things. Or milky stuff."

"No way. For singing?"

"And I'm lactose, yeah."

"Oh. Well…" Emi thought hard for a bit, eyebrows scrunching down. She perked back up in seconds. "Oo! How about coffee? There's a Starbucks—"

"Caffeinated. Can't."

"7-Eleven for sodas!"

"Carbonated. Sorry."

"Snow cones?"

"Again, cold. Acidic. Not allowed."

"That's not acidic!"

"The syrup is. My mum would kill me."

"So, what can you have?"

"Room temperature or warm water. Or herbal tea. Miso and other clear broths… Yeah."

"Yikes, dude. Singing sounds like it sucks."

"Not… so much. I snuck coffee this morning. I just had to chug water like hell right after. That sucked more. I hate water."

Emi chuckled. "Let me guess, room temperature?"

Shota nearly laughed at the truth in her words. But he merely ran a hand through his bangs, letting the subtle sunlight dance on his forehead, over his eyes. "Point is, I get it. Your goddaughter being impressionable and stuff."

"For better or worse." Emi's missing-toothed smile widened and she took her hair out of the clip that twisted it into a bun. "You're the first person not to be weirded out that I'm already a godmother."

Shota shrugged, stopping at his locker and starting to twist the dial. Around them, other students ripped through their lockers for their public shoes, tearing off their private shoes, and racing outside with challenges of who's the fastest to make it to the park. Shota sat on the bench next to Emi, who also switched out her shoes, and slowly redressed his feet. "I have a cousin, an aunt, and an uncle who are the same age as my sister." He dropped his school shoe. Emi glanced at him. Chi. He hadn't thought of her as his sister in… how long? A simple name, another word in the English language, another kanji pair in Japanese. All Chi existed as was an embodiment of Shota's obedience to his mother, like opera. She said forget about his sister, so he did. She said opera is his passion, so he believed her. Like all things, even love and passions grew dull. Logically. So, he never doubted it.

Till now.

"You have a sister, too?" Emi hopped to her feet, smoothing her skirt and placing her school shoes back into the locker.

Shota slowly followed suit. "Had. She's gone."

"Oh. I'm so sorry."

"Don't be. That was long ago." Shota waited for her to finish up, watching how she seemed to bounce with every movement. There was a brief pause between the looping of her sneakers' laces, a halt in her yellow-painted fingernails. When she finally did loop them, Shota pretended he hadn't been staring, tossing a disinterested glance at the Above-and-Beyond corkboard the entrance. His Opera teacher had pulled him aside for a picture last month, as did his Piano, Theatre, and Literature teachers. All of the pictures seemed to be too similar—shot at Shota's eye level with him in the middle of the frame, chin dipped to his chest, eyes large and pleading, shoulders hiked and tensed, and just every in-frame part of him reeling into the wall from the camera—so the office opted to use one of the de facto duplicates, border it with a special gold-glitter construction paper, and write a caption for his excellence each class under it. Right dead-smacked in the middle of the entire board.

They failed to mention that his "excellence" should be completed by the addition of the word "forced" preceding it.

He averted his eyes, pretending to look elsewhere. The Zen courtyard through spotless glass windows and doors.

"I have a brother," Emi said, startling him. She checked her hair in the small mirror she'd placed on the side wall of the slot, smoothing down some static from spinning and turning and tossing her head back in laughter throughout the day. But in this moment, and many of these new moments with just the two of them, her reversed irises and wide eyes seemed serene. Real. "He already finished college and has a job, but he's gonna go back to do more school. Isn't that weird? Oh! My goddaughter's his daughter. She's so cute!"

Shota watched her lips, caught himself and blushed, dropped his eyes and studied the forming curves of her waist and legs, caught himself and blushed again, and ultimately opted to glaring at a grass stain on the white tip of his Converse. "That's…" Fighting a stutter that paralyzed his tongue, Shota swallowed and took a resetting breath. These days, all the opera and theatre classes and rehearsals smoothed the crimped edges of his disability, eroding a path into oration that he could locate with shorter pauses and enough focus. Even wh's and h's started to cooperate with him. "You really love her."

"She's the best!" Emi closed her locker and twirled to face Shota. "Hey! Did you hear? Summerson-sensei and Asano-sensei released the cast sheet for the musical!"

