Ch. 10 A Gilded Cage

"Go, baby," Yoko said, gripping his bruised knuckles. "Soar."

"Yeah," Shota said, walking towards the massive door labeled Class 1-A. He scowled. "What a joke…" Starting at the top hero academy in Japan without any combat experience would be difficult enough; he was no fighter, just a punching bag. But starting any school in a new area in the first hurdle of the school year was never easy for anyone.

He hoped Jiggy was okay…

Shikoku was home, no matter how dearly he'd despised the nosy neighbors and whispering townsfolk, and the never-ending ceremonies and cookouts and distant-as-hell family gatherings; but Adachi would have to do… And stupid Musutafu, where U.A. High dominated from its mountainous throne. He couldn't help but think during his first night before this new day that these city folk were bound to consume his entire family alive, like what had happened to his ancestors who dared Hawaii centuries before Quirks emerged. Civilization always had a way of sniffing out the odd ones out. Sniffing and snuffing.

His phone vibrated in his hand. From his mama: Good luck today. Smile and make friends.

Shota groaned, shutting his eyes for a moment. "Irrational." Yet he still answered her: I'll try only 'cause you said.

Good boy. Love you, baby.

Love you, too, Mama.

"What is?" another student asked, halfway into the same classroom he had to enter. He had white-blue hair, vibrant eyes and… was sitting on a cloud…? Wait, his hair was cloud, too!

Embarrassed at having been heard speaking to himself, another habit he routinely failed to shake, Shota's face flushed across the bridge of his nose. And he knew it, so he practiced extra care to ensure his expression, at least, remained the same. "Sorry. Nothing." But he really wanted to ask if the other kid's Quirk was similar to the Dragon Ball cloud. Jig loved DBZ.

Instead, Shota hurried from the crowds and opted to take the nearly abandoned way to his assigned class where the trash cans and cleaning robots zigzagged and spoke to themselves. His embarrassment heightened when the spiraling echo of the bone of his shin meeting metal traveled through the halls. Given the slight decline in daily clammer, he knew the other students' eyes were planted firmly on him. His face flushed more—he could tell by the heat on the back of his neck and the buzzing in his ears—as he stared at the downed cleaning robot whose song of peril alerted the other robots that circled it, yammering on about the fallen soldier, wailing to the mostly unpopulated space, "Who. would. do. this?"

Shota backed up a few steps. The robots' jerking turn and orange sensor beams pointed at him automatically sent regret through him.

One of the de-facto EMT robots-to-the-rescue took the time to fully pause, position its white chrome crank to Shota, and deadpan, "You. should. be. ashamed." With a mini red siren popping out of its dome, another bot joined in, in a higher, faster pitch: "Youshouldbeashamed!"

Prisoner between the two of them, Shota huddled into his blazer, wishing it was oversized like the rest of his wardrobe. A blended mix of Daddy's and Jiggy's old clothes with punctuations of his own plaids. Yori's scent tended to permeate the entire closet, twisting into the fabrics of every shirt, pants, and jacket. While his father's face had begun to fade from his memory the way pain hid behind fear, that cedar musk cologne clung like claws dragging down each sweater thread.

As the bots berated him without mercy, he pleated the ends of his jacket into sweat-dampened creases. Never in a million years would Mama let him live this down, had she seen his ducking. When one of the robots nudged his leg, still repeating the same phrase, he muttered, "I'm sorry…" Though all he really wanted to do was kick them over and be done with it. He deduced, in his starkness without his oversized clothes, that the bots would report the assault to the principal without hesitation.

And then, Mama would find out. Tsubasa would probably be sent to deal with him. His skin had only started to heal from his and Jig's nighttime adventure. Mama hadn't told Tsubasa, but he always had a way of finding out whenever one of the boys needed punishment. Shota had long since learned these shifts in the air, learned the pattern of Tsubasa's swings like muscle memory and when they would falter, learned how to soft focus his way out of acceptance that came with his stepfather's fury upon already marked skin. He learned every detail. And how to shield himself from them when necessary.

Details. Details always helped.

Jiggy had a family of freckles on the bridge of his nose.

Shota learned to nervously chew on his hair from Mama.

Granddaddy Sheeran was stressed about having to terminate a fellow officer's employment last month, and Grandmama Yoona's favorite sister in the Hawaii side of the family—the odd sugarcane farmers in a fishing family—visited Liliuokalani Park and Gardens yesterday. So, Shota should probably call his grandparents or take a weekend to see them again. Jiggy always hated the way their grandfather's studying eyes spared not a single moment.

It always intrigued Emi how eyes gatekeep memory, how memory is birthed by glimpses and fixations. The idea of perception.

Emi.

Emi always trumped details, trumped Rationality, and gave Heart strength. But lately she too had begun to fade, bit by bit. Was her hair seafoam or emerald? Her eyes sparkled because of her white pupils. She walked heavily on her heels, but could run fast. Did she like summer or spring more?

The more he searched for her in his mind, the more elusive she became. He sometimes imagined what their goodbye would have been…

It didn't matter… She was there and he was… here.

