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!

6. Ch 06 - A Gilded Cage

A/N: Thank you for your patience. It's been a crazy few months, but I finally got down to editing this monster chapter. Hope you all enjoy. Thank you for the support!

Please R&R and F&F - I appreciate it!

Onward!

Ch. 06 A Gilded Cage

Emi stole sleep from him. Stole focus. Stole breath.

But most importantly, she stole that meanness and anger from him, replacing it with truth. Clear view. Just him and her. Him and the Her that blushed and pulled her elbows in. The Her that sighed and smiled quietly in the purrs of rainfall during passing period. The Her that chanced that goofy smile through an onslaught of tears by fault of her parents and their expectations. He saw her everywhere, a remnant scent from nature's breath that threatened hurricanes or volcanic activity, from a kitchen now cooled after hours of laboring love, from a child opening a wrapped serving of Oreos at the park. He heard the orchestra of her laughter in the boons where shipmates and fishermen exchanged swears and proclamations of social taboos inflicted upon some married man's wife the night before; over their hacks and spits of mucus or tobacco that plopped on wooden, water-beaten decks or sun-slapped concrete and asphalt roads. And in the late hours of the silent night plagued with non-sleep, visions of love-making, his arms around her to show her he could finally be a man…

…only to be interrupted by his own fluster and reddening face. Everything he'd learned about this thing called love, how to exude manliness, and the hush-hush mysteries of sex came from school, low-volume movies, and Family Guy. Watching Granddad surprise Grandmum with morning tea or homemade dinners, even after spending hours at the police station on a case. Listening to Mama's bitter rants about men and threats to wear his ass out if he ever got a girl knocked up before his opera career took off. Two realms, neither one complementing each other. Always colliding.

Random spouts of fluster upon his face, a quickening of pace from the room when his stomach somersaulted, distant, though lightened eyes drawn to corners of walls. An oddity for a patient, attentive child like Shota. If either of his parents, grandparents, or teachers placed another hand to his forehead and cheeks to check for fever, he'd lose it. Jong had demolished him in videogames and proclaimed himself the king of the PlayStation console, only to elbow-drop on top of Shota, one too many times, oblivious to the weight too many ice cream truck visits had caused his seven-year-old body. By the third elbow drop by the Great Zombie-slaying King Jiggy himself, Shota had had a Mardi Gras bruise on his shin from his brother's bony joint. He had hardly noticed when Emi sent him a multimedia message with a funny seal picture—the animal's eyes bulging out till the whites of the eyes bordered the black bulb irises, which were focused in two different directions, and its jaw stretched open to its full width and length, all supported by a fat, bowling-ball body with the head shriveled into it by the blubbery neck. But once he had noticed, he dove for his phone and unlocked it. She texted after the picture came: I sent u sumthin! Its called THIS IS U DURING REHEARSAL.

Shota burst out laughing once putting two-and-two together. In spite of himself and out of pure stubbornness, he texted her back: You're not funny. That's you.

But he couldn't tell—anyone. Never. They'd be furious, his parents. His grandparents would tell him he's too young. Mama, that was obvious. His teachers would whisper behind hands that he had the same promiscuous nature as his mother, crash-and-burn Janne. He hardly cared. Eventually, they'd talk enough shit and fall ill from sepsis. Or at least give themselves pink-eye.

And it wouldn't change anything. Emi haunted him. And he loved it.

Was it the romance of coming-winter? Was it their Dance class's focus on doo-wop ballads and anthems, which, of course, they'd been paired as each other's yearlong partners? Or was it remnants of the last section's focus on the bachata and rumba, pulsing and popping to the heartsong of a Latin band? Was it how much time they constantly spent together at school over sugary snacks, after school over fast food with a pair of earbuds and his country playlist? Was it simply the excitement of having her number and sending each other nonsensical things like regular kids at regular schools?

Shota hardly knew a damn thing.

Well, no. He knew in particular that the harsh blade of the cleaver nearly severed his thumbnail. Nearly. But it did catch his cuticle a bit. Glaring at the small slab of skin, daring it—just daring it—to bleed, he cursed when rich red teased the surface in a pinpoint bulb. "Christ on a bike." He dropped the cleaver in irritated clatters and rushed his thumb under the sink's stream. Icy burn tacked up to his wrist and he gave a short wince. He went to the medicine cabinet to find the band-aid box empty. "Fuck… Tsubasa!"

"What?" In the next room with Yoko. Shota heard his mother snort awake and ask what was going on.

"Sorry," The swishing of water re-registered in his mind. Hurrying to the sink, he elbowed off the sink and covered his thumb with a halved paper towel. "Do we have any band-aids?"

"None in the kitchen?" Two shifts of weight and a groan to stand.

"In your bathroom, I mean."

"What'd you do now?"

"No, I…"

Yoko moaned. "What's wrong with Pup?" Sleep that trailed in her voice diminished to give way to attempted alertness. In her best imitation of a concerned mother's voice, one that Shota perceived as just another part of her nurturing act—everything was a bloody show to her—she called across the foyer, "Shota?"

"I'm fine, Mama." Shota pressed his other thumb against the nicked one, looking back at the garlic cloves. With all this wasted time that his irrationality caused, he'd have to haul ass to get dinner on the table by five. When he looked back at the entry arch of the dining room, his stepfather came hobble-charging in with an exasperated, but harmless scowl to assess the situation. Shota backed into the counter corner when Tsubasa's eyes caught the wadded paper towel. When his stepfather squinted, he knew he'd seen the blood on the wad, despite his attempt to crinkle it up in a ball. "I-I-I'm sorry. M— I— Th—" Shota's tongue caught. Instead, he held up his bleeding thumb and glanced at the cleaver.

Understanding, Tsubasa came closer after a considering pause and held out a fatty, callused hand. "Let me."

Shota watched as the fingers beckoned in impatience—the twitches of fatty flesh brought heat to his knife cut. He extracted his hand from the paper towel and furtively surrendered it. Taking note of his hand's fragility against his stepfather's tough one, he couldn't help but acknowledge the obvious difference in stature and strength between the two of them. Both of which, of course, he knew already and well enough. It was the contrast in presence; but he'd wanted that, right? Disappear without noise until needed. Until it was rational to reappear and resonate. At his stepfather's lingering gaze, he jerked back to consciousness. "I-I— Sorry?"

"Did you," Tsubasa said, clearly having to repeat himself, with Shota's hand still in his for inspection, "bleed more than this?"

"Uh, no."

"Okay."

"—No, sir."

Tsubasa returned his hand. "It doesn't seem deep. Don't touch anything else." With a labored groan, he turned on his good leg and grunted out of the kitchen.

"Oh, okay." Shota glanced at the garlic again before looking back to his clearly-tired stepfather. A full day's work was proven by the graying bags under the man's eyes, the harshness of chewing tobacco breath that sprayed into the kitchen's savory air. "I can get it."

"Or your brother can. He's doing nothing." Tsubasa grabbed his cane from the corner of the dining room, left behind from the morning after pain medication. "Jong! Get your clumsy brother a band-aid." Jong roared his petulance with an echoing ugh from the living room, the incessant blare of videogame music pausing with abruptness. "Now."

"Okay!" Jong raged back, throwing himself from the couch and stomping to the master bathroom. Slamming cabinets could be heard throughout the house. The violent banging continued on for another minute or so, and Shota turned to face the kitchen sink, anticipating his brother's pushed luck. If he had tried that at Jong's age, his mother and grandparents would be on him faster than he'd register taking another breath.

Yoko stormed into the foyer, flurries of loose clothes and frizzing hair behind her. When Jong resurfaced with a band-aid strip in his hand, she caught him and smacked his leg. "Don't you start," she said over Jong's uproar. "Go do what Dad said."

When Jong came to hand Shota the bandage, Shota gathered his brother's head in a one-armed hug, pulling Jong's face into his side to let the younger child recover. "You're okay, Jiggy." Shota scratched his brother's scalp lightly, raking his nails through screens of sandy hair. "Be glad Mama got the spins or she'd be chasing you through the house with the spoon."

"You're not funny."

"Who said I was joking? Thanks for the band-aid."

Jong gave a weak uh-huh while Shota wrapped his thumb in the sterile fabric. "When's food gonna be ready?" The younger child peeked at the stove, at the ingredients, at the oven. "I'm starving."

Shota rolled his eyes, slipping a disposable glove over his band-aid hand. A loose band-aid in the middle of dinner would be a front-row seat to Dante's Malebolge. Tsubasa would drag him to his room by a pulsing arm. Mama would never stop yelling, deem him incompetent and careless. Jong would never let him forget about it. He glanced over his prep work. "It'll be ready when it's ready."

"So, you don't know?"

Shota nipped his brother's nose with the knuckles of his fingers. "I know you're being annoying."

Yoko dragged herself into the kitchen, easing on to the refrigerator as if she were expecting to slip by without much fuss. A wandering ghost. Around her ever-shrinking shoulders was a thinning wool blanket, knitted by some great aunt on the Fuse side of the family. A generation of stitchwork and squinted eyes now left draped and haggard, yet maintaining its initial grace without nearly enough effort as Yoko, which was scarcely little to none. Fortunately, she hadn't noticed much else beyond Jong's previous outburst.