"Yippee." Shota, in all truth, had seen it in passing. He nearly lost consciousness when he saw his and Emi's names in the two lead roles. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, clenching them as if he could squeeze this moment into non-existence by sheer will.

Emi recoiled at his flat expression. "You can't have that attitude about it. We both got picked."

"You taking the streetcar?"

"You're impossible."

Shota wondered if he could quit. Until he saw Emi's eyebrows draw up, saw her gripping at her wrist and walking in a hesitant way, inching closer to him as they exited the gates. "You're nervous."

"Maybe."

"You… are nervous?"

"Don't be a jerk."

Shota nudged her arm with his. "I always hated Phantom of the Opera."

"Really?"

"It's… too much." Shota raked his fingers through his bangs, combing them back for a moment. His hand made its way to the back of his head, where the severed, uneven locks could be felt under the first layer of hair. "Mama's gonna be just thrilled, I reckon."

"Yeah, my parents, too." Emi kicked a stone as they walked, dribbling it. She hopped in her step at the short game, hugging her schoolbag to her chest as she shuffled. "They wanted me to take advantage of everything while I'm here, not just the visual department's courses."

"Lucky you."

"Lucky you, nightingale. I bet your mom's gonna spoil you rotten for that role." She kicked the stone into the canal they passed. "I personally can't wait to hear you."

"You hear me every day," Shota evaded, sniffling a bit from remnants of a passed cold. The chest cold found its way to Tsubasa this time, having started with Jong after he, despite being warned by Yoona, drank from a public park's water fountain, and now seemed to be lying in wait to take down Yoko next. Unless gin and cigarette smoke acted as a disinfectant as well. Shota didn't know, didn't care. "You're hearing me right now."

"I meant hearing you sing, dork."

"I'm not a dork. Just say what you mean, punk."

"Hey!" Emi struck him in the chest, making him, to his own surprise, laugh. Seeing his smile and hearing the lightness of his laugh, she found herself breaking a teasing smile. "Look, everyone talks about your talent and I've seen the papers. Summerson-sensei said your per-gaj-o is phenomenal!"

"Passaggio."

"—I wanted to see for myself 'cause we're such good pals, you know?!" She gasped, startling Shota. "What if we get the lead roles in the next one?! We can do it! Us besties, dominating this school and sending out fuck you's to all those jerks who think they're better than everyone else!"

"I don't know about dominating," Shota sighed. "But—"

"With your voice and my charm, we can! Plus, let's be honest, Shota: we're both pretty damn hot. We got it in the bag."

Shota shoved a lock of hair into his mouth. "You're embarrassing me. Easy." His heart ached hearing Emi mention his voice. Another expectation. His gaze worked itself to the cup of her hand at her side, wondering—hoping—that his hand would be bigger than hers, should he choose to grab it. As himself, as just Shota—anything he could eventually be once surgically removed from his mother and her ruined image. His "gift." To tame an irrational, pessimistic mind, he swiped open his phone and read the flurry of text messages from his mother, asking if he'd seen the casting sheet. Of course. He texted back that he had, had tons of homework, and would be home to start dinner soon. Closing his phone, he rolled his eyes. "If I could ask you something, Em…"

"Sup?"

"It's not about world domination, mind you."

"That's chill. Sup?"

"I w—… I-I— Uh… um…" Shota's face flushed from neck to scalp and he dropped his eyes, cursing the newfound strength of his stutter in response to his temporary rule over it prior to this moment. "W— I—"

Emi grabbed his hand and pulled him to start walking with her, but kept her eyes on him.

"W— Would… it be all right to… t'ask for your number?"

Emi extracted a pen from her bag, grabbed Shota's arm and moved his sleeve, and scribbled her number by the curve of his wrist. "Like I said," Emi hummed, casting her eyes back to Shota's after finishing, "we'll dominate this place." She bounced on the balls of her feet again, back to her usual self. "Especially with the next musical coming up!"

"What's the next one?"

"She Loves Me."

"That's the dumbest title I've ever heard. Sorry."

"Come on!" Emi poked at his side, doing it again when he jolted away from her. "You'll be great! I heard it's pretty funny and has a cute ending! We're funny! And we're cute! Let's go to the audition together so the teachers can get a clear picture!"

"No."

"Yes!"

"Ugh."

Emi laughed.

"Hey, real talk." Shota paused in his stride, causing Emi to do the same and turn to him in full attention. He looked around, then at her with an expression of worried exasperation. "Where are we going?"

