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All of Fuyumi’s students called her Fuyumi-san. Never, ever Todoroki-san. She was happy about that. Todoroki-san was her father.
She cared about her students. They were so young, so fragile, and she’d been entrusted with their care and wellbeing. It was a duty she did not intend to ever neglect.
Every child was precious.
Every child deserved to have someone watching over them.
“Are we done with our projects?” she asked gently, clapping her hands to call the room’s attention to her. She never yelled at her students. She was of the opinion that it was never necessary to yell at a child. “Anyone need more work time?”
There was a general sound of agreement from the tables. Fuyumi’s classroom was arranged with a number of round tables ringed by seats, so her children could cooperate and talk while they worked. Strict rows and columns of desks might work well enough for middle and high school, but kids… needed a chance to be children.
“Pile them up at the tables, then, and then you can go out to recess- neatly, alright, yes, that’s better,” she said with a smile as she glanced at the only somewhat messy piles. “You’re free to go. Don’t run in the hallways!”
Her students vacated the room in a giggling rush, and Fuyumi stood a moment, looking fondly after them, before circling around the tables and collecting the piles of paper into a single stack, which she hefted in her hands. There were twenty-one students in her class, seven to a table.
The assignment was a minor writing project, meant to help the children practice their kana. What are your hopes for your future? Fuyumi liked assigning questions like that, the sort of abstract ones that made them think in ways they might not be used to. And children always had interesting answers for questions like that.
She shuffled through the papers as she walked back to her desk, glancing out the window to where her students were now flooding out onto the playground. She sat down to grade them, only glimpsing a few lines as she glanced through and checked each one off for completion with a star sticker.
I want to be a scientist and discover things.
I hope I get married!!
I want to have a million dogs.
I want to travel around the world.
I hope dinosaurs come back because I wanna ride a dinosaur.
I want to be famous!
I hope my mom gets happier.
Fuyumi blinked, the words jolting her uncomfortably and wiping the bemused smile off of her face. Something familiar and heavy had already begun sinking in her chest as she went back and read the paper more thoroughly, from the top. It was written by one of her quieter students, she noticed. Little Sugimoto Reiji. He was a bookish sort, and a better writer than many of his peers, which rendered his assignment horribly clear and legible.
I hope my mom gets happier. She’s really nice but she cries all the time and I want her to be happier and not hurt so bad. I want my dad to go away he’s mean and he makes Mom sad.
When I get older I want to be a policeman. My quirk isn’t good enough to be a hero but I still want to help people. When I do I’m gonna help my mom.
It could have been a letter from Fuyumi Todoroki, age six. There was something sick and angry bubbling up in her chest, and she pressed a hand to her mouth against a sudden upwell of nausea.
The children filed back into the classroom before long, calmer now that they’d worked out their surplus energy on the jungle gym, and Fuyumi hastily regathered her composure and got her notes for the rest of the day in order, shuffling the paper off to the side of her desk.
For the rest of the day, it sat there, flat and accusatory, seeming to glare at her out of the corner of her eye. For her part, she watched Reiji carefully as they ran through the afternoon weekday song and did some basic addition and subtraction. She noticed the way he kept his shoulders close and tight, defensive. Tried to remember if she’d ever seen him not wearing long sleeves.
She could taste acid in her mouth. The pieces were there. She knew this story. She’d lived it. When she blinked, for half a heartbeat she could see another little boy in long sleeves, this one with red hair and blue eyes.
At the end of the day, the children’s parents came to pick them up. When Reiji’s father stepped into the room, when he laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder and Reiji very carefully did not flinch away, Fuyumi had an abrupt and overwhelming urge to grab the heavy binder that held her teaching plan off of her desk and deck him across the face with it.
Her resolve was stronger than that, and her smile didn’t flicker as she watched the children trail out of the room, as she made meaningless small talk with a few of the parents and talked with Ena’s mother about her daughter’s progress in reading.