Emi would hold his hand right now. She would smile. Say "okay" under her breath as if challenging the world and her nerves to even dare her. At lunch, she would go racing in and out of line for milk bread with peaches. During class, she would focus on dissection, on presentation. She would be the first to run outside in the rain and close her eyes to smell cloud water on cement. Elegance would behold her.

He remembered observing her, laboring to tame the most rational words that might begin to replicate that desire, that passion, that want for something.

The thought of her led his hand to reach out, to receive nothing but chilled air in his needing hand that now fell limp to his side. She should've been here.

He glanced at the door and imagined her. She should be here.

Only his distant, blurry reflection distorted by powdery glass frames for in-school privacy.

This U.A. uniform was sized to him, he observed then and there. Shota felt suffocated and shriveled just by looking at it, felt stupid and overly self-conscious just by wearing it on the way to school. The silk red tie, forget it. It sagged with a certain lameness that nearly screamed broke-ass compared to the usual U.A. student standard of living. He never liked the color green or blue on him, but the school blazer was littered with stripes of blue-green and slacks to match them.

Emi once said green brightened the honey color of his eyes.

Mama used to say to wear strong blues to give off the impression that a rich family raised him—not a long ancestry of shrimping, mussel-picking, fish-wrangling farmers whose wives' idea of a mani-pedis was sticking their hands and feet in the bayous to feed nibble fish and blue crabs. The sand-seamen's songs disgraced the actual talent in the family, Mama had said once during New Year's Eve at the family house. She'd pulled Shota aside and made sure to pinpoint which relatives to impress. That same night, she'd hung up a few of his awards above an old piano.

Like this first morning at U.A., Shota's face never returned to its usual olive tone. Maroon became his color.

And speaking of the school, the location was ludicrous—sitting on top of a tree-clad hill that loomed over Musutafu. It might as well have rested above the clouds, had a bunch of goddamn angels singing when the doors opened. The halls of the Hero department's building were almost too clean, too orderly. The walls shone marble, the floors gem-like. Each window graced the white-chrome world inside with fresh sunlight and verdant hues of the garden and carefully-sculpted trees in the courtyard. The students, and not just the Heroic students, appeared just as clean and put-together: ironed uniforms, starched ties, polished shoes and dry-cleaned slippers.

Not a hair, tentacle, fur, or trait out of place.

And then there was him: a clumsy tie, a casually folded uniform straight from a ten-year-old dryer, and a homemade lunch made by his mother. The first one since kindergarten. He hardly heard her when she ran through what she had packed him this morning. Hardly tasted her handmade breakfast, the very thing he'd been craving for years now. It simply washed over his pallet without even a spark of recognition. And the weekly lunch menu posted at the front gate—some hero named Lunch Rush—illegitimated the packed food Yoko planned for his first day. He knew the contents without even glancing at it. Homemade spring rolls with rice paper, hand-breaded cod fillets over rice, and garlic sesame water spinach.

For reasons unknown to him but gnawing enough to act upon, he opted to hiding the knotted Vahn's plastic bag lunch at the bottom of his bag until he could find his locker. He'd never bring himself to throw away his mother's food, no matter the intention behind it or how modest it seemed to these U.A. folk—people, not folk, he'd chided himself. If he said "folk" out here, he might as well tape a conical hat to his hat and throw back on his sewed nikka-pokka, and let the oh-so-modern fashionistas have at him. He prayed—yes, prayed—that with quick movement and rational timing no one would notice and he could continue on to worrying about whatever else might make him a target to these better adjusted, confident, aspiring heroes-to-be. Or maybe he'd just save it for tomorrow when the tension released. Mama did work hard to prepare it all fresh for the day.

He could give it to Jig, but Jig always overshared and made it obvious when there was a secret amongst the two of them.

Fine, Shota thought to himself, thinking about his exhausted, hungover mother, slaving away in the kitchen to prepare a fresh lunch for her boys. Face sprinkled with crystal sweat, her wavy brown hair wrapped into a ponytail made of its own length, a light but determined smile just barely reaching her paled lips. Her shrinking frame in a nocturnal kitchen with the melody of a cleaver sliding over wood and tapping porcelain.

I'll eat it in the bathroom, then.

Behind him, someone coughed or snickered. He couldn't tell which, and didn't care to. Schools were petri dishes either way—everyone knew that. When he looked, no one was there. No one standing out, at least.

Taking precise note of the descending classroom letter scale, he stared down at the printed-out schedule that had moistened with the shaking of his hands, pretending to be so entranced by the seven-period schedule that awaited him. Why did the Hero department need that extra course anyway? An entire school day should be enough! So… I'm gonna go out by 4:10 every day? Shota stared harder at the schedule, though keeping his peripheral sharp enough to keep track of the classrooms left until his destined 1-A. Why does this feel like a scam or a cheap deal instead of a scholarship?

He narrowly caught an angled foot sticking out from the upcoming intersecting hallway and widened his step at the last moment to overcome it. "Excuse me. Sorry," he muttered, without stopping. He'd only glanced briefly to make sure it wasn't a teacher or senior, or anyone he would have to pepper his apology with a respectful bow. Just some guy with brown sunglasses and a poor impression of Johnny Bravo hairdo. Shota didn't think twice to stick around at the latter's obvious up-and-down stare looming over tilted lenses.