Emi burst out laughing.

"That's not an answer."

##

That night, Shota struggled to write an essay about Kamakura Period caste system and how combat with the Mongols shaped the Period's society, scowling from being prodded at by Jong since dinner. His focus on homework had been thwarted by his brother's constant shoving and running in and out of his room. The last straw: a light impact in the back followed by the spreading chill of water through his shirt. Shota sent Jong a maiming glare.

Jong hid the next water balloon behind his back, eyes large and mouth downturned. "Wait. I'm sorry." Once Shota stood up, Jong screeched—half in excitement, half in the realization that he had gone too far for even his patient brother—and ran downstairs. "Stop!"

"What is wrong with you?!" Shota chased him into the dining room, where Sheeran sat with criminal reports from the station open and spread across the table. Yoko and Tsubasa had gone out for date night and deemed Shota "too emotional to be left in charge of the house" because of his refusal to sample a song for a visiting relative last month.

Jong hurried behind their grandfather, eyes peeking at his brother. When Shota caught up, the younger child clutched onto Sheeran's shirt. "What's going on?" their grandfather asked, rubbing his eyes after removing his glasses. "Shota, you know bett—"

At Jong's stuck-out tongue from behind the safety of their grandfather, Shota snatched his brother and tossed him to the floor. He planted a knee on top of his brother's back when the latter tried to run toward the foyer, immobilizing him with his weight. With that, he grabbed his brother's arm and leg and restrained him in a hog-tie.

Jong screeched. "Ow! Grandpa!"

"Hello?!" The boys froze, eyes wide—one like bourbon in a glass bottle, one like polished steel at high noon. Dropping his hands with a slap at his thighs, Sheeran repeated, dangerously, "I said, what's going on?"

The boys answered at the same time with a mutual, accusing, "HE—"

"You know what? Never mind. It doesn't matter." Sheeran put his hands on his hips, looking over his grandbabies' tangle, studying the intricacy of Shota's hold on his brother. "Nice takedown, pup. But seriously," he said, bending over to lightly but firmly swat Shota's rear. The boys stood slowly, glaring at each other, but giving their grandfather their attention. "Be nice to your brother. You're older."

Shota's scowl tightened, his eyes emitting red and his hair giving rise. "But—"

"End of discussion. I know." Sheeran placed a hand on Shota's head, fingers tangling with the constant flow of his hair. His touch cancelled Shota's Quirk. Then he turned to Jong with a leveled, no-nonsense stare. "And you, mouse." Jong pouted and kicked his feet a bit. "You don't throw water at your brother, especially in the house. Don't start fights and then cry victim or you're answering to Grandpa. Clear?"

"Ugh." Jong frowned a bit the way he saw Shota do when Mommy and Daddy weren't looking. But his version came out with more crinkle and less maim.

Shota glanced at him and nudged him with his elbow to cut it out before hopping between the near-dangerous silence that bled from Sheeran to his brother. "Yes, Granddad"—He shot his eyebrows down at his brother and looked up at their grandfather—"is what he meant to say. Sorry for the noise."

"Go on to your rooms, the both of you." Sheeran rubbed the back of his neck. "If y'all can't play nice."

"I was already in my room—"

"Shota."

"Yes, Dad."

"You stay. I got something to ask ya."

"Crap."

"Hm?"

"I said, okay."

Sheeran nodded Jong toward the stairs, a non-negotiable gaze following the younger boy all the way to the top. Shota remained standing before his grandfather, eyes down, shoving a lock of hair into his mouth. When Sheeran looked down at him, Shota looked up. "How's school going?"

"Fine, I guess." Shota, in truth, never knew how to answer those types of questions. Only his grandparents asked them. There was only that one answer. And it proved to be enough.

Sheeran fingered the lock of hair from his grandson's mouth, smoothing it back into the rest of his thick waves. "Don't gnaw on your hair. Jesus," he said, raking his fingers through Shota's scalp. "You and your mum, I swear. Y'all gonna get hairballs in your stomachs and you'll explode."

Shota stifled a laugh, but cleared his face when his grandfather shot him a look. A bored, half-lidded expression only remained. Knowingly, his grandfather pinched his nose. Shota growled and pushed at the hand. "What'd you wanna talk to me about?"