Unfortunately, Jong spotted her. Having recovered from his previous meltdown at the literal hand of their mother, the younger child hurried to her side, grasping her robe and tugging it with enough force that Shota felt his neck start to tense, waiting for her to yell or smack his brother again. "Mom, Tai and Don are going to the arcade after school tomorrow, and then the movies! Can I go, too?"

Yoko pushed a sack of frozen carrots to her forehead, sighing at the frosty relief. The stinging chill that gripped her skin released for favor of that cool forgiveness upon her temples. She held the package over her eyes for a long moment, much to Jong's audible dissatisfaction.

Shota watched her, and though he'd seen this routine year after year, he winced along with her. His mind rattled with possibilities of how he could help, or take the pain away somehow. He chose silence. And production: he'd make her a dinner that would ameliorate the ghosts of drunk mornings and late nights with a single, savory bite. That was the logical thing to do.

"What time are you going to be home?" she finally droned, ignoring Jong's tugging and instead patting his cheek without moving the ice pack to see him.

Nearly propelling into the air, Jong announced, "10:30!"

"I don't know…"

"But it's not that late!"

"Jong."Shota shot his brother a sharp look, raising a brow. But he was mindful enough to know to keep his voice low. Such lowness permitted parental impatience to enter where volume was lacking. "Don't yell."

Yoko moved her hand back to her de facto ice pack and pressed it with more urgency to her head. "Ask Dad. Okay? Please—"

"Please, Mommy?" Jong stuck out his bottom lip and lowered his chin to make his eyes appear wider, rounder, and more expectant. In Shota's opinion, the countenance of a certified brat. "Please, please, please?"

"Wow, mouse." Shota scoffed, turning back around to mince garlic cloves, pressing the tips of his fingers into the bulbous roots and sliding the cleaver through them, three at once. Each shush of the blade punctuated his skeptical voice. "You pulled out the 'Mummy' just like that."

His brother, sensing the possible destruction of his plan in the annoyed voice that challenged him, stomped his foot and traded the imploring tone for a defensive, commanding one. "Shut up, Shota!"

Shota remained unfazed, slicing away. "You shut up. Stop begging."

"Boys, quit telling each other to shut up. Both of you, shut up." Tsubasa limped back into the room, carrying his trash can of tobacco tins, beer, and black-brown stained soda bottles for spitting. He pecked Yoko's clammy cheek in passing. "One drink tonight. If any. But you eat dinner."

"Okay." Yoko, with amusement in her voice, caved the moment she finally looked at Jong. His eyes sparkled in yearning, with hope, and with the satisfaction of snatching his way from her parentally-protective hands that released a little too easily at times. And she knew it, in her own way. But she could never deny him a chance to smile. Children were meant to be free to explore. "You can go."

Shota spun around, scowling in offended disbelief. "Really?" His brother, mother, and stepfather all turned to him, each varying in expressions of confusion. Outbursts and tantrums were expected only from one of the children in the house—and it was certainly not Shota, who ducked and dodged and flinched and stuttered through each day with only snippets of a voice escaping his throat, when he wasn't singing. Yet, there he stood, sporting an expression of outright, long-harbored and finally-released annoyance and disbelief, and met his mother's eyes, gesturing at Jong, who stuck out his tongue. "That worked? I asked you for a can of Raid for Christmas when I was six for the roaches, and you said no."

His mother rubbed the outside of her eye into her temple, looking more worn in a matter of seconds. "Don't start whining…"

"I killed them with the cat." Shota slid the minced garlic to the building heap of aromatic garlic slivers. Opting against comparing the drastic difference of curfew between him and his brother, with Shota's being a strict, non-negotiable 7:30pm, paired with threats and punishment if he was even five minutes late, he unpacked the next batch of garlic cloves and spread them on the cutting board. "Maisie didn't even eat th—! I literally smashed the roaches with the cat."

Yoko, giving a teasing smile and chuckle, approached him, running her hand up and down his back (failing to notice how he flinched at the contact made to the newest scar on his lower back), and smoothed his hair from his eyes when he looked up at her. Her smile widened in a calm, eased-in way. In a voice as content as he'd heard since his childhood, she cooed, "Shut up, Shota."

His frown returned as she walked off to return to a pouting Jong. While his mother gave a teasing chuckle to his apparently-dramatic reaction, Shota went back to work on the mincing, opting to smash the next clove with the blade of his fist rather than the flat of the knife. "Remember who makes your dinner," he muttered to himself.

Tsubasa's heavy hand on the top of his head gave him pause. Under Jong's cheering and Yoko's light chuckles in response, his stepfather messed up his hair a bit and said, "Be happy for your brother. Your mom didn't have the means back then. Think."

Think. Shota averted his eyes and nodded in acceptance, continuing with his task of making dinner. In his mind, he could visualize his own blind, irrational thoughts. Each one was hideous with jealousy, self-interest, meanness. He berated himself for his short-sight, for his own selfishness that fogged his regard for the variations of normalcy that separated his life from Jong's. Where he'd led a life that ricocheted between impenetrable silence that brought stinging pain to being dragged from stage to stage by Mama's grip, Jong understood all the pop culture references, danced cringey moves he and his friends saw in videogames, and could sneak onto Farmer Thuy's property to tip over dairy cows for laughs. Shota knew this, having had to cover for his brother's mischief too many times, and having to be the one, therefore, to give Jong you-know-better lectures in the latter's room late at night, clad with crossed arms and a perfect delivery of a tight, parental scowl on his disapproving twelve-year-old face. But that smile on Jong's face—it was enough for an older sibling to see it, to nurture it, and to protect it.

Think. Shota sighed, and started mincing the flattened clove. The aromatic fumes rose to his eyes, irritating them to the extent that he had to rub them with the back of his wrist. Lately, his Quirk forced him to start using eyedrops—that is, whenever he did choose to use it. Some days, he had to use lubricant without even activating his Quirk. He had already gotten in trouble with Tsubasa more times than he could count for coming home with red, tired eyes.

"Baby boy," Mama called from the living room. He could hear her collapsing on the couch. Beaten padding now croaked under her weight.

"Yeah, Mama?" Shota said, sliding his finger along the blade of the cleaver to push bits of garlic into the waiting mound. The amount of garlic the house consumed had to be record-shattering. But one could never have quite enough.

…Silence.

"Yes, Mama?"

Nothing.

Shota internalized a nasty growl of the purest form of annoyance, placed the cleaver down by the uncut cloves, snatched a dishrag for the sticky remnants of garlic moisture, and took extra care not to stomp on his way to his awaiting mother. He rounded the corner, glanced at his scowling expression in the foyer mirror, and straightened his face to a widened look of doe-like neutrality (product of his resting bitch face and how to combat it). "Yes, Mama?"

"There you are. Finally." With her hand tossed over her face, Yoko parted her fingers, glancing at him, and shielded her eyes from the light again to ward off a headache. "When're you gonna make those M&M biscuits for Mama?"

"I didn't realize I'd put it off so long, sorry."

"I need you to go to the market, love."

"Oh," Shota said, wiping his hands on his mother's apron, stuffing the dishrag into the pocket. Well… it was mostly his now. "Sure, but dinner."

"I'll pick it up," Tsubasa said, his eyes planted on the TV where a news anchor rambled on about a recent villain attack in Naruhata, just west of Tokyo's red-light district. The hotbed of city crime and villainy.

"Ain't'cha hurting?"

Yoko droned, wincing from her head and reapplied the frozen carrots to her temples. "Don't say ain't. Just because we're from the country doesn't mean we gotta say things stupidly."

"I said it normal." Shota averted his eyes as this slipped out. He nearly made an attempt to catch it, but opted against it. And it was logical. Everyone else on the island spoke the way he did—some did, granted, dwell in the more intense forms of cockney and drawl than he did, but everyone at least understood each other on basic slangs and slurs. The only ones trying to show up everyone else were the people like Mama, snobbishly turning their noses up in undeserved, inflated, shallow self-importance. When Shota realized the danger in his (logical) outburst, his stomach curled in. Knowing it was inevitable, he inched his attention back to his dangerously staring mother, daring him to repeat himself or say more, and Tsubasa, who, to his surprise, gave an impressed smirk and nod. "I— Uh… Sorry."

"You're lucky I'm hungover," Yoko hissed, placing the carrots over her eyes again and leaning her head back.

"You do what Mom said. I got the food. Don't backtalk me." Tsubasa plopped money into Shota's hand and messed up his hair. "There's a list on the long table."

Shota hated the way he always flinched at that hand. But he couldn't stop it or his reflexed response of "Yes, sir." To avoid further conversation, he averted his eyes to said long table, not caring for the list in the slightest. Lingering around his parents never meant anything good or productive. Conversations with them only left him jaded and injured.

"Hurry back before the streetlights flick on." Shota nodded in leave, but his stepfather grabbed his upper arm and reeled him back. With a dead-end look, Tsubasa said, "Don't lag. I mean it."

"Yes, sir." Shota hurried to the door, kicking his feet into his shoes, snatching the red plaid Yoko had bought for him last year as well as the scribbled grocery list—to which he'd added ingredients for Mama's biscuits on the bottom—and walked briskly down the street. Once the streetcar came into view, chugging along, he ran to jump onto the side, holding the rail. At the startled driver, he said in his usual patient, lazy voice, "Easy, Mr. Kurzweil?"