Unfortunately, they both turned into the room labeled 1-A. A rough, but skinny hand snatched his shoulder and jerked him back around.

"So, you're one of the guys that got in here on scholarship," said the sunglasses-wielding student, flicking the green spirals of his eyes up and down once again. His hair seemed to be almost as loud as his voice. "What's a dirt-poor pile of country trash like you doing at U.A.?"

Fuck.Shota locked eyes with him for a moment, but said nothing as he sat where the list at the door instructed. A modest middle seat in the middle row in the middle column. Only sometimes do things sitting centered get the luxury of anonymity; not things standing inches shorter than average, things whose voices reclined with more twang than the blaring calls of the crowd. This time, the centermost spot where he sat burned, like a volcanic eye.

By the stare, he knew the other freshman had studied every trace of hand-me-down and wear-and-tear on his entire being: the faded backpack, the sloppily ironed uniform, the homemade notch in a belt designed for wider waistlines, made to fit his thin frame. Humiliation thudded against his temples in increasing intensity by the blows at the disdain and disgust in the other boy's voice, in his up-and-down stare, as if drilling into Shota's every insecurity and secret.

The jack-ass with the sunglasses nudged Shota's leg again with his foot, making a very obvious show of the collected black dirt on the sole before doing so. "Hellooo? You stupid?"

"Quiet down, now." A several-feet-tall dog-man entered the room abruptly, snarling under his words. "Take your seats."

As told, the class did so and held their attention to the front, silent. The boy with the sunglasses muttered something to another student next to him, and they laughed.

"Good morning. My name is Ryo Inui, though, some of you may know me as Hound Dog. I'm your homeroom teacher." Ryo adjusted the accessorized muzzle that housed his thin-furred snout. "Before orientation, let's do a quick go-round, starting with Ao's row." Said student flinched under the dog-man's eyes. "Go on. Introduce yourself as you see fit."

"Yes, sir," Ao said, standing. She cleared her throat in a manner Shota thought to be pompous. She was pretty, though, and seemed to carry an air of maturity about her. Intelligence and confidence emitted from her as profoundly as the cherry perfume on her skin. "My name is Rieko Ao. I'm sixteen-years-old, and I have a car!"

Ryo nodded and gestured at the next student, who stood slowly. "Uh, Raidon Mirakoshi here. I'm fourteen, and my Quirk is… Well…" He scratched the back of his head. "I excrete a mucus that solidifies after I reform it."

Ryo squinted at him. "You mean you secrete mucus?"

"Uh, no, sir. Excrete." The class filled with giggles and winces, but Shota could only think of this Mirakoshi kid being useful in constructional demands. He wondered how sturdy this mucus was when it hardened. He did feel bad for the other student, having to explain his Quirk to people as if discussing the daily specials at a fast-food joint. But at least his Quirk was rational when it came down to business. So long as he used it in privacy…

The class went about down the rows until he heard that same, annoying voice as before. The spiky-haired kid stood with the same amount of noise as his idea of fashion, even with the school's tame uniform. "Hizashi Yamada!" The entire class flinched at his energy. "I'm fifteen, filthy rich, beautiful beyond my super-awesome wit, and THIS IS MY QUIRK!" Everyone screeched in alarm and pain, shielding their ears to no avail.

"Will you knock it off?!" Ryo barked.

Almost as soon as he spoke, Yamada's Quirk shut off. Ears thudding, Shota covered his face in his arms, save for a single, red eye, hoping no one else saw, praying his Quirk would suddenly do anything else to make this situation worse. A panic activation at Yamada's volume. He shut his eye almost immediately to prevent being seen. He had no idea what it'd do. But in his defense, if his teacher saw the red glow, his Quirk activated in defense of Yamada's. And it was harmless. Just a glow and hair rise that served no other purpose.

No one could figure it out. Another reason why he questioned his enrollment at U.A. How could he last in a combat school when he had zero knowledge of his own Quirk?

The class had long-since fallen silent. The cloud kid saw Shota's hair standing on end. Shota ran his arm over his head, smoothing down the defensive volume, pretending to be going to asleep on his desk.

"What the hell was that?" Yamada asked, nearly panicking at the violation of his Quirk. "Was that you, Sensei?"

Ryo sighed, watching the other kids rub their head and stick their fingers in their ears, groaning. "Congratulations on earning detention on your first day here. Not a good start, Yamada."

"That's totally uncool!"

"Just a reminder for the rest of you: unauthorized Quirk usage is prohibited at U.A., especially those of you with highly offensive Quirks. Of course, the case is slightly different for those of you with mutating Quirks, like me…"

A collective yes, sir.

"Next. Sit down, Yamada." The classroom, after Yamada threw himself in his chair again, went obediently quiet. An awkward, lingering silence rang about the full classroom. "Next, young man. Aizawa, right?"

All heads turned to Shota, whose face reddened a bit, though his expression barely changed. He looked up at his teacher with avoidant eyes, hoping he had heard him wrong.