She waited until the last stragglers were gone before her smile dropped away, and she made a beeline to the phone on her desk. She only hesitated a moment before dialing the number, and fidgeted anxiously with one of the pencils on her desk while it rang dully in her ear.
“This is the Endeavor Hero Agency, how may I help you?” the cheerful voice of her father’s secretary answered.
“Hello, Aiko,” Fuyumi said. “It’s Fuyumi. Can you put me through to my father, please? It’s important.”
“Oh! Of course, Todoroki-san. Won’t be a moment,” Aiko answered brightly. A moment later there was a click as the call shifted lines, and her father’s voice was in her ear.
“Fuyumi! I didn’t expect to hear from you.”
“I’m sorry for interrupting you at work,” Fuyumi said, a borderline instinctive reaction. Growing up, she had gotten good at apologizing away any perceived slight, both for her own sake and when her brothers were too proud to do so. It was a survival skill. “I need your help.”
She could hear him straighten in his chair on the other end of the line. “What’s wrong? Has there been a villain attack?”
“No, no, nothing like that,” Fuyumi said hastily. “Listen. You have access to the police records, right?”
“I do.”
“I need you to look up…” she paused, grabbed the book of parent contact information with her free hand and hastily flipped through it until she found the name she was looking for. “Sugimoto Jun.”
“Fuyumi,” he said warningly, “I’m not supposed to do that unless it’s part of an investigation.”
She bit her lip. “Does ‘suspected of a crime’ work?”
“What crime?”
She hesitated, but only for a heartbeat. “Child abuse. Spousal abuse. Potential neglect.”
The silence on the other end of the line was deafening. When her father spoke again, his words were slow and cautious. “Fuyumi, I-”
She cut him off. “Please. You say you want to be better, right? That you want to do better? This is the way. This is how you start.”
There was a pause.
Then there was the sound of a keyboard rattling, and she nearly slumped in her seat in relief. It was easy to forget until it was happening just how frightening talking to her father still was. Even if she knew he wouldn’t hurt her. Even if she knew he couldn’t- she was on the other side of the city. But some things didn’t obey logic.
After what felt like a long time, her father spoke. “The police have been called to his home for ‘noise disturbance’ twice in the past,” he said. “And he had his license suspended for driving under the influence last year.”
Fuyumi nodded, even though he couldn’t see her. It was the confirmation she needed. It fit so neatly with all the other pieces in place in her head.
Noise disturbance, she thought. Yelling? Fighting? Screaming? Crying? Breaking? What had it been?
“Alright,” she said. “Thank you. That’s what I needed. If you’ll excuse me now, I need to call the police.”
She was already moving the phone away from her ear when her father said, “Fuyumi?”
“What?”
A pause. “I’m proud of you. Thank you.”
She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know if her father had ever told her anything like that before in her life.
“I’ll see you at home,” she said quietly, and hung up.
She sat, for just a moment, staring at the paper, still lying on the edge of her desk.
Then she picked the phone back up again, and called the police.
The next day, as Fuyumi was handing out the writing assignments from the day before back with their star stickers, Reiji’s mother came to pick him up. She had dark hair, but if not for that she could have been Todoroki Rei fifteen years ago. The darting eyes and submissive, frightened posture were the same, as was the soft smile she broke into when she saw her son. Reiji was smiling too, had been smiling all day. Fuyumi didn’t know if she’d ever seen him so happy before.
“Sugimoto-san,” Fuyumi said, handing her Reiji’s paper, “you might want to read this. Your son wrote it yesterday.”
She watched as the woman read, saw the realization dawning on her face. She looked down at her son, who shuffled his feet shyly but couldn’t quite hold back his timid, triumphant smile.
“If there’s anything I can ever help you and your son with, please, let me know,” Fuyumi said. “I mean it.”
“Thank you,” the woman said, and when they made eye contact Fuyumi could see light dawning in her eyes. “Thank you.”