"Christ!" The warm-faced driver gripped the gear shift with a precise hand, his English beautified by a rich Austrian accent. "What is wrong with you?!"

"Sorry." Shota stuck out his arm, watching the wind ripple through his overshirt's sleeve, ruffling up the fabrics that drooped from his frame. You'll grow into it, Mama had said. Mama worked up a good sweat trying to afford that one. Don't you lose it.

He nearly wore it every day. Sheeran had to peel it off him the moment he came home from school on a free-dress day just to get it into the wash.

It'll be with you until it ain't nothing but rags.

Like he would, her. But that had already been decided on the day Daddy walked out and died. Mama needed room to grow, a soft place to land, a new overshirt bought from labor. And Shota had to do that. He could.

It'll be with you until it ain't nothing but rags.

He sighed out sea breeze, staring out into the harbor, at the stationed cargo ships at the port and awaiting at sea, ghosts behind sea fog. At the shore were fishermen, modern and traditional boats for that purpose, sandy dunes that hid turtles and hermit crabs, an abundance of green further inland where forests and winding roads danced, a centered almost-town, almost-city in the collision of sea and land, comfort food and a kiwifruit sale at every stop, each street leading, eventually, to the sea. Scarlet torii gates up the sakura- and wisteria-peppered mountains by lead of a reflective string of warm stone stairs. The streetcar swerved around a roundabout and braved Nobuchika Avenue's uphill climbs and downhill skids, though at only 35 miles per hour. Shota leaned out further and watched the pilgriming Buddhists huddle into the pagoda by the sacred Ribbon Pond, fresh from the inari shrine. One of them fed the rabbits that frequented and burdened the town and forests, the way uncontained children frequented and burdened the peace of their parents' rare quality time in toy-littered living rooms. The Buddhist gently peeled a lotus root and slipped the bead into the little blue rabbit's paws, an obsequious smile stroking across his wrinkled face. He glanced at the streetcar and waved at Shota.

Startled, Shota winced into his shoulders, ears burning under the Buddhist's kind gaze, and gave a half-hearted wave back, silently wishing streetcars exceeded twenty miles-per-hour. Hurrying his attention back to Ribbon Pond, it occurred to him that he had to remember to tell Emi and Jong the myth of that sacred area one of these days—of the then-retired samurai archer Hisoka Nakanishi of the late Muromachi Period who drew a fifty-foot golden catfish from the water in the midst of winter. How the retiree had chanced starvation for the sake of natural faith and trust in the land to provide for ten days straight without any form of nourishment, cradling that single line just above a tiny hole in the frozen-over pond. A story of peaceful suffering with great reward… or one of total stubbornness and coincidental luck. Shota still didn't know which interpretation was rational, but he knew which one his grandparents and the other elders would accept. But as for Emi and Jong and their disregard for proper-ness and etiquette, he could predict their first question: And… then he ate it? They would laugh—and so would he, though he knew the legend told of Nakanishi's selflessness that caused him to surrender the catfish to its home above. His following days of starvation that led to his being gifted a single, regular-sized gray catfish on the day of Island Praise. Meaning, two months after he'd already been starving to death in the first place...

He should've eaten the damn fish. Shota guessed that if Nakanishi had eaten the holy fish, he'd probably have been tortured in some way by one of the gods or bodhisattvas, or something. Myths always glorified suffering, he'd observed, or maybe he was being too negative. Grandmum always chided him for that, and he always shrugged her off.

Still, Shota wondered what a golden catfish would taste like…

Inspiration for a pastoral poem hit him and he retrieved the pen from home from his pocket, bared his arm from the plaid's sleeve, and scribbled the poem along his forearm, a lock of hair shoved into his mouth and a pinched scowl crinkling his forehead. The streetcar's swaying and rattling made his penmanship jagged and spotty, but his eyes could make out the words and kanjis either way. In a single minute, his arm was tattooed with nature-paced rhythm by aid of meticulous diction to suit cathartic tones and tunes. Alongside the drafted poem were notes written in shorthand by his elbow for possibilities for expansion into a story or simply another few stanzas. Satisfied (for now), he put the pen back into his pocket and covered his arm with the sleeve to protect the flash mob of verse upon his skin.

Behind him, he heard the behind-handed comments from other island residents. "Always been odd, that one."

"Where's his mother?"

"Who cares? That one's bound to get in the same trouble either way."

"Least he can sing."

"Sure. But it's in his blood. Trouble, I mean."

Shota reached under his hair and rubbed the back of his neck the way Granddad always did. Solace usually granted in this gesture was devoid in calming the rising fluster of his heart and the prying angry hidden within it, and he was left in a space of stillness… but stillness forced only through that ugly haze. He tried to numb. Be good. Be nice. Smile. He tried.

…And they flinched, huddled together, carried on and on and on in a fit of hissing whispers. "It's in his Quirk—have you seen?" And they glanced at him again. "Evil-eye, that one."

Shota hurried to turn his face away from them, moving his ever-growing hair to guard him against their studying eyes, just as another one of them muttered, "Strange."

"Innit."

Shota spotted the market sign just two blocks down. "I'm off. Thanks, Mr. Kurzweil." Without waiting for the cordial response that always came, Shota jumped from the streetcar and caught his balance with a few steps on the old-time cobblestone. The rubber of his sole scuffed against cracks induced by man and element with a thud.

"Stop jumping off my car!" Kurzweil exclaimed as the vehicle moseyed off. "Crazy boy! I'll tell your parents!"

Shota waved. "Take care!" But once he turned around, the streets were lined with passersby with lingering eyes. Some of wariness, some of amazement, some just because everyone else was inspecting him. They all said the same things. Each word, each syllable buzzing with discontent and condemning judgment, cast iron and stones down his throat, dragging him further down where dirt broke into stream, carried him off with the unforgiving urgency of the Stix. He glanced at the streetcar, which, though lacking in speed, had already dipped over the curve of the next hill, diving into the tired sun that yawned orange.

Odd. Evil-eye. Cursed. Bastard. Whore's son.

Shota ducked his head between his shoulders, eyes on the floor, and walked forward. Down the Red Sea of stares and whispers. He felt each label pasting itself to his body, snaking inside of him each time he dared listen. He dared at the wrong time, each time.

"Bastard."

"Bastard."

"Bastard."

"Bastard."

Rage filled his chest each time. Rage spontaneous. Rage uncontainable. Rage that bled ecstasy, that promised hellfire, should he allow it to roam even an inch from behind Rationality's cage, that rammed his Heart back into submission and set it ablaze—and ablaze not to inspire or enervate, but to condemn. He knew it was mean. He knew it was ugly. Improper, as Mama would say. But—

"Bastard."

"—bastard."

"—bastard."

"—bastard."

So, he didn't contain it. He let it fester, encouraged it to, and let it do as it pleased. His scalp prickled; his eyes tingled, heated up beyond that of the natural human temperature. He nearly caved, nearly begged his mystery Quirk not to activate by motivation of his rage. No one could foresee whatever hell his Quirk could raise, whatever rampant curse those glowing red pupils could unleash, whoever's heart its centered glare could stop.

"Stuttering bastard child. Shame."

He let rage win.

"Well, it's just the way he was born…"

A solid force knocked him back and a friendly voice dispensed the scent of minty gum over his head. "Whoa. Shota!" Baker Tsukiji. "Are you okay, son?"

Shota glared at him, Quirk fully awakened. His hair attacked the air, standing on end, at attention, on high alert, and lashed the air in torrents of black waves. His eyes, lying in wait, mustering, blistering in a blinding ray of crimson that complemented a glare that maimed on instinct without clemency toward those unfortunate enough to bear witness, or worse, to be victim to it. Without hesitation, without stutter, and without restraint in the brutal hatred in his lowered, growling voice: "Don't call me son."

The baker paled in a gaping expression. All at once, his breath hastened, became staccato in each inhalation and exhalation, before it suddenly halted, arrested by some secondary reaction in anticipation of whatever Shota's hellish Quirk may release upon him. Baker Tsukiji gave a choking sound, a convulsing gasp, and then he collapsed in a fright.

Silence.

Shota couldn't even hear the sea drawing in. But the sea before him parted with stumbling staggers as he stepped over the baker and walked down the street. His footsteps brought ruin to autumn-afflicted leaves, though now snow threatened the curb in patches of ice, and only the single crisp crinkle of his weight over the leaf corpses echoed toward the mountain shrines for that moment.

The bustling port town of Longdon stilled. Shota hid in the grocery store bathroom and jammed the pen into his thumb's cut to fight the hateful tears in his eyes. He'd be damned if he let them see him cry, if he let them have even that miniscule satisfaction and power over him. Or at least show them that they did. The throbbing pain induced by the pen's point branched out into a stinging itch of ink intermingling with exposed cuticle. But it did away with the embarrassment, with the anger, and with the habit sense of foreboding with full knowledge he'd be in trouble at home for this.