"I heard you got lead role in Phantom of the Opera. Way to go!" Sheeran nudged his shoulder, pulling a you're-excited-right, concerned look. Even in his encouragement, his detective's eye never rested. Shota could feel every hair on his body standing on end under that meticulous eye. "So?"

Shota shrugged. After a luring silence, he sagged in tone, body, and spirit and sent a monitoring glance at the stairs to make sure Jiggy was in his room, away from this conversation-in-the-making that could give him another reason to tease him with the "over-emotional" card, like Tsubasa and Mama. Granddad never did that. "I don't care about Phantom of the Stupid Opera. That's not why I'm at school."

Sheeran visibly retracted at the violent turn of his usually-cordial and patient grandson's words. After a tense silence that closed in on Shota's burst of bitterness, causing the child to go wide-eyed with instant regret at his grandfather, Sheeran broke into amused laughter. "Very nice mouth, pup. What's got you cheesed off?"

Shota closed his eyes in a relieved breath at his grandfather's laughter. He fumbled with his fingers, sending his eyes to the floor and his Under Armour gray socks. "It's a waste of time."

"You don't have to perform. Why don't you just say you don't want it?"

"It's an art school, Dad."

"Oh, right. It's expected."

"And Mama."

"Your mum's gotta be able to deal with the fact," Sheeran explained, exacting in tone, "that you and her got separate wants and goals."

Shota nearly scoffed at that, at the idea of telling his Mama to back off. She would never let him forget his every documented word against her. She'd deem him ungrateful and selfish. She'd spread the word, shifting the story and Shota's words or expressions to make herself the victim. She'd drink. Go silent. Go to her room, like a condemned child, and hide in there with gin and Tsubasa. Tsubasa would corner him when he wasn't ready—not that he ever was. Jong would laugh. What more could kids do than laugh? "Yeah. Sure."

"Just something to ponder over."

"Suppose…"

"Well, anyway, I'm proud of you. You got talent, but we all tell you that." Chuckling at Shota's attempt to conceal an eye roll, Sheeran cupped his head and pulled him close to kiss between his eyebrows where his frown clenched. "To your room, then. If Jong keeps bugging you, close your door and I'll deal with him. Go."

Pulling an unconvinced, sarcastic nod, Shota turned to leave more so to remove himself than to give in to the fact that his grandfather had sent him to his room like a baby in the first place. The drenched spot on the back of his shirt wafted against his back as he climbed the stairs. A reminder that his brother was a brat who had the advantage of being born last. Youngest's privilege.

Middle children never lasted too long in the world.

He plopped on his bed, too annoyed and tired to continue on with the stupid essay. He grabbed a tall copy of The Complete Poems & Plays of T.S. Eliot and pried it open at random to "Sweeney Among the Nightingales." Reading through it with respectful precision and in no-rush pace, he paused upon a stanza, continued to the end, and returned to it. Read it over:

The host with someone indistinct
Converses at the door apart,
The nightingales are singing near
The Convent of the Sacred Heart…

He had no idea what it meant, but it beckoned. And it beckoned again. It reeled him in and into the image, the song, the chaos of…

Emi.

Only now did it register in his mind that he'd be… nearer to her. The call sheet. The horror of having to now sing in front of the entire school and its students' families had distracted him from the obvious conditions of being in a lead role of a musical with Emi. His best friend. They would be lovers, safe behind the excuse of operatic drama. They would have to kiss. He would have to touch her. She'd touch him. Heat rose to his face, attacked his heart into high defense, and he rolled onto his face, burying it into the mattress. He covered his head with his pillow and tucked himself into a ball, hating his luck. Everyone already mocked him, but now Emi had to be dragged down with him, too.

He reemerged easily with the promise to himself, Emi's strong. She wasn't like him. She knew how to get people to back off. She knew how to use her Quirk to defend herself. She'd be fine. He glanced at his phone and remembered that he'd gotten her number. How she'd called him her best friend during Island Praise. How she'd flushed when they talked about their lead roles together on the walk home. How her cheeks pinked and how she'd sought him out for comfort, no matter how standoffish he'd acted toward her, no matter that she'd saved him from bullies when he was supposed to be a man, as Mama always said. But Emi didn't care. They were best friends.

So, his introductory text message to her was a concise, but precise: A song for a song, punk. His only regret was not being able to see her face once she read it. But that was too mean.

Please R&R!