The boy just walked along the shore with the ugly view of the mountain of trash in front of him, the sound of the waves that seemed as if they were far away but were actually only a few feet away, just muted because of all the junk. The other sound that could be heard was the watery nose of a person crying. Today Midoriya helped some people like an old man with his bag, took a cat out of a tree, and helped his mother make breakfast.
But he got angry and sad at home because of the looks his mother gave him when he started to cut vegetables, millisecond from helping him, he accidentally cut himself after getting distracted by her pitiful look again for the sixth time.
It hurt but not as much as his mother thought he would die just by a simple cut, he wanted so badly to scream "I'M NOT MADE OF PORCELAIN!" at her while she coddled and bandaged him, crying more than him. Part of him thought her reaction hurt more than the cut.
In school, he thinks it's worst: beat down, cursed, suicide baited… He started to plant red spider lilies just because of how much he gained at school, he even gave a bouquet of those lilies to a blonde girl one day who said she loved them.
"I cannot… I am so tired." Izuku's voice sounds broken, he almost can't sense the tears falling down his cheek or the look some people are giving him. "Why am I so alone? Why did I have to be born like this?" He sits on a bench, and his hand covers the red face and swollen from crying so much.
The boy seems the perfect image of a destroyed teenager, and that gets the attention of a skinny and tall man who doesn't think when he starts to go towards where the kid is, his body moves for his own.
"Hello Young Boy, is everything okay?" The man slowly gets closer analyzing the boy, and the wrist with bandages there now soaks in tears, a red flag opened in his mind as he slowed down his movements to not make the boy more anxious.
The boy continued mumbling 'not fair' and did not notice him there, so he asked again. "Can I sit here, kiddo? Are you okay?" The boy jumped in his seat, afraid and scared like a kid whose parents found them eating chocolate.
The first thing the boy noticed was his eyes, a deep blue like the ocean that you could easily lose yourself in, and the shadow of his skull for the eye made just this blue point in an all dark abyss shine all that much more, power was the first thing he thought, a blue sun burning alone in the void.
"Hey, kiddo, are you okay?" He stops looking into the eye and looks at the bright smile on a skinny and sharp face. Midoriya can't stand strong when he sees that smile, it is like All Might be telling everything is okay. It just makes it worse for him to compose himself, he doesn't want to be a burden, so he gets up trying to stop the tears and get out of there, he is ashamed.
"I'm okay, I just lost myself, sorry for bothering you." He is fast to start running, his heart so confusing, and he is so hurt he cannot stay and make another person ashamed of him, look at him disgusted, see him with pity eyes, so unfair, so-
"It's okay kid, breathe slowly, you need to calm down." The man touched him lightly on the shoulder and Midoriya stopped tending, and seeing it he dropped his hand. "Maybe you will feel better after telling me, and maybe I can help you, it's like people say vent can better how you feel." Still confused he stopped for a second thinking he would stay or run, the gentle smile was enough for him to sigh and sit down again, with a few weak tears still flowing.
"My mother..." The boy takes a breath and Yagi just waits calmly, after a long time he continues. "She always looks at me like I am made of glass and my best friend always puts me down, because I am just..." The lump in his throat didn't come out even forcing himself to say, seeing the man still attentive, he just gave up and changed the subject. "I just want one person to say I can be a hero." The child who appears to be so small starts to cry and as more tears fall the more he tries to smile the best he could, the man seems particularly hurt because of it. "It's so selfish I know, how can I dream of being a hero when I am so weak? I write analyses on different heroes in my notebook. I think I have a good brain, but it seems like that isn't enough. People just see me as a weak boy… it hurts." He tightened his grip on the bandages and blood started to dirty the soaked bandage.
"Boy…" He stops the small hand from hurting himself, and he looks at his green eyes, he loses himself a bit there thinking about what he would say, he just decided to use the same question his master said a long time ago. "You know what makes people see you and think you are a hero?" A confusing expression makes the man smile. At least he stopped hurting himself.
"The outfit? The smile? The power? The presence? A lot of articles and studies say the outfit is the first thing some people saw, but in the USA, villains and heroes almost dress equally. So they pass to look at the smile the heroes gave the people, but in Germany villains copy it for a while and fool a lot of people. And we pass to the power-" Toshinori laughed off how fast and similar the boy seems with Mirai, and the blush of shame the boy had just made it more fun. He wonders if Mirai would like the boy for a split second before apologizing for laughing him off instinctively.
"Sorry, sorry, you just remind me of an old friend of mine." Yagi breathes and takes his posture again. "Yes and no, Young Boy. But you are the few people between the ones I teach or have conversations with that study so much, something so basic like that." The little guy beamed and looked at him with big eyes.
"Are you a teacher? A hero teacher?" Yagi smiles because of the wave of excitement of the boy.
"Yep, something like that, still making some tests, but I am the future teacher of U.A. next year, Toshinori Yagi at your service." 'So bright' is the only thing the blonde man could think when he saw the smile the kid is giving him. "But answer the question, what makes people think and see you as a hero is your act." A serious and huge voice makes the boy's exciting mind clear, filling all the spaces with new knowledge. "People will start to look at you as a hero when you start to act like one." The boy takes his notebook from nowhere and starts writing without looking at the paper. "Well, you do seem kinda skimpy. Do you work out at all, kid? This is a thing people will see when looking at someone strong or even a hero." The boy laughs a bit because of who is telling this and Toshinori is okay with that, he is half-serious and half-not, but the buzz from the man's cell phone tells he needs to worry. "Hey, I've let myself go a bit since I retired, okay. Anyway, you just need to think about it a little and then act. Look at this trash on this beach, maybe with you clean it all people around this, including yourself, will see you as a hero. Just act, boy, actions scream more than words." And then he walked away in slow but determinate steps, his back seeming so big.