But Ryo raised his eyebrows and kept his gaze firmly planted on the shaggy-haired student. "Aizawa?"

Shota shook his head quickly.

Ryo gave a stern, but supportive nod.

Shota rolled his eyes and stood with a short sigh. "U-uh…" It only took one chanced scan of the room for him to avert his eyes back down to his hands on the desk. "I'm Sh—…" He scowled when his tongue caught: Shit, not now. "I-I'm… Sh—" A girl in front of him turned to face him with concerned, curious brown eyes. His face pinched, his throat felt thick, and the stares of everyone in the room caved in on him so relentlessly that he trembled. He breathed in to calm himself, remembering his grandfather's patient nod and his grandmother's encouraging squeeze on his hand. "My name is Sh-Shota… Aizawa."

"Where you from, Aizawa?" Ryo asked, intrigued by the kid's accent.

"Sh—… Shikoku."

"Are you?" Ryo said in a tone better suited for tea. "A good friend of mine moved there. Which part?"

For fuck's sake. "L-Longdon."

A student to his right, far by the door, whispered, "Was it really that painful?"

Shota cursed in his head, blaming his stupid stutter for this humiliation, blaming his mother for making him take the scholarship, blaming her again for her false hopes and expectations. His stomach churned.

"I think the stutter's worse than that dorky accent," a neighboring student said behind his hand. "They don't teach you how to talk in Shikoku?"

Shota's shoulders tensed in close to his body and his eyes remained stubbornly focused on his hands. The uniform swelled against him, his tie tightened, his face felt muggy. He heard every snicker, whisper, and insult, wishing to have never stepped foot on this stupid campus. But he willed his expression to stayed as coldly stable as possible. He was good at that, at least.

"Shota, huh?" said the girl in front of him. He looked up at her. "Like flying, right? Your name means to fly?"

Whoa, Shota thought, staring at her.

Yamada beside him snorted, his arms thrown over his head. "Yeah, right. More like: to turn off."

Shota's face reddened and he looked back down at his hands. It was true; his mother spelled his names in styles meaning 'to erase,' or any other way to do away with something. Perhaps even she knew that he would be the last kid she had with Yori until they divorced. Before he walked out and never looked back. A-plus parenting.

Yamada continued, "And Aizawa as in swamp, right?" Some giggles and chuckles there, but mainly led by the loud kid's short laugh. "Jeez. Can't imagine what I'd do, if I were named something like 'a swamp that turns people off.' I'd probably hide forever. Or kill myself."

Shota glanced at the teacher. "Can I please sit?"

The teacher put his hand up. "Kids, hush."

"Hizashi," said the same girl, "you don't have to be an ass. I think it's a fun name. It bounces!"

"Bounces?"

The cloud kid made a huh sound, leaning back in approval in his chair. "Soar or erasure…" A wide smile broke out across his face. "Yeah! I totally see it!"

Shota felt watery rage threatening his eyes, threatening the hair to stand at his scalp, threatening to force his hands into fists.

"All right," Ryo interrupted again, sending glares around the room to silence the chatter. "Aizawa."

Shota clenched his jaw, but said nothing in protest.

"Want to tell us something about yourself?"

"Fourteen," Shota said, hurrying to sit down to avoid further questioning and time in the spotlight.

Ryo lifted his snout at this, unsure what to think. Shota thought he heard his teacher thank him for participating, but he only really heard his own heart protesting. All he could think of was the mocking laughter, the snide comments.

A swamp that turns people off.

"Sir!" the brown-eyed girl popped up with her hand raised. "I'll kick us back off!" She cleared her throat and then said, calmer, "Hi, I'm Shino Sosaki. I'm among the old bags of this class at fifteen, and my Quirk is Telepathy." It appeared nearly all the male students' noses bled at her. "I can't wait to get to know you all!" Shota noticed Yamada had gone dead-silent, and when he glanced ever so subtly at him, he was nearly drooling on his desk at her.

Ryo nodded in approval and looked to the next student, then the next, and the next, and so on until all twenty of them were presented.

Orientation would be next, so they all went about the hall, following their homeroom teacher to the stairs. But Shota slipped away when no one else was looking, clutching the strap of his bag to minimize the sounds. He ran all the way to the next department building, knowing all the freshman classes would be in the auditorium. Choosing the classroom labeled 1-H, he went inside and sat in the space under the teacher's desk, holding his bag on his lap. He pulled out a copy of Of Human Bondage, but ceased to crack it.

The judges for that exam are idiots, he thought. Why am I here? That damn scholarship should have gone to someone else, someone deserving. Me, I'm just…

Pathetic? Weak? Weird?

…powerless.

—last summer—

He had gotten the scholarship, sure, but the school still wanted to see that he could survive the basic, first-level test of entry.

