A/N:
Hey guys! Here is the prequel to clockwork. There won't be a set update schedule so updates will be very random.
Enjoy!
If there was one thing that Hisashi had learned over the 160-and-something years he had been alive, it was that living for that many years was pretty fucking boring.
He had survived his parents' terrible parenting, looked after his younger brother, put said younger brother in a bank vault, started world war 3, killed a few too many people, tortured some more people, and hidden away for around… 137 years?
Yeah, that sounds about right.
On top of all that, he had tracked seven One For All users across the country, to America and back, and ultimately, to the place where he had killed them.
But that was boring, so Hisashi (being the absolute genius he is, in his humble opinion) had started a.. few… hundred companies over those long years.
And they were doing well (except the loo roll one, but that didn't count)!
So, as the CEO of these companies, Hisashi took time to check on them in person every once in a while.
Which leads him to where he is now, sitting behind an overly large desk at the top floor of the Yoichi Accounting Firm, doing absolutely nothing and bored out of his mind.
Hisashi sighs, getting to his feet. He grabs the empty mug from his desk — and tries to gauge if the dregs are enough to be possible to drink — before leaving the office to make his way down to the coffee machines on the nearest floor.
The elevator and halls are bustling, but no one bats an eye at him. Most don't know who he is. An advantage of living for such a long time with All For One: you have plenty of quirks to both conceal your identity and never have to use any of the fake ones.
Clean white walls, floors, ceilings surround him. Seriously, 153 years and you can't be bothered to change the original colors of the building? What idiots.
The coffee machines are, thankfully, working and mostly free. He has struck gold!
Hisashi chuckles lightly to himself as the coffee pours in a steady stream into his mug. It wasn't what he had been expecting, but of all the things to get better since quirks had come about, coffee machines had been greatly improved. Much better than the crappy Waitrose things he had drunk from in his youth.
God, he sounds old.
The caramel flavored latte is ready within a couple of minutes of staring at the quirk-sustained plants. Hisashi grabs the mug from the counter after pouring a sachet of sugar into it – he likes his coffee sweet – to slip out of the room and back up to his office so he won't be bugged.
Clearly the other people in the building don't have the same idea.
A flash of green is all he sees before he's on the floor with a grunt, some hot liquid soaking into his white shirt.
Oh come on! He had only ironed it this morning.
"I am so sorry, sir. Please forgive me; I wasn't looking where I was going!"
Hisashi blinks a couple times. Standing in front of him, stretching out a hand, is a pretty young woman with a round face and viridian hair tied back into a ponytail.
"That's alright," he responds, not trusting himself to say anything else, lest it damage his carefully put-together reputation.
He picks himself up, along with his dropped mug which is very fortunately unbreakable.
The woman (Hisashi really needs to get her name) drops into a deep bow, "Again, I am very sorry about… this."
"That's alright," Hisashi repeats with a laugh. The woman straightens up. "You've given me a good excuse to get out of here for the day, thanks." He gives her a small wink, to which she flushes a light pink.
"Okay, then." She glances down at the mess on the floor. "Oh! I should probably clean up that coffee."
Snatching a few sheets of tissue paper from the counter next to her, the woman bends down and begins to mop up the spillage. Hisashi takes a few too and joins her. The coffee spread rather far, what a waste.
Ah well, he got to meet this charming lady.
His tissues are unusable after just a few wipes of the floor so Hisashi stands up, throws them into the trash, and gets a few more. That's when he notices the book lying forgotten on the floor.
He gasps loudly at the title.
The woman gives him a concerned look. "Are you alright, sir?"
"The Princess Bride!" Hisashi exclaims, understandably excited as he hasn't seen that in goodness knows how long. He just about stops himself from saying 'Inconceivable!'
The woman's face brightens and she smiles. "I've been reading it a lot lately." A pause. "I take it you've read it?"
"One of my favourites!" He responds. "I love Inigo's line."
The woman laughs jovially, the coffee on the floor long forgotten. She deepens her voice and recites dramatically, "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya."
"You killed my father; prepare to die." They finish together and the woman giggles.
"Have you seen the old movie?"
"Have I? Of course!"
"It's so hard to get your hands on a good DVD of it," she groans, dropping her head. "Oh, I better finish cleaning that."
Hisashi and the woman wipe up the spilled coffee, wash their hands in the sink, and she gives him her number before Hisashi leaves the office building, choosing to take a walk back to the apartment he keeps for appearances instead of teleporting from a hidden alley as he would usually do.
It isn't until he's comfortable in sweatpants and a t-shirt emblazoned with a logo of some old rapper on his couch in his proper house that he checks his newest contact.
'Aizawa Inko'
A pretty name for a pretty woman.
Hisashi hasn't blushed in a long time.
Hisashi makes more of an effort to go to the Accounting Firm over the next few weeks. It only takes a couple of days before he runs into Inko again when they're both in the kitchen for a cup of coffee.
Inko smiles at him and they strike up a conversation, at which point Hisashi realises that he never told Inko his name.
Oops!
She, being the smart woman that she is, notices too.
"M-Midoriya Hisashi," he stutters, Inko's viridian hair at the forefront of his mind and so the first thing he could think of.
Their talk is cut short after one of Inko's friends pulls her away for a moment. Hisashi heads back up to his office, ready for another meeting.
And indeed, just the next day, Inko is in the kitchen with him, chatting enthusiastically about a pre-quirk era novel by the name of 'Red Queen'. Hisashi nods along, having never read the book, but happy to hear Inko talk about it anyway.
When Inko's friend attempts to get her back to work, Hisashi feels an unexplainable surge of annoyance.
Is he getting too attached?
…
Nah.
Over the next few months, Hisashi takes a well-earned (in his opinion) break from running the criminal underground to look after the companies he owns.
The accounting firm, of course, was at the top of his list.
Inko spent her breaks in the kitchen with him as they shared quotes and interests.
Safe to say, Hisashi had fallen. Hard.
Aizawa Inko was pretty, smart, shared his interests (other than being evil), and was constantly kind and compassionate.
So really, was it any surprise when Hisashi asked her out for dinner after about six months of coffee-break chats.
Inko had beamed and said, "I would love to, ."
He was, naturally, ecstatic.
And then he remembered.
He had never been on a date.
Oh fuuuuck.