Green eyes watch the man as he walks away and then turns to look at the mountain of trash near them. "How much trash bag do I need for all of this?" The boy just gets up, forgetting all the sorrow in his heart, taking a clean notebook that seems to be brand new before writing in Analysis For The Future #13 as the title. "If I wake up at 4 in the morning, I could run to this point and start catching this trash… Small things first… Mom has bags for it… See a doctor…" The boy was mumbling all the way home, taking notes off everything.
He needed to put his new knowledge to prove, at max he helped clean the beach, and he could see what was under all this junk.
And because of it, the next day he almost didn't sleep and was so excited to start that the sun was not even close to the horizon when Izuku started to catch the small trash. The sand on the east part was the dirtiest because you almost could not see the sand there, so he thought starting there was preferable.
"What am I doing?" Don't last long when his mind starts to take the best of him. "I could be at home sleeping but no, I am here… No Izuku, this is not for you or your eye bags you are doing it is for the community… For your dream." He talks to himself all the time, he does his best to keep it in , but he mutters it out sometimes.
And with that little by little, he started to clean a corridor between a rock and a mountain of trash, his back aches like hell, his legs feel numb, and his arms are burning, but when he sees the sunlight a great smile appears on his face, he can do it!
But little did he know his body can't do it, at least not yet, but that was the point behind doing this. He would gain muscle and strength by cleaning this beach, and it helps people just like hero work.
"We need to put the trash in the recycle bin… No, we need to stop doing it, my body is hurting… Is for the greatest good." When he turned to leave the trash bags on the trash, he saw a little necklace with a pendant like a song note. It's dirty with sand and some oxide, but the little he saw is beautiful.
"Where is your owner?" He wondered aloud as he picked up the necklace and saw another close to the other, seeming the same, when his hands took the thing a glass cut his hand. "Fu… Ouch!" He forces himself not to curse, blood flowing, but it's just a little 'normal Wednesday Izuku' He tells himself 'normal Wednesday.'
He just focuses on the music note for some time and puts the two pieces together, creating a new note. Furthermore, he got lost in his thoughts, looking at the silver necklace and thinking about how to clean it. He didn't notice the little girl who ran into him.
"Oh, sorry I was not looking where I was going, are you okay?" Izuku saw white hair and big red eyes looking at him. The girl was so small, he worried she had hurt herself with the fall, but she gave a big smile back.
"I'm okay!" She jumps a little off the ground with a smile full of energy, but still a little introverted, Midoriya just remembers himself in her and smiles back at her.
"Still sorry for hitting you, I am Midoriya Izuku, and you?" The girl beamed and started to think deeply, trying to decide whether to continue the talk and tell her name to a stranger or continue walking. But a big hand got in her head, a tall man with a kind smile looked at the boy.
"Her name is Himura Eri, sorry I let her run without control, Midoriya-san." Izuku got ashamed because the man was sorry about that, it was his fault for not paying attention.
"That's okay, that was my fault for not looking at the street." The same man smiles back at the kid and starts to apologize, the girl between them laughs about the one apologizing to another.
Because of that, Izuku lost his attention to the necklace he started to use. Day after day it is common to go to the beach and see father and daughter, sometimes even Yagi-san appears. Before he knew it a week had passed and because and only because of a joke Yagi-san said about the necklace he remembers to clean it. Maybe his mother knows how to do it.
When Inko noticed her son acting differently was a not so normal Monday, first, he is saying that he wakes up early to go for a jog, and then he says to her to make a doctor appointment to give him a diet, a thing she doesn't complain about even though she wanted to see the man anyways since she wants to lose some weight.
But he started to come to the house exhausted, sometimes even with cuts on his hands, but that smile and fire in his eyes made her not think so much about it… Like his burns on some hazy days, she wants him to be protected after all she always thinks about how small he was when born, how small he still is, she still thinks it's her fault for him being so fragile, he doesn't have the power to protect himself, he was just her baby.
"Mom, you know how to clean a Necklace?" She saw her child curving and shy, asking her, so small.
"Why are you asking me this, sweety?" She asked tilting her head to the side a bit, wondering why he needed a necklace fixed.
"I-I found it on the way home from school a few days ago and almost forgot about it, I thought it looked nice, but it's a bit dirty." He replied."I hope I can find the person it belongs to, but I want to clean it a bit first" She suspected it was a lie because she didn't think there was much sand from their home to the school, but she showed him how anyway also finding the music note pretty, and she liked seeing him smile.
She also wanted to know if doing so would have him tell her where he's been. She doesn't want to force him because she doesn't want to break him herself, not knowing she might've already done so.
Izuku started to get good at cleaning and became happier as well. He even gets nightmares less often after not thinking so much about being called Deku, for him being alone at lunch and knowing that he is expected to be a failure, that sometimes get the better of him and cleaning the beach was just a pain some days, even talking to Yagi-san wasn't able to improve his mood.
But everything was okay, he doesn't even think much about how his mother is looking at him confused these days. He was having a surprisingly good month.
He cleaned the necklace, started to clean the beach, and even saw Yagi-san and talked to him sometimes, but sadly the father and daughter stopped going there to talk to him. Cleaning the beach started to slowly become easier for him. How lucky he was because he even saw a hero fight in person and a new hero debut, Mt. Lady! It's not every day that someone is able to see a new hero debut in person.
He doesn't expect that day, just a normal Wednesday, will be an upside-down day. He needs to know better. Wednesdays were almost never good days for him it seemed.