In moments' time, the test proctors—staff members, mainly—found themselves hostage at electrical-wire-point under the glowing, laser-like eyes of Shota. He snatched the collar of the largest 'villain' and yanked him down to eye-level. Nothing was said or done; only red blaring eyes stared through the culprit. U.A.'s math teacher, Ectoplasm. From then on, the test was ended with the collapse of the gigantic robots. After much debate, much analysis as to how Shota had even infiltrated, let alone located, the headquarters, Nezu himself decided to admit the boy, who gathered only civilian points and struck the heart of the attack, rather than the limbs. No one could even track Shota's movements besides the moment the starting alarm went off. He spent a good ten or so minutes getting tossed and slammed from the robots, another two minutes biting back tears on the floor, and then… gone.

Next thing they all knew, he'd found HQ.

The admission video came in the mail after a month's wait, but Shota could not bring himself to watch it. Nursing his back from his recent run-in with Tsubasa, he caught Jong watching it in his room, snickering at the playbacks of his brother getting tossed around by the other students in the beginning. Only when Nezu himself said, "Shota Aizawa, welcome to U.A. High's Hero Department! Congratulations!" did the two brothers stop fighting and wrestling.

"Oh, God, no." Shota stared at the screen long after it fell black, oblivious to Jong's teeth in his arm, or that he was crushing his little brother under his weight. "Please, no…"

Jong snatched the tape while his brother processed the message and darted downstairs, hollering, "Mom!"

"I got into U.A."

"Shota's hiding something from you!"

Yoko sighed and called from the kitchen. "Shota, what's going on?" The long delay caused an additional tune of exasperation in her voice. "Shota! I'm talking to you!" Jong's giggles peppered her demand.

Dreading each moment to come, he decided not to risk pissing his mother off more, subdued by the strikes of burning pain in his back each time he moved. He made it only as far as the middle of the stairs, only to where Yoko could see him through the transom from the steaming kitchen. Mid-sentence, he started back up the stairs, "I got into U.A., and I'm going to bed, so—"

"Hey!" Only his mother's warning voice arose a reaction from him. A flinch. She was pulling her hair back from the heat, speaking over running ventilation and hissing pan-fried food and a pot cooling under running water in the sink. "Get down here. Right now."

Shota cursed in his head, knocking his head against the wall in, but slowly descended the stairs, as told. Each step hardened his pleading prayer: Please don't make me go. He had to get out, out of this suffocating house, off this stupid island where everyone knew everyone's business, but did nothing about it. U.A. couldn't be the answer—the only answer was to hop on a bus or plane, close his eyes, and disappear. On sight, he was just about to pounce, to ring Jong's neck when his mother's arm separated them, stopping him while Jong hid behind her leg. But the lower Jong hid, the less Yoko's reach could shield him. Shota, knowing that, pushed against his mother for an instant only to shove his brother down to the floor by the face.

"Shota!" Their mother reached for both, missing both. She turned her focus to Shota, who recoiled after pushing Jong, already predicting his mother's retaliation. Without hesitation, she grabbed his arm to turn him and smacked the side of his thigh. But this time, unlike past times, he resisted her grasp on his arm, jerking it to free himself. Scowling. "Hey! What's gotten into you?" Yoko asked in further warning.

"Nothing," Shota growled before focusing on his brother, who stuck out his tongue. "Come here, you little f-freak!"

"You're the freak, Quirky!" Jong yelled back.

"Boys!" Yoko snatched Shota's arm and Jong's ear. "Stop it! What's this about?!"

"He's hiding stuff! As if I'd ever do that!"

"I-it's n—" Shota said when she let go. "It's n—…"

"It's n-n-n—…" Jong mocked, silenced when Yoko whacked the back of his head. "Ow! Mom!"

"—It's n-not even about you, Jig! Damn!" Shota complained.

Yoko held up a stern finger to the youngest's face. "Don't make fun of your brother. Go to your room." Jong stomped up the stairs, muttering to himself. "Shota." Shota flinched at her voice, unsure what was coming next. His mother, though she had a drunken haziness about her eyes, gave him a serious stare. "What's going on?"

Shota made a sound of disapproval and turned away from her, but she snatched his chin with a quick, but strangely gentle hand.

Her non-negotiable voice smoothed over with a touch of calmness. "Shota, answer me."

And it was enough to win Shota's steeled, cracked heart over. His stubborn frown morphed to a loving, attentive gaze meant only for Mama. He toyed with his hands a little and spoke slowly to fend off his stutter: "I… got into U.A.—"

"You did?!" Yoko screeched, excitedly hugging her son, who initially pulled away from her from the stinging of his back wounds. But in seconds, he melted into her hold, snuggling his face into her nicotine hair, finding only a whiff of her familiar shampoo. "I'm so proud of you! I knew you were going to be great!"

He said nothing back. Savoring the moment—this rare moment—was enough for him. The world could wait.

—end flashback—

"Aizawa?" Shota jerked his head up from the warmth of his arms to see his homeroom teacher staring at him. "What are you doing in here?" Ryo halfway expected to get no response from the boy, so he extended a paw to lead him out from under the desk. "Are you okay? You didn't make it to orientation."

"It's a waste of time," Shota said, bluntly.