Country folk never learned how to stop talking shit and shit spread too fast to be kept off the streets. He could already hear Mama's horrified yelling at whatever this mishap may have cost his future. As if opera had been on his mind all along…

He managed to make it home before the streetlights could even think to flicker. By the time he kicked off his shoes in the foyer, Sheeran appeared by the kitchen's archway, still in uniform, and gave his grandson a disapproving sigh. He'd heard about the baker—detectives, go figure. But rather than beginning the lecture with a direct "Get over here," he opened his arms and said nothing. No anger or threats of withheld privileges in his brown eyes. Shota tried his best scowl, his best squint of the eyes to show defiance, but his grandfather persisted and beckoned him toward the embrace. At the unapologetic affection, at the silence that came with not being yelled at till his eyes watered, and with the sudden realization that he'd hurt an innocent bystander because he let himself get irrationally angry at the truth of his reality, Shota crumbled into tears and held desperately onto his grandfather.

"He's alive," Sheeran whispered over Shota's head, stroking his hair along the length and pressing his nose to the boy's head. "He's in the hospital, and he's awake and well. You're gonna apologize to him, but don't you worry. Accidents happen, right?"

Shota could only grasp onto his grandfather harder, ignoring his mother's passing comment to Tsubasa, "He's being dramatic again. Just ignore him." But she didn't matter right now.

Shota gripped Sheeran's coat so hard that his nailbeds throbbed and he could barely make out from his buried face, "I just got upset. I didn't want to hurt him. It was everyone else."

Sheeran hushed him when his voice cracked midway, running his hands up and down the child's back. He glanced at Yoko with an expectant look, nodding toward Shota in his arms. But his daughter only gave a noncommittal shrug, took another swig of ale, and leaned into Tsubasa's chest to watch Die Hard. Sheeran shook his head, rolled his eyes, and focused back on Shota, who was muttering incomprehensible apologies into his coat. "I know."

"No, you don't," Shota resisted, pushing from his grandfather a bit. But when he felt that his outburst was denied by Sheeran's tightened hold of him, he submitted back to the embrace and pawed at his grandfather to be held even tighter. "They kept calling me a bastard. And they wouldn't stop talking like I couldn't hear them. I hear everything."

"C'mon." Sheeran tried to guide Shota toward the dining room, but seeing as the latter was too worked up, he opted to simply lifting him by the underarms and carrying him that way to the table to sit. "Sit down. Listen to me. You can't expect people to be nice all the time. You just can't. That's the world."

A red-rimmed, watering eye peeked at him through a mess of black waves and a down-tilted chin. "How can I make it stop?"

"Unfortunately, you can't." Sheeran hurried to grip Shota's wrist in support when the latter's shoulders dropped. "But that's why you gotta show them, Pup. Show them you're not your dad or your mum, or a ticking time bomb. You're you."

"They don't care. They all hate me."

"They do not hate you. They just… judge you and they think you're gonna make the same mistakes your mum did. If I can be just… brutally candid with you." Sheeran sighed. "I'm not talking about you. Your mum loves you, and your grandmother and I love you. Your brother loves you. So, don't think to start overthinking."

Shota averted his eyes, sniffling hard and trying to appear grown-up and resolved to his spite and guilt, and intent on proving that he couldn't be talked down from it like any other child. Because he wasn't any other child. He hardly felt like a child at all. "I heard Mum call me a by-blow. Years ago, at Mama's wedding." Shota knew he was risking his rear-end, but he didn't care. "I know it's a bullshit fancy way to say bastard. I'm not as dumb as you think just because I'm twelve."

Sheeran froze, and Shota felt bitter satisfaction at the stunned reaction. He glanced at his shocked grandfather before turning his gaze away again. "Your grandmother and I were… having doubts about your stepfather and your mother. We didn't approve. We didn't even really know Tsubasa back then, and… it just… came out wrong."

"There's a lot of wrong things when it comes to me, isn't there?"

"No, Shota. No. There's nothing wrong with you." Shota shoved off the table and tried to storm off to the stairs. But, anticipating this, Sheeran easily grabbed his elbow without moving an inch and reeled him back to sit. He glanced at his grip on his grandson's arm—more specifically, the hinted ink marks on Shota's arm—and pulled up the plaid shirt's sleeve. Shota sniffled again and wiped his eyes free of water with his other hand, focusing on the diamond tile that led to the kitchen. "What's this?" Sheeran said, his grip loosening on Shota's arm.

"Nothing."

"You're writing?" There was a smile in Sheeran's voice that boasted pride and a certain cooing reserved for baby-talk. Shota's neck, face, and ears burned in rising embarrassment at that tone of voice alone. "When did this start?"

"It's nothing, Dad," Shota hurried to say, face reddening. "Just let it go."

Sheeran gave an adoring, but understanding smile and gently patted Shota's arm before letting go. He reached behind his neck and unclipped his gold necklace, led by a calligraphic, but strong S. "Here." He placed it in Shota's hand. "You really are mygrandson."

"I can't take this," Shota said, looking up at his grandfather in a way that made him appear six-years-old again—all eyes and too much hair, staring up at his grandfather with want, but without an ounce of selfishness to it. "I really can't take this from you."

"You can. And you will. It's a gift." Sheeran gently smoothed Shota's hair. A moment of silence eased by them, gravid of understanding forged from trust, from hope linked to words often supported by actions. "You listen to me, Shota. People are going to treat you all kinds of ways in this world. But it's up to you if you take it. It's up to you if you believe the bad things they say. But I'll tell you here and now, Pup." Sheeran gestured to the front door. "You are better than that. What happened out there today is not what I expect from my grandson who knows better. You understand me?"

Shota shrunk into himself at his grandfather's supportive lecture. He could trace the scolding undertone, but he listened with the full knowledge that he'd probably deserved it. He nodded.

"You are so much better than what happened today. I know it. You know it. So, you show them you aren't just some bastard. You're Shota Aizawa. You're kind and a little too smart for your own good sometimes, but you do not hurt people because you're upset. Am I clear?"

Shota's eyes filled again, taking in his grandfather's words that prompted his Heart from its hiding place, burnt and bruised and all. "Yes, Dad."

Sheeran stared long and hard into his eyes in that investigative way that always warmed and unnerved Shota. Finally, after a moment of visual dissection to check if the child believed him, Sheeran pulled Shota into a hug. "C'mere." Shota held onto him, calmer this time, nestling his face into his grandfather's shoulder. "I'll take care of things out there, but this does not happen again. When you get too angry, don't listen to when Mama calls you dramatic. You're not. She's just impatient—for some reason, more so with you than your brother and sister... But that can change in time."

Shota wanted to believe him.

"But in the meantime, come talk to me and Mum if you need help, okay?"

Shota nodded.

"And never drop your head again." Sheeran sighed and rubbed Shota's back and hair. "If you want to fall, just take a knee. But you better rise again."

Though he was unsure if he could do it when the time came, if he could be as strong and resilient as his grandfather wished, Shota simply nodded again, this time with a short smile. He held his grandfather's understanding eyes, those eyes that could search for anything it wanted within his own, that could slip easily through Rationality's barriers and aim straight for the Heart, that could scold him without excessive fear of being beaten to a crumbled version of himself.

"Rise, Shota." Sheeran patted his thigh. Unsatisfied with the way his grandson cast away his gaze, at the defeatist slump to his shoulders, too rounded and predisposed to disappointment for a child his age, he reached over and snatched Shota's sides, squeezing his ribs where he knew drove him crazy since he was a baby. Shota gave a scream and keeled over, trying to cover himself and fight laughter to no avail. "Or you go some serious explaining to do to Granddad." He stopped and planted a long kiss to Shota's eyebrow.

With a smile Sheeran hadn't seen since the swan park when he was five, Shota threw himself into his grandfather's open arms. He buried his face into his grandfather's chest and relished the safety of those two thick, gentle hands on his back, giving warmth where bruises and scars normally triumphed. The hands that taught him how to mince and dice, how to pluck guitar strings, how to bottle-feed Jong, that could guide him from his worst mistakes and ease away his sorrows. Shota stared at Sheeran's palm lines, how these crisscrossed grooves were those of love, of raising a family, of a parent. So unlike the ones on his back that bragged of unforgiveness, of shame, of his worst traits brought to the spotlight for all to see, of the death of whoever he was before them. He wondered if his own hands could do what his grandfather and grandmother's did, if he could ever be able to love as they do, if he too was sure to be doomed to the same generational tension that divided his grandparents from his mother in even the slightest of glances over hot pot dinners. He wondered if he would be the type of man and father that stayed like Sheeran or he was the coward type like Yori who tore from the home like a leech with a full belly, only to meet his karmic end in the outside world. Alone. Shota started to scowl at the thought, but Sheeran smoothed his bangs from his forehead. "I love you, Pup."

The calm that returned to him immediately lulled him. He pushed his face into Sheeran's coat, hearing the vibrations within the man's chest when he chuckled. Shota swore he could've fallen asleep right there.

##

It stormed that night. Thunder. Give or take, a meditative sound to some. Nature's white noise and droning on sufficed as a lullaby to Tsubasa, Jong, and Yoko. But Shota… he was alone. The pounding of thunder rattled the house, swerving it left to right, the exposing lightning flashes illuminated the room for a second, darkened it all too soon, illuminated again, darkened again. Something would appear there—something. He'd seen shadows and faces in the dark before when he was a child. Shadows and faces were always everywhere.

