Chapter Text
Cleithrophobia: The fear of being trapped, locked in, or unable to leave. Not to be confused with claustrophobia, which is the fear of small spaces.
Shinsou Hitoshi was a traitor.
Not just any traitor, but the one that U.A’s rumours spoke about.
While some might understand why he did what he did, he knew in the end it wouldn’t matter.
He knew that when he came clean, the look of betrayal that’d wash across the faces of those who had come to trust & care about him was going to hurt even more than the events that led up to his treachery.
He was going to admit to it soon, no matter how much dread filled him at the thought of seeing those looks.
There were some nights where he would contemplate going to the police to tell them all that he knew, all that had happened to him & all that he had done. There were days where he would be so close to telling Aizawa everything.
But he couldn’t just yet & there was an important reason for that. He had to save the silver haired girl from the Yakuza first. This was all for her.
The Shie Hassaikai had been using Hitoshi as their test subject for their quirk-killing serum for a long time now. They used the girl to make it & Hitoshi to test it.
They were told that Hitoshi had a dangerous quirk, that he was the perfect cursed child for Overhaul to test on.
It hadn’t always been that way, though.
Hitoshi had actually been sought out by his foster father, Tatsuya, for his quirk & had been moved halfway across the country when he was ten because of it.
The man wanted a child with a brainwashing quirk & while the rules were strict & life was hell, Tatsuya was a crook who invested a lot of money in having Hitoshi ruthlessly trained to strengthen his quirk to a point where it would be useful to him.
It was the first time someone wanted Hitoshi’s quirk. Nobody had ever wanted him before.
Tatsuya sold information to anyone who could afford to buy it & Hitoshi’s quirk would have been the perfect way to rake in all the more money. It would have been the perfect quirk to get people to tell Hitoshi their secrets, their plans, their weaknesses & Tatsuya could sell that information for profit.
But then something terrible happened. Something that completely changed Tatsuya’s course of action.
Hitoshi had tried to run away. The key word being tried.
Why? Because his quirk wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t strong enough.
No matter how hard his personal trainer, a scary lady he only knew as ‘Trigger’ trained him, no matter how far she pushed, no matter how hurt he got, in their eyes he wasn’t strong enough.
If he couldn’t get people to speak back to him after years of trying to strengthen his quirk, then what was the point?
They were going to get rid of him. He had overheard them say that there was no point in keeping him around if he wouldn’t be able to help their criminal operations. He had overheard them say that they couldn’t let anyone else find Hitoshi’s quirk & find how to strengthen it when they couldn’t.
With tears streaming down his face, Hitoshi had bolted out of the front door that day.
He had run as fast as his legs could carry him, despite having no shoes on or sense of direction. He had weaved through alleyways, climbed over fences, even with his foster mother & her son yelling at him as they chased him down.
He wasn’t even allowed to speak to them around the house. He wasn’t even allowed to know their names. But he should have known that Tatsuya would have sent them after him. He should have known that he wouldn’t have been able to get away.
That was the night everything changed. That was the night one hell ended & another began & Hitoshi was still waiting for it to end.
That was the night that Hitoshi had bumped straight into a boy a few years older than him. He had strange, purple like scarring all across his body & sort of looked as though he was being held together by staples.
Apology after desperate apology tumbled from his trembling lips as the boy crouched down to his level, hands flat on Hitoshi’s shoulders as though that would help stop his shaking.
The boy with the scars asked Hitoshi what was wrong, to which Hitoshi just… broke.
He wasn’t even so sure what had possessed him to speak, perhaps it was because nobody had ever asked him that question before. But in a voice that was broken & raspy with disuse, he had told the boy that his foster family were going to get rid of him because of his quirk not being strong enough.
He told the boy that he wouldn’t get into his head, that he wanted to be a hero, not a villain. He told him that he wanted to be strong. He wanted to be good.
He didn’t want to be thrown away.
The boy with the spiky black hair & staples holding his face together was the first person to believe that Hitoshi wouldn’t brainwash them. He was the first person who didn’t tense when talking to him.
The boy told him that he used to want to be a hero too, but then his father didn’t think he was good enough either. The boy told him that he got replaced.
Hitoshi didn’t want to be replaced. He didn’t want to be killed. He didn’t want to be gotten rid of just because he wasn’t up to standard.
No more than a few moments later, Hitoshi’s foster mother & her son rounded the corner, a choked sob leaving his mouth. Hands tightened on his shoulders as the boy told Hitoshi to never let them see him hurt, or else they could use it against him.
To this day, Hitoshi could still remember the heat of the blue flames that surrounded him as though it was yesterday. He could still remember the stench of burnt flesh, but he wasn’t the one who was burning. The flames surrounded him, but he was utterly safe.
The vibrant, angry flames protected him.
Blue flames dissipated & in their wake were two piles of ash.
The boy with the scars was nowhere to be seen when Tatsuya found Hitoshi standing in that alleyway. Hitoshi was horrified & shook to his very core when his foster father blamed him for the deaths of his family.
In a way, perhaps he was right; because if Hitoshi had never spoken, then they would still be alive. He wasn’t supposed to speak outside of the gym where his quirk training took place, but he had & that was what happened.
He had opened his mouth & people had died because of it.
That was the night that Tatsuya decided that Hitoshi’s quirk needed to be taken away instead.
That was the night that a thirteen year old, wide eyed & terrified Hitoshi had been taken to the strange gang who all wore various types of plague masks.
Hitoshi also wore a mask, but his was different. It wasn’t one of those strange beaked ones like the others wore. His was a black half-face mask that covered his nose & mouth, strapped tightly in place & locked at the back.
It was uncomfortable. The thick, plasticy-metal-like material it was made from rubbed at his nose & cheeks, the sharp edge cutting into just beneath his jaw where it was strapped tightly enough that it rendered his jaw completely immobile, teeth constantly clenched together.
Tatsuya & Trigger had told the leader of the beaked mask gang that the mask was a necessary precaution because Hitoshi could brainwash them into using their quirks if he spoke, leaving out the part that they had to respond to him for it to work. They told him how Hitoshi had brainwashed a villain into