The dog-man hummed in understanding, watching the student throw the strap of his bag over his head and shove his hands in his pockets. He was built athletically in frame, but as far as muscles went…the kid had the bare minimum. And by the distance in his eyes, he lacked the desire to train. Or more to the exact detail, as Principal Nezu had pointed out, simply didn't think he would fit in, and therefore didn't know where to start. Resolved on the latter possibility, Ryo took a considering moment to let the thought overtake him and inspire empathy. "Well, what're you doing in here? No one uses this classroom."

"Nothing. I guess I fell asleep." Shota looked away from his teacher. "Sorry."

"Son—"

"Please don't call me son." His phone vibrated in his pocket. "Respectfully… I didn't mean to be rude."

"Just get to your stuff and catch up with the class." Hound Dog stalked off as if he had never come in the first place. As if he had never meant to come looking for that one missing student. Shota imagined, somehow, as he did as he was told, that the teacher was not one to be tested. And that was confirmed by the muffled growling (literally) heard down the hall, back the way the class had gone and the teacher had come.

Shota caught himself snickering, realized that he should not be mocking another person's mutative Quirk, and was nearly brought closer to laughter by that single hint of self-scolding. It was not helpful that in the midst of his chiding that Ryo's incessant dog sounds had begun to morph with his speech, mumbling about bratty children and what kind of idiot hides in another classroom from a teacher on the first day at a new school.

Not what he was expecting from a teacher at a top-ranked school. But in all fairness, Hosubana was top-ranked, though in a different field, and nearly half his teachers were on the sour side. When he asked himself, he did not know why he had expected U.A. to be a place of kindness, hand-holding, and rainbows and coffee cake, and whatever other illogical crap they teach aspiring heroes. And he also knew that was probably an illogical assumption to make. All he really knew was performance arts and cooking.

Emi wanted to be a hero…

Standing, subconsciously glancing around the empty classroom for no other reason than to fill the quiet with some form of… well, anything, he slung his bag over his shoulder, trudged back to the 1-A classroom next door, placed his stuff where it belonged by his stupid centerfold desk, and put one foot in front of the other, eyes down, until his shoes met blacktop.

Instead of the sun, he was met with his own ankle curling against his other, with a shove to finish the job, and sun-blasted cement that left black marks on his palms when he caught himself. Mama was going to kill him for staining his slacks.

"Go back to whatever gutter you came from." With that, Yamada punched him in the face. As he left, he smirked that he'd reduced the new kid with resting bitch face to a defensive fetal position on the ground, a single hand up to block his face from further attack. "Bastard hick." And with that hasty assault, Yamada was gone.

Once the accompanying footsteps were distant echoes among the clattering and chattering of students on the field, Shota chanced a glance around and unraveled himself. He didn't bother touching his face where the fist had landed—he knew it was already red, probably bruising by the second. Stared at the floor without really thinking of much at all. He finally pulled out his phone and unlocked the screen.

A single, red number by the message application. Mama: I got a job interview today at 4. Make your chicken curry for dinner plz. We can talk about your first day when I get home! Love you, baby boy.

He pulled himself to stand, ignoring the aching in his face and ears.

Love you, too.

##

The mark Yamada had left on his face passed for a sparring bruise, which is what he'd told Mama. Heroing school, go figure. After a lively dinner, Shota secluded himself in his room until bedtime and finally cracked up Of Human Bondage. The text proved to be too dry for his disinterested mind before long. Instead, he'd taken a long shower and went to bed early. Around midnight, he felt Jig crawl into bed with him. But Shota pretended to be asleep.

The pretty girl from his homeroom collided with him the next morning with an alarmed gasp. Shota jerked with a start. "Oh, God!" Her name was Shino, he remembered, and she had just spilled her green tea all over him. "I'm so sorry!"

"No, it's fine…" Shota said as the liquid burned him through his uniform. Heat flicked his skin pink under his shirt, but he didn't care much. "Sorry."

"I really shouldn't run around like that," Shino admitted, fumbling through her bag. She retrieved a Kleenex and folded it. "Here."

Shota moved back a little. "N-no, it's…it's—" She patted away the liquid from his face and neck. "I-I-I, uh… 'm fine."

Shino gave him an amused scowl, chuckling a bit. "I spill tea on you and you apologize to me?" She folded the tissue over and patted at the tea on his under his chin. The matcha dribbling down his face probably made him look like a goddamn toddler. Just the thought alone heated his face maroon. When he looked down, she lifted his head with a light hand. "You're Shota, right? Aizawa?"

He stared at her. "And Shino?" It was a question, but he didn't want to come off as if he'd been paying attention to her, or anyone in particular. Just another name that roamed through the stale air of any other classroom on any other school day.

Shino smiled. "I like your hair."

"Thanks. It tangles easily."

"I'm always jealous of people with curly hair."

"You shouldn't be. I wake up looking like Oscar the Grouch."

With a slightly amused glance, she laughed softly. She gently blotted at the cooling tea on his shirt, wincing in an apologetic pout at the green-colored proof of her clumsiness on Shota's uniform. "I can't believe I spilled tea on you."

When she leaned closer, transfixed by the wet stain, he could feel her sighing breath push at the fabric of his shirt. A warm gust that made his clothes strangle, that blushed his cheeks for reasons he couldn't figure out. Shota looked down at her hands at work to keep from staring at her. Her nails were manicured with a siren blue. "It's really fine," he said after long. "I don't mind."

"You don't mind walking around with an ambiguous green stain on your shirt?"

Shota didn't expect to laugh, but he did. "You're gonna need another drink. Sorry." He slipped some bank notes from his wallet and offered it to her. "Reckon you'd prefer not to be hungry throughout homeroom."

Shino looked at the money, then him, then the money again. "You are too sweet. Better not hold your money out like that."

"Oh. Are you sure?"

"I have some mochi doughnuts to snack on!" She tucked the handkerchief into her bag, away from any valuables that could be stained. "I like your name, by the way. I don't care what Hizashi says."

"I don't mind my name," Shota said, stuffing the bills back into his wallet. "It's just a name. Nothing to it."

"How did your parents come up with it? I'd love to know."

"Don't know. Mama said she just knew."

"Where in Shikoku did you say you're from again?"

Shota's face instantly colored. The marshes came back into his mind—in murky scents, the water-teasing sounds that the firefly-wind carried, the singing craydads and foxes, the secrets sealed in the sand and sea that joined him and it. Stains of bare feet in chestnut mud that bowls morning rain. Steam coming out of the chimney at his grandparents' house. When he'd taught Jig how to claw the bayou for shrimp and mussels. When him and Chi went fishing for the first time with Daddy that one salty, pink dawn, and how he'd shushed their giggling. His scowls of disapproval when one of them teased the other into tears. The obedient shush never lasted too long those days.

Then, of course, the soundlessness of After.

"Longdon." Shota looked at his nails, now always clean. Not a hint of dirt under the nails. Mama's primping. Another erasure of the marshes that held his Heart and raised him by the hair in the theatre, stored and over-polished. "We had a small house."

"Bet you're relieved to be here now, huh?" Shino readjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder and turned to start down the hall, holding his eyes to invite him beside her. "Did you like it there more? I hear that Shikoku has the fluffiest foxes. And bunnies! And Island Praise! I hear that's Longdon's special festival!"

"Yeah. It's super noisy. My brother and I used to get stomachaches every year from eating too much."

"Oh, wow!" Shino laughed.

Shota watched her. She sounded nothing like Emi. Where Emi's laugh rang bells and brightened the space around her, Shino's quieted storms and stroked the air. She'd said something after that, but he didn't hear. He just watched. A day in at U.A., and her company already made the move, the goodbyes, the goddamn headaches of the enrollment process worth it. People could mock his name, his accent, his height, and his dodging eyes all they wanted. Shino's attention could amend any sting that bled from his mother's piercing lectures.

Before he knew it, though, she was waving and running off with whoever. A particularly pretty student with traits of a rabbit caught his eye. Literally. Her eyes were sharp, harsh, and inspecting. He'd seen eyes like those before.

But she too was beautiful. Right when he wondered what her name was, Shino threw her arms around the other girl, cheering, "Mirko! You're back!"

Mirko…

He'd be sure to avoid her like fucking hell.

"Hey."

Shota glanced over his shoulder to see that Yamada asshole marching towards him. A tight glare creased under the heavily-tinted shades he wore. Cursing, Shota turned to face him, gripping the strap of his bag.

"You giving Shino trouble?"

"No."

Yamada snatched Shota's collar and slammed him into the lockers, the bang echoing down the hall. Students from the other classes and their own gathered to witness. Yamada gritted his teeth at Shota, hovering over him. "Keep your country-ass away from her."

Shota pushed back a bit. "She bumped into me."

"Oh, so you can talk."

Shota activated his Quirk, red eyes blaring into Yamada's. Yamada, shocked and filled with trepidation, backed away. Shota watched him, forcing himself not to blink, and then stalked off. Hurried out of sight to anywhere else. Somewhere to hide.

Shota remembered that feeble baker back in Shikoku, fainting by only the sight of his mystery Quirk, never waving to him or Jig or Yoko every again. The town never stopped talking about it.

"What is that Quirk, anyway?" one girl down the hall asked.

"I don't know," a boy replied, shielding his voice with a hand to no avail. "But it's hella creepy."

"Wrong school," another student said. As she left, arm locked around her friend's, she whispered to him, "That's not the look of a hero."

##

Tsubasa looked remorseful, but full of resolve—one to bring pain. His eyes were set on Jong and Shota's entire body weight raced to the pit of his stomach and tore it down.

"No," Shota interjected again, louder. He stood between his half-brother and his stepfather, facing the latter with a protective hand out. "I-it's… It's m—"

"Shota, move," Tsubasa ordered, glaring at him under the shadow of his lids. His hand rose to sit on his hip, which, as Shota knew, indicated he was going to use his belt. The cane was by the couch. When Shota showed no sign of moving, Tsubasa gripped his upper arm and started to pull him from Jong. "Move. Now—"

"I used my Quirk on him!" Don't touch him.

"Quit being a little shit."

"It was me!" Shota forced out, fighting himself free and replanting himself in front of his brother. Jong gasped, earning a subtle, silencing pinch to the arm from his older brother. "I made him do it. It's my fault. All of it." Don't you fuckin' touch him…!

Tsubasa squinted in consideration at him. "Hands on the wall." After he said this, he turned and moved back a few steps, expectantly.

When Shota turned, Jong noticed his eyes had gone dim, his expression sullen, but accepting. Underneath it was love and desperation.

"Go to your room, mouse."

When he kneeled down, Jong noticed that water was collecting in his determined eyes.

Fear tugged at the ligaments in his brother's neck, more so when he swallowed. But his attention was all for his little brother. "Listen to my CD player. Hit play. Loud."

Jong peeked over his brother's head. Why was Dad standing over—

Shota snatched his shoulders and shook him hard. "Jiggy."

"What?" Jong asked, shaking still from the confrontation.

Shota raised his eyebrows. "Go. Or else."

"What's going on—"

Shota snatched his chin, hard enough to ensure his brother would listen the first time. "J-j-just… do it or I'll hit you. I mean it." With his other hand, he squeezed his brother's hand before letting go. The letting-go gave a tear the opportunity to escape and roll down his cheek. "Go. It's okay."

Jong fidgeted with the hem of his brother's shirt. "What's going on?"

Shota wiped his face with impatience and nodded once, searching his little brother's face for any red marks, any evidence of tears. "It's okay." He tried to give his usual sarcastic smirk and lightened his tone to a more annoyed-teenager sigh. "I'm just gonna get yelled at. As usual. But it's gonna be loud. So, you don't need to hear it. It's scary, I know. Go listen to my music."

Trusting his brother, Jong did as told, running upstairs and into his brother's room.

Shota called after him, trying to sound like a bossy older brother while his hands shook, his eyes blurred, his legs nearly gave. "I'm gonna check! Do it or else!"

Jong quickly put the headphones over his ears, turned up the volume, and let whoever this Chris Stapleton person was drown out the tenseness in the house. He held his brother's pillow over his head and focused on the music.

"Get over here." Tsubasa's voice rose a startle from Shota, causing him to immediately drop his eyes to his feet, trembling more. Without looking up, Shota turned and approached his stepfather, stopping once he saw gray socks over wide feet. "Hurry up."

Shota, as straight-backed as he could manage with a face of granite matted with frost, walked upstairs to the bathroom. Jong came out of his room to peek into the hallway, but Shota hardly noticed. He locked himself in there.

Stripping naked, wincing at each movement, at every fabric of his uniform, he stood there, contemplating if he dared look at himself, if today was the day. Shutting his eyes, he turned to the mirror. One step at a time.

He peeked open an eye, but only when he dropped his head, to see his feet on white tile.

Shut his eyes again.

Lifted his head.

He forced his eyes to open, flinching in anticipation. He could see how tired his eyes were. Turning… only a bit—

Red.

Crying red.

He scanned over his body in the mirror. Detested and horrified, the way people flinched at maggots. The more he forced himself to see his wound of a body, the harsher the threat of deconstruction. Tears were evident in his entirety, but each inch of himself he studied brought forth more dread about him. He stifled a cry, from the pain, from the humiliation, from everything he knew he could not escape. Somehow, looking at the bleeding strokes irritated his skin more than he could tolerate at the moment. So, he turned away.

A knock. Shota gave pause, lifting his head at attention, unmoving with a tear-painted face. Gaping at the uncertainty behind the locked door.

Jong's voice, but in a careful, tiny tone: "Shota?" Another light knock. That's right. Jiggy's knocks were always barely-audibly gentle. Yoko slapped at the door. Tsubasa: a single bang with a heavy fist.

"What?" Shota replied, willing strength into his voice.

"Are you okay?"

Hardening his voice to that of non-negotiating resolve, Shota swallowed hard and said, sternly, "Go to your room." But he knew his brother would remain, at least for a while. He waited for obedient footsteps sliding on rattan. When the shifting did not occur, he snatched a roll of toilet paper and launched it to the door with a thud. "Go! I'm taking a shit!"

The shifting came instead as scurrying. A door ticked closed, and a small body could be heard flinging itself onto a mattress.

Shota, listening, making sure, sighed in relief. He placed the toilet tissue back on the shelf and sank down to sit with his back against the tub's side. The polished acrylic drew a flinching hiss from him, but the finish cooled his afflicted back.

The drawer just in his reach hid a razor. Bites subtle enough not to bleed, not to scar. Only little pink glides across green veins. It'd been a year since. It'd be a distraction from his beating back and legs. The thought alone shot fear through his body where grasps for control had once been. At dinner last night, he'd noticed his hands starting to shake. His last doctor's appointment stated anemia. Underweight. Muscle weakness.

Maybe he'd cut too deep last time.

Or maybe it was his Heart, finally caving in, finally dissolving into nothing.

He didn't really care. All he was, was tired.

Instead, he tucked into himself, arms secured against his chest with his knees. He closed his eyes and accepted the searing agony in his back. Only that detail. Only that hurt.

And remained there, mirror-avoidant until Yoko came home.