But tonight, the storm groaned into a snarl. He found himself huddled under the frame of his desk, wrapped completely in his comforter, hands clapped over his ears and eyes pinched shut, his desk chair locking him under there in his rare security. A particularly sharp thunderclap and lighting flash punished the earth just outside his window. He felt it shove his room forward. "Mama!"

Natural instinct, yet she'd failed him during storms before. He was five left in the old house—the Big House. He'd woken up from a too-long nap around eight at night to the assault of thunder and the violation of lightning. He'd called for her to no avail for an entire night. But she'd finally walked through the door around five in the morning and had scolded him for being up late, for wetting himself before sending him to his room for half the day.

But this time wasn't about her. Shota knew that even as he had just screamed for her. It was the word. Mama. It in itself had comforting connotations, even if its embodiment was fast asleep downstairs with Tsubasa. Yet still, calling out for her in the middle of the night was childish, he knew. He resented himself for it. But more so, he wanted the storm to have some goddamn mercy and just pass. He covered his ears harder and only then did he notice that his eyes were smothered hot and watery. Another brutal onslaught of thunder and lightning crushed the beginnings of his self-scolding. The thunder's vibration caused a barbaric recoil—as if some grotesque with black-rimmed eyes and demented, long hands strangled the house and tossed it between hands—that knocked his thick copy of Les Misérables from the top shelf by his desk. The hardcover nailed the top wood as if a fist or hand came crashing down just inches from his head. A flinch and scream. "MAMA!"

The door tore open with a wall-smack. Footsteps and heavy breathing that first hurried to his bed, then paused, hurried to his closet and opened it, paused there, too, and finally rushed to the desk, where scraping feet became sliding knees. "Shota?" The chair was pulled from underneath the desk. Yoko pushed it aside and reached under the desk, patting the comforter until she felt a trembling body. "What're you doing under there, huh?" She reached over and grabbed Shota's hand, trying to untangle it from his hair.

At first touch and glance, he dragged himself—twisted comforter and all—to her and wrapped his arms around her waist, squeezing himself there. Ensuring that if she were in a bad mood, she'd have to get Tsubasa to pull him off. Even then…

Yoko, luckily, had slept through the evening long enough to be denied alcohol—though she did miss dinner, too. She gripped her son's upper arms and pulled him further out from under the desk into the safety of her body and held him close. "What's this? You don't like rainstorms?"

Shota shook his head.

"You're too big to be scared of—"

"I know, Mama." He secured his arms around her again. "Stay. Please? I don't want to be alone."

Yoko stared at the window, at the sky through the blinds. Lightning flashed and she could see the willow tree just by the corner of the sidewalk by the driveway. She looked down at Shota, who pushed half his face into her stomach, and took unfortunate note of how small and afraid he looked. Half his body splayed away from hers now, but his expression, how tightly he clung to her. So, she gently placed a hand on his back and ran it up and down his tensed spine. "Okay. I won't leave. Just no more crying."

When he woke in the mud-and-grass-scented morning, his mother was gone and he was left on the carpet, halfway under his desk.

A dream, he rationalized.

##

"A field trip? To where?"

"An art museum, I think it was."

"An art museum? Like, painting and shit?"

"Reckon so."

"You don't need to know about painting," Yoko said, setting down plastic bags from the market, each stuffed to their best efforts to hold all she'd chosen for them. The table gave a groan in response to the heavy weight. Shota gathered by her side and started unloading. "You're a singer."

Shota shrugged.

"What a waste of money…" He watched his mother carelessly put soup cans and noodle packs away, leaving them wherever in the pantry and shoving back the older foods to the back. With a stifled groan, he tailed her and rearranged the order, knowing that his brother would only shoot for the newer items in the house and disregard the ones that were nearing expiration or were already opened. Tsubasa would nag the entire house and make the boys do extra chores around the house. "I need you to watch Mouse. I have an interview and your father can't get off work earlier that day."

"Jiggy doesn't have school?"

"His class also has a field trip, as it turns out." She tossed her bangs from her eyes and tapped away on her phone. Whatever contents demanded her attention inside the device captivated her to the extent that she forgot Shota stood there, waiting, expecting her to go on.

After long, Shota tended to the neglected groceries, keeping his eyes on his mother, unsure what to make of the lengthy quiet. "He… didn't want to go or…?"

"It's to a marine animal center. He said he wasn't interested, so"—the phone clapped close with an echo, paired with the blaring clicks and chimes of Jong on Mario Galaxy 7—"he gets to stay home. And that means you need to watch him. I'd rather not call my parents."

"Well… actually," Shota said, feeling the paper between his fingers start to moisten at that sole implied refusal. "I-I… w-was wondering if—" Yoko finally looked at him, finishing the last of the groceries. And all his nerve perished. He shoved the paper deep into his pocket and smiled. Just… smiled. "Sure thing, Mama."

The day of, Shota hunched over a copy of A Mill on the Floss while Jong finally—finally; God-fucking-finally—submitted to a sugar-crash nap. It was partially Shota's fault: for breakfast, he'd made Nutella-topped cinnamon rolls with double frosting. Afterwards, the brothers walked to the nearest gas station and Shota let Jong pick out whatever he wanted for the day (so long as his saved-up money could afford it). His brother's arsenal was stocked with sour and sweet candies, chocolates across the board, some weird Mountain Dew that switched from neon blue to purple every five seconds, and a giant bag of nacho cheese Doritos. The Hoga house submitted to onslaughts of noise: Jong screaming at the game, Shota yelling at Jong to sit still or not to touch that, Jong racing down the halls and up the stairs for the bathroom or another one of his many snacks he made sure to hide from Tsubasa.

But now, just a quiet house, a distant lawnmower buzzing along, and the gentle sounds of a child's snoring. Shota moved the last candy wrapper from underneath his brother, discovering that there had been more hidden under the younger boy's body and gathering those, too, and emptied them in the trash bin outside. He'd made it back inside in time to hear a knock at the front door. He trudged over to it, opened it in a sway of prepared annoyance, and gazed into two seafoam, reversed eyes. "Em?"

His best friend perked up. "Hey!"

"I thought you were going on the field trip." He moved aside for her, gesturing for her to come in. Mama and Tsubasa were due home at or after dinner, and Jong had his friends pop in all the time. What harm was a girl who couldn't stop laughing compared to three other rambunctious elementary schoolers? "Wait, how'd you find my house?"

"Who wants to see a dumb contemporary art museum, anyway…" Emi plopped down on the step and removed her spotless white sneakers.

Shota shut the door. "I figured you would. Visual's your thing."

"I'd rather skip the day and do nothing!" Emi placed her shoes by the others. "So? What're we doing?" Shota dipped his head at her in a gaping sort of way. "What?"

"Are you kidding me?"

"What?"

Shota couldn't help the warmth spreading in his chest. Though his nerves would never allow him to say it, he knew Emi's intention. "Nothing. I'm, uh…" He walked off, signaling for her to follow. "I'm just babysitting today. I'm surprised my parents let me this time. Usually they don't."

"Why not? You're responsible."

"Yeah, well… Yeah." He first went to the kitchen to retrieve a soda for her from the fridge. The last grapefruit-flavored one. "Here."

Emi chuckled. "Thanks, man!" She popped open the can and took a small sip. "Aren't you gonna get one?"

"Can't have soda, remember?"

"Oh."

He could tell in her eyes and slowed movements that her sympathy extended into a nervousness about drinking the carbonated drink in front of him. To spare her that worry and guilt and God knows whatever else was going on in her head, he asked, "Wanna watch TV or something?" He led her to the living room, where Jong still snored. "That's my little brother, Jong. Sorry, I'll be back." He pried the remote from his brother's half-limp hand, gave it to Emi, and scooped the boy into his arms.

Emi watched them go, smiling in memory of Isao carrying her the same way when they were younger, of her now plucking up her baby niece Nejire in a similar fashion for bedtime. Flipping aimlessly through channel after channel, she remembered a time when her parents would do the same, when they would look at her with an unexpectant gaze. No sighs, no head-shaking, no stern Emi's—just looking. Her brother got into an Ivy League university at seventeen, full-ride with a promissory stipend working in the chemistry lab for his entire undergrad and graduate experience. And here she was with a too-big mouth, a useless love of photography, and a reckless aspiration of pro-heroism. Resentment had no place in her heart toward her brother, nor did it have a place in her heart toward Shota, who, whether he liked it or not, was born with a natural, rare talent to a family with networking experience in the performance realm. She could only wish to have the same talents and brains. She could carry a tune. She could capture an image in a moment. She got straight A's without studying much. But nothing special. But what she did like was seeing people smile. That she could do. She had only moments to spare to recollect herself when she heard Shota come back in. Blue Planet droned on the TV.

"Your Quirk was… cool. Could be rational in a fight." Shota plopped on the floor beside her. He glanced at her, and gave a squinting scowl that told her he'd caught on to her shift in mood. But he said nothing and opted to poking holes in the carpet, watching the fibers engulf his finger. "When you helped me. Your Quirk."

"Where'd that come from? Random! But thanks!" She gave her best, widest smile—not one to imitate All Might's violently broad smile. But one of her own, one that shone in a different, more realistic, more approachable way. "I wanna be a hero when I grow up, so I have to be the first one to appear when someone needs help!"

Shota nodded, though he never quite cared for pro-heroism or being the first anything. He could feel Emi's eyes on him, on his hair, after bringing that day up. He had learned how to comb it in a certain way to hide it from being noticed much and he'd kept up the lie about brushing too hard to Yoko and his grandparents. But he knew that Emi knew. Even if she didn't see, she was often difficult for him to lie to. When he glanced back at her, her eyes were on his lips. "What's… wrong?" he asked, allowing his eyes to trail down her still-developing body. But he snatched control over himself quickly and stared intently into her eyes, waiting for her to return the gaze. "What?"

There was a telltale giggle in Emi's voice when she said, "Hey, Shota." She covered her mouth with a hand as her stifled laughter began to leak from her throat. "You have a hole in your pants…!" She could barely get through it with all the laughter.

Shota rolled his eyes.

Emi pouted, delivering a light kick to his thigh from where she stood. "Hey! Why aren't you answering me?!"

Once safe, Shota confessed, "Your tell."

"What tell?"

"When you're trying to lure someone, the right corner of your mouth tenses up. That, and the obvious cackling." Shota looked at the screen, watching a family of blue whales migrate through empty blue. "I'm not telling you all of them, though. You'll just keep trying to use your Quirk on me. Better to just give up now."

"You're so mean…" Emi took a gulp of the soda.

"I'd rather just talk to you."

"You are talking to me."

"I'm talking to half of you. Rather talk to all of you."

"I don't get it."

"You fake a lot and it's irrational, is what I mean. Sorry."

"You can't just insult someone and then apologize!"

Shota, to her surprise and to his own, broke out laughing and shoved his bangs from his eyes. But he knew his statement, no matter how poorly delivered, was an accurate one. He also knew that he had no place to say what he did to Emi, given how much he faked and had been faking since Yoko remembered he existed all those years ago. By influence of his inherited vocal cords and lung-span. "Suppose you're right."

Emi dodged his eyes, sporting a frown in an attempt to hide a smile. "I know I'm right."

Jong trudged by, rubbing sleep from his eyes and strangling a granola bar—double chocolate, Tsubasa made sure to check this time before he got to the front of the grocery line—on his way back to his room. "I'm telling Mom you're kissing in here."

Shota rolled his eyes and glared at his brother. "I'll tell her you're lying."

"I'll tell her you're a bedwetter!"

"Bye."

"Hi!" Emi threw an arm up. "You must be Jong! Shota always talks about you! I'm Emi!"

"Ew, you're his girlfriend?" Jong slugged up the stairs as he spoke, uncaring for a response.

Shota shot a glare at the living room's door. "Jong." He looked at Emi, eyes softened with embarrassed sympathy. "Sorry. He's not normally that rude."

"Meh." Emi's sequin eyes traced along the rooms, taking every single detail in with gaping, though calm, wonder. "These houses are so different than the city." A smile rose. "It's almost like everything is gonna jump alive and hug you! You can just rest in there forever."

"Country folk take things slow..." Shota followed her eyes, unable to match her perspective. Everything in the bloody house on Chokeberry Street either strangled or struck. Hugs were obedient compressions. Hugs were too-large hands gripping arms. There was no air inside these houses, but bitterness sculpted the frame of the structure.

"Give me a tour?" Emi stood up.

Shota hesitated, but ultimately got to his feet. "It's not much to look at. But it's better than our old house." He gestured for her to follow.

"You moved?"

"Yeah. My old house was smaller than this, in the middle of a little forest and a dirt road. Our main family house is closer to the mountain, by a forest and cliffside overlooking the ocean. The Big House." On cue, they stopped in the narrow hallway Shota hated that Yoko had decorated with his recital awards and newspaper clippings, that Tsubasa often cornered him all too easily in. He pointed at a faded picture of the family standing before the origin house: his grandparents, his Yoko and Yori, his sister, his godfather, and some other relatives he hadn't seen in half a decade, and in his mother's arms, him. It was after his parents' second wedding. "See that red sakura tree? It's been there for ten generations, or something. My dad's side. My ancestors built the house around it. It's in the half-ass courtyard."

"Wow. Don't take this the wrong way," Emi said, carefully, but honestly. "Were your ancestors rich?"

"Naw." Shota shrugged, thumbing Sheeran's necklace that now hung around his neck. "Fishers and farmers on both sides. A few doctors on Mama's side, some lawyers on my dad's. That's it. But we've been on the land for forever, so that's really the end of it."

"Legit."

"See those pens? We don't use them anymore, but we had livestock. They stopped using 'em before I was born, my dad said."

"You really look like your dad. He's the one with the glasses, right?"

Shota looked at the frozen image of Yori. Where he'd originally felt worry and sorrow, the beginnings of anger mustered into a sphere that clogged the gateway to other emotions. If Daddy hadn't run out, he wouldn't have died. If Daddy just kept his temper for once and listened more, Mama wouldn't have gotten so angry. Or he'd be able to calm her down, like before. They fought all the time—why was that one time any different? The only thing that held no question was that Yori was dead, in one way or another. So, Shota, hearing Emi's comment, scowled and growled venom. "I can't help my face."

Emi paled at the expression on his face, unsure what to make of it or what to say to ease him out of it. A look so foreign to her that she nearly became scared. Her best friend was usually so resigned and patient, and fairly easygoing, no matter what people threw at him. But this look, this odd darkness, this foreign rage she saw… It frightened her. But more so, she wanted to hold him. "Shota—"

Growing tired of the sight of the place, of his parents' faking happiness and his grandparents' standing idly by, he stalked off toward the other end of the hall where the foyer waited. Emi followed. "Here's the front, obviously." He glanced into Tsubasa's den, but averted his eyes to the dining room and kitchen. "Not much to see here."

Emi paused mid-step at a wall—the wall. Her eyebrows pulled down a bit at the slight make-outs of five fingers, translucent, but not, upon the pearl paint of the wall. Shota's heart submitted to ruin without even a cry and he walked from her toward the stairs, sat down and steeled over. "What's this?" Emi asked, more so rhetorically.

Shota droned the perfect response, one that even he expected. "My brother finger-paints where he ain't supposed to." He had to look away from her to execute his lie.

"Isn't your brother seven?" Emi watched him.

Shota shrugged. "Ain't seven still a baby?"

"I guess." Emi took another squinting side glance at the wall marks.

Shota reeled back, wondering where he'd go—how he'd hide—when and if she figured it out. She would probably cry, probably try to get involved. Tsubasa would be furious. No one would be safe. "U-um—"

Brushing her hand along the outline as she went, Emi paused again to lay her hand against the near-hidden print.

Shota's eyes welled up the moment her hand pressed to the wall. Without warning, Rationality shifted and his Heart drew the deepest of inhales. He wanted to tell her, to have her hug him, to hear her make impulsive promises about running away on the next train, to cry to her until it all stopped hurting. The warmth of her palm he could feel radiating in his core. But he dug his nails into his palms and cleared his face of anything beyond a flat expression. "So…"

"Show me your room! I wanna see how many books you have! You're always reading!" Once she smiled and perked up in step again, Shota's nerves calmed and his heart started to climb to its proper spot again. Focusing on his heart spared him from the dull sting in his thighs—he'd dared to backtalk Tsubasa about a failed algebra test he tried to hide. Emi took his hand. "Uh-oh. Are you short-circuiting?"

Shota flushed. "Sorry." He gripped her hand back and started up the stairs. "I was just remembering something. It's nothing." When they got upstairs, he let go of her hand and half-heartedly gestured at the entirety of his room, unsure what else to say or do as introduction.

Emi's thin eyebrows shot up at the colossal stacks of books on top of his dresser. "Whoa…" She scanned over each stack. "You separate by genre or… time period?"

"Literary movement, mostly," Shota said. "Some by location, too, like here." He nodded at the stacks. "American, colonial to contemporary. Over there's Victorian English. Asian, there. And here's a general stack that I cleared gave up in: Old and Middle English, Renaissance, some French..." The more he glanced over his collection, the less confident he felt in his organizational choices. "It's… actually more of a mess than I'd thought. I'm sorry."

"So, I think it's safe to say, given the size, that Victorian is your gig— No way you read Kristin Hannah!" Emi broke out laughing. Shota's face exploded in red, but he said nothing. "My mom reads her!"

"A lot of people read her." Shota moved away from his books, realizing that he had allowed the author to have a stack all to herself. "She's a good storyteller. So what?"

"No, I was just teasing you!" Emi contained her laughter poorly. "I think it's really sweet. It just caught me off-guard!"

"Mama used to read her, when she first got published." Shota stared at the Hannah stack. "But she doesn't read anymore. Says it's a waste of time. So, I took from her stash." He covered his face and turned a bit more from Emi. "Will you stop giggling?!"

Once she could, Emi contained herself and asked in a direct, though still bubbling tone, "Why don't you just tell her?"

"About?" Shota turned to her, oblivious as to who was being referenced. Surely it wasn't Kristin Hannah, but there were always random things coming out of Emi's mouth. It wouldn't be the oddest thing she'd said since they'd become friends. "Who?"

"Opera. Theatre."

"What about them?"

"That you hate them. Tell your mom."

Shota stilled. How…? Meeting Emi's suddenly serious stare, he froze over, unable to react, unable to lie, unable to fake it. In the silence that followed her keen observation, he could only hear his own heartbeat, could only think to speak thoroughly before her. "I…" He, what? The investigative crease between Emi's brows deepened and her head tilted—she was listening. He leveled his gaze on her, eyes hallow, sanded and jaded in the vibrance that should've been there in a young boy's eyes. "Better to keep the peace."

"That's… sad. And weird."

Shota coughed a short laugh, pulling a scowl of disbelief that Emi would deem him weird. "Well, I wanna make Mama happy, too. Hungry?"

"A bit."

"I'll be back. If you wanna borrow something, you can. Just don't destroy it." Shota stalked from the room. When he returned, he came armed with two instant ramen cups and water. He gave Emi one of each.

"So, what does your mom's dream have to do with you? I mean, can't you just tell her you hate performing?"

He shrugged. "I don't hate it. I just don't like being paraded around by her. Everything has to be perfect and I have to show up everyone else, or else I get yelled at. I don't care about being popular or nothing." He stirred the steaming broth in the Styrofoam cup. "There is something about performing that's… special. Cathartic, even. But it's the pressure from her that… well…"

"Maybe tell your mom to just let you do performance without the competitions, and all that." Emi took a bite of swaddled-up noodles upon her chopsticks without much effort, and somehow, to Shota, made the saggy consumption of noodles appear elegant. She brushed some hair behind an ear and covered her mouth as she spoke with her napkin. "Maybe if you do it for fun… We could do it together! For fun!"

As tempting as that was, Shota knew he was already in too deep. Yoko had already ruined the appeal of performing professionally. She had churned it into something greedy, ugly, and filthy. "Mama's always dreamed of making it big in the opera industry. She was the first break-out in the family. Didn't want the farm life or any other white-collar job. But… didn't work out that way for her."

"Oh. Well…" Emi's gaze deepened.

"Plus, we are. Remember?" Shota's neck and ears reddened, and he hunched his shoulders a bit. "We got lead roles for how many musicals coming up, right? I think we'll both be done with musicals after Phantom alone."

Emi swirled the noodles with her chopsticks, holding them like drumsticks, before twirling one over to her dominant hand and observing the knitted ball of empty starches. "Do you know what happened? Your mom?"

Shota flicked his eyes up to her before losing his nerve and looking down at the steaming broth. "Do you?"

Emi shrugged. "Are you asking because you wanna see what I'll say or is it 'cause you think I know?"

"I don't know." Maybe both. He figured there wasn't much to be said about Mama. But yet there was always something with Mama. She liked it that way. But she hated noise. Shota never knew, but knowing enough kept him safe, kept everyone happy. Ish. "Sorry, did it seem like I was luring?"

"A bit."

"Oh. Sorry."

"My dad just said she needed to prioritize her health."

"Her health?"

"That's all he would tell me."

"Mama's fine. She just gets really moody. And she sleeps a lot." Guilt panged Shota's stomach, twisting in the acknowledgment that he might've spoken too much. A reflex. In his mind: the countless nights the early morning reeked of gin vomit, the clatter of liquid-sloshing bottles from downstairs that he learned to fall asleep to, the slurred, hot-breath accusations and sloppy swats at his head or legs that often missed. The worst part: the tears that somehow always slipped between his fingers, no matter how dutifully he consoled Mama. But no one could ever know that. He hurried to meet Emi's eyes again. "B-but she went out to an interview for a desk job today. She said she had a good shot. I think so, too."

Emi crossed her fingers and gave him a supportive smile. But for some reason, the light escaped her eyes in that brief moment.

"My stepdad would kill me if he knew we were eating up here." Shota downed the rest of the cheap ramen. "Little does he know Jiggy stuffs his face at midnight in his room. It's like walking over hermit crabs with all the wrappers and crumbs by his bed."

The light returned in Emi's eyes when she laughed mid-bite. "You're gonna make a noodle come out of my nose!"

For the second time that afternoon, Shota broke out laughing.

##

He took her to his spot—the spot he always took Jong. It was an unassuming, shaded spot, as if plopped in the middle of the wood some distance from his house. All one had to do was following the sound of rushing toward the creek, then follow the creek's stride until a patch of wild bamboo and wisteria flowers could be just barely seen by a forward glance, and finally, continue through the aesthetics until it calmed to varying hues of greens and browns until a slouching tree could be spotted hovering over an infant lake by a modest waterfall. Fireflies and songbirds drew inspiration from these earthly scents, from these white-noise hums of nature untouched. He came here to write or read, or simply just to watch ripples and breathe free air. For him, it was a gentle medium of noise and quiet. Like the kitchen by his hand. Like the final note ringing out before the close of a recital. Like Emi's voice matched with his.

Feet kicked up against the tree's spine, Shota watched Emi toss her arm out into the wind. She stood tall on one of the tree's sturdy branches, a light smile facing the sun, her fingers stretched out to snatch every chilled fume of the wind. Her two-tone eyes danced with the blue of the sky and the yellow-greens of the leaves. The riverbank clicked and whistled between them. "What do you even do out here?"

"Sacrifice geckos to Xibalba." Emi tossed her shoe at him. It hit his arm and they both laughed a bit. He picked it up and held it out to her. "I saw a child here once." She gave him an interested look that didn't elevate beyond that. Just interested listening with a subtle squint of her eyes. "I'm being honest." Shota averted his gaze, mainly to avoid the investigative eyes that watched him. "He was dressed entirely in white. Old clothes. His skin was kinda blue, and…" He swallowed, feeling heat attack his neck and his cheeks.

"Uh-huh?" Emi smiled a bit, leaning in with what Shota perceived as childish excitement, as he'd often seen in his younger brother. And somehow that calmed him, how she so readily listened, and any threat of his stutter manifesting disappeared. "Did he chase? Did you chase him?"

Caught off-guard, Shota coughed a short laugh. "Uh, no. No. I'm not crazy." He fumbled with his hands, deemed that to be foolish and irrational, and opted instead to shove a lock of hair into the corner of his mouth out of habit. "We just… stared at each other. He was sorta… hovering over the banks." He pointed across the mini lake. "There. And when I stood up to see if anyone else was around, he backed up into the forest again."

"Did you tell your parents? Or anyone?"

"I told my stepdad when he came out here to look for me. I'd apparently been out for hours." Shota frowned in memory. "But it only felt like minutes."

"Did he believe you?"

"Naw. He just yelled at me."

Emi nodded slowly, turning back to the lake before them. As she turned, Shota glanced at her and saw her thin eyebrows flick up as if in contempt. But at what, he wondered. Was it at Tsubasa? Surely, he'd dropped hints about his stepfather's strictness before. Was it his random story inclusion about a ghost child that had conveniently manifested at the location they sat at now? He could confidently say that the two of them, being best friends, were familiar with each other's tics and habits. She turned to him again, this time with a concerned blink that furrowed her eyebrows. "Hey," she said, smiling a bit, "did I shock you? Sorry. Mom says I can out-talk anyone. Also, why do you bite on your hair? You're gonna get drool all over it!"

"Uh," Shota replied, tossing up a dismissive hand. "Sorry. It's not you. Did you say something?"

Shoving her foot back into her sneaker, rolling her ankle around to get everything in its proper place, Emi flipped her hair over her shoulder, tossed her head to move her bangs from her eyelashes, and gave him that tomboyish smile that only widened. "I said maybe your house is haunted."

"Innit." Shota raked his overgrown bangs from his face and let the waves fall back where they defiantly pleased. "It's called Mama. Haunts every part of this town, she does."

"Mr. Schrute"—their life science teacher—"was talking about your mom." Shota stilled. "When you went to the nurse."

Shota lifted himself to sit on the branch beside her. "I don't want to know." In truth, he'd had left on the excuse of going to the nurse. In reality, he'd retreated to the far corner of the school where not even the security guards checked and wrote a short story about the height of suffocation. He'd no idea where the prompt came from, or where the words were destined to take him as ink flowed from the pen at his command. But he kept on for the sole purpose of breathing, of not being watched, of the natural song of nature's silence. "He's a lairy asshole, ain't he?"

He was paused by a light hand on his shoulder, one that could have chilled him as much as it'd warmed him. The smallest finger stopped just where his nearest scar began, as if sensing where and when he'd flinch and opting not to startle him. Through some subconscious understanding, she must have known. Or she didn't, and naturally knew how to handle things unlike her. Things that couldn't smile. Things that flinched. Things that could be hideous, but, knowing so, could equally be useful in silent ways. He'd never know. The silence between them was telling of something lingering between them, but it was a comfortable pause. Emi's hand on his shoulder became fingers at the ends of his hair. Shota leaned his head to her a bit, staring at the twisting stream beneath them. He remembered when Jong fell in years ago. He would've landed on his face in the rocky part of the bank, had Shota reacted even a second later. He managed to snatch the back of his brother's shirt the moment he misstepped. Shota remembered carrying his brother home on his back that summer day, bloody knees and a pink, teary face. At home, he patted away dirt and dried bloody scabs, and thumbed away toddler tears while cupping his brother's baby-fat cheeks, gently hushing him.

"So… there's a dance coming up," Emi said, as if they'd been on the topic for the last five minutes.

"Uh-huh." Shota frowned, wondering how in the hell his best friend became the haunt of his mind. Not like the haunt that Daddy left or that Mama's expectations or Tsubasa's corrections brought. A good haunt. A haunt he wanted. Damp dirt leaked a bit through his plaid shirt—he hadn't worn much else since Mama bought it for him—so he sat up and ruffled the dirt and leaf crackers from his hair and clothes. "Reckon there's always something coming up."

Emi snickered. She always did when he said reckon, said it made him sound like an old man in a history book. She looked down at him. "You have dirt on your nose."

Shota wiped it with his sleeve. "Sorry."

"You gonna go?"

"Probably not." Shota looked at his dirty Converse. "Mama said I got a recital coming up again. So, she'll make me practice until the morning of. You?"

"Probably not. Daddy has a dinner party coming for his hospital. My brother won't make it, but I should go. Mom says it's always proper of a lady to be involved. Networking or something."

"Yet you showed up to my house."

Emi blushed, and Shota smiled. "Yeah, so?"

"There's a story like that, I think. A myth or a fable."

"Isn't it like a fate string or something? Sounds cheesy."

"Ain't it just so pretty to think so?"

"That it's cheesy?"

"That… maybe… somehow, we got one."

She stared at him.

He stared at her. "A-a-a thread… I mean… that ties us." An unbearable silence. One that Shota feared implied lines crossed, boundaries dismissed and the hell that would follow, of a sacred friendship and love now scorched by reckless commentary. "It… could be made of cheese, too… if you want."

She stared at him.

He slowly averted his eyes, feeling his neck burn. "I'm sorry," he muttered, removing himself from the branch beside her. After an irrational comment like that, he'd lost that privilege. He belonged on the sun-cracked floor like the heaping pile of humiliated, loose-tongued rubbish he knew himself to be. Emi belonged where the clouds stroked the stars.

When she finally spoke, she spoke in a foreign, low-set tone that only reddened his scorched face. "Shota Aizawa, you flirt."

"No! I—"

"You are such a flirt." Emi hopped down from the branch while Shota distressed himself into stuttering utterances, trying to will an excuse, an apology into existence through his stubbornly frigid tongue, ultimately submitting to silent defeat, a covered face, and red ears of self-reproach. He felt one of his hands cradled by hers, chilled by the wind. Their pinkies curled into each other, and Emi craned her head to meet his eyes. "We might though."

##

The orchestra's rage calmed into silence as their classmate, pampered and dressed as an aged Raoul at Emi's/Christine's grave, lay down a single red rose and sash of satin. His portrayed despair and the band's haunting harmony was replaced by the uproar of the audience, cheers and clapping. Behind the curtain, though on opposite sides of the stage, Shota and Emi took relieved breaths. Met eyes in the darkness. Glanced away with nothing to hold onto.

As the children remerged from the red velvet curtain and bowed, flashes from digital cameras triggered by the demands of excited parents and wowed scouts illuminated the auditorium. By each warm-lit shoji wall-mounted lamp were bustling pride and flourishing expectations. A handful of overzealous parents raced down the aisle to snap close-up shots and grab at their babies' hands. Among them, Yoko alone and stone-faced to the right, and Dr. and Mrs. Fukukado to the left, seated calmly and clapping and nodding. The other kids let go of each other's hands to wave and bounce around at their parents; but Shota and Emi held on. Other parents cooed at them, whispering that lead roles always turned out to be lovers and that the kids were too young for X, Y, and Z. But at the sight of their parents, Shota leaned over to Emi a bit and muttered, "Oh, my God."

"I see them." Emi gave a tiny wave to her mother.

"How much you wanna bet they're cheesed at the kiss?"

Emi shot her eyes down as her cheeks exploded in red. Her fingers curled tighter around his, and she dodged his eyes. "I don't know…"

When Shota glanced at her, surprised at her silence and coyness, he found himself smiling, then pining. Something about the way Emi looked at him, felt to him, and felt alongside him. The two of them, hands locked, standing tall against the world that constantly tried to divide itself. He wondered how he looked to her, if she thought he was a man yet, if she thought of him as he did her: of beauty easily emitted and beauty in the process of burgeoning. She was loud, sure; but he'd forgotten how it felt to smile without restraint and to laugh until the air swirled.

"My dad's gonna kill us both," Emi said, all hilarity and coyness replaced by a bracing sort of calmness. Her eyes were set ahead into the crowd, eyelids sagged a bit as opposed to her usual wide-eyed look, and cast as far away from him the more he watched her.

"It's the script." In actuality, Shota hardly cared about Emi's father. Or Tsubasa and Mama's threats about him losing focus. He knew Granddad would tug him aside by the elbow and give him a listen-to-me-for-a-sec talk about the birds and the bees again. Grandmum would gently advise him that he's too young to know about liking a girl a little too much. Jong would never shut up. Everyone was so damn predictable that Shota's brain ached, but not from overuse or strain. From the desperate attempt to squeeze some sort of stimulation from itself to provide some semblance of surprise, or joy, or wonder. All that bled were sorry drops of Heart and spurts of Rationality.

The velvet curtain divided performers from audience, canceling out the excited synergy of cheers and wailing by the gaping expression common among the latter for the sighs of relief of the former. Shota and Emi turned toward each other, still hanging onto each other by the pinky. Around them, students stripped from costumes and went to work scrubbing their faces with makeup removing wipes. Murmurs of after-show celebrations and tomorrow's plans engulfed the space. Mr. Summerson clapped his hands in formal applause to the children, dodging and spinning around racing boys and girls while giving exclamations of praise and prayer for their continued luck for the show's weeklong duration.

But Shota and Emi didn't notice. Emi opened her mouth to say something, her usual upbeat expression rejuvenated in the privacy of the separating curtain. Right then, Shota slipped his arms around her and held her close. When her hands rested against his back, he cringed a bit. His muscles supporting his shoulders balled, hardened, and stilled… but then released, retracted, and fell to its natural place at her touch. "Sorry," he said in their embrace. "I didn't mean to just do this."

Emi only relaxed with a contented sigh and held him tighter, leaning her head against his.

"Is it okay? I'm sorry."

She gingerly tugged a lock of his hair by his ear. "It's just a hug. You already kissed me."

"It… was for the show."

"Good boys don't lie, Shota—"

"—Shota Aizawa!"

Their hug broke immediately and they looked in the direction of the cry. Shota felt his shoulders rounding again. "Mama?"

On firm ankles hoisted by six-inch heels, black and studded with faux diamonds, Yoko, lo and behold, forced her way into the backstage area passed the two guiding teachers and security guard. A flurry of brown waves and whiskey-hued eyes, she sported a figure-hugging black dress with a high neck and a skirt that rode up too liberally. In her designer purse, peeking out just by its polished dome, was Shota's most recent recital trophy. As expected, all eyes in the room went straight to it, then to Yoko, then to Shota.

Shota's entire being reddened and compressed as she drew nearer. He had only realized it then, but he'd let go of Emi's pinky. Without even realizing it and with some eerie sort of ease, he'd let her go. With the same odd easiness, Emi retracted into the crowd. Shota hardly noticed, victim to his mother's unyielding glare. "Wh-what're—"

"We're going," Yoko demanded, standing over him. She flashed her eyes behind his head.

He glanced quickly over his shoulder to see Emi by the art students who made the scenery for the musical. She was already well-immersed in the conversation about her failed attempts to paint freehand. When Shota looked back, his mother was frowning with a darker flame of determination at her. He nearly spoke up—

"You don't need to waste your time."

"Yes, Mama." He dropped his eyes, sensing the other less-considerate students watching and mumbling behind curved hands about him being in trouble and isn't that Janne the singer. Ears burning, face swelling, shoulders tensing, he waited. For something. Mama always did something when he was in trouble for whatever reason. She rarely let him be. Instead, she simply tapped under his chin in her usual, but rare demonstration of affection and turned to leave, expecting him to shadow her. He took a step, but glanced back at Emi.

She stood there, unexpectedly, but expectedly. Smiling in a sad way. "Did I get you in trouble?"

Shota loved her for that, and he took her hands, squeezed them. Dared not kiss them on the knuckles or in her palm. Yet. "You always do." He smiled.

This time, Yoko spun around at the auditorium door, exasperated beyond her own comprehension, and yelled down the tunnel of parents and children. "Shota Aizawa, I said now!"

All eyes centered said boy. Quick to release Emi's hands and make distance before his mother saw, Shota's entire face exploded in red again, his expression sporting a stare of horror that his mother would scream at him from such a distance, in front of such a massive audience. He knew his mother's disregard for his being embarrassed—she hardly pulled punches with her lectures and discipline even if they were in the middle of the line at the grocery store. She once slapped him across the face in the middle of rehearsal for a "lazy" mix of head and chest voice, though everyone else present had already applauded his flawless transition. He turned back to Emi while grabbing his bag, stuffing his jacket into it, taking that brief moment to say, "At Sadie's, Ems."

"At Sadie's," Emi echoed in breathless sigh, locked into his eyes, no matter how nervous. "Call me."

"I will." And he hurried down the soul train of too-bold starers, braving whatever his mother might do when he got to her in return for his lagging. Once he reached her, he stopped. His eyes rolled up to meet her down-the-nose glare, expecting her to just hit him already. But instead, she readjusted her purse on her shoulder and huffed out the door, knowing he'd follow.

He always did.

Please R&R and F&F! And happy (belated) Lunar New Year! Go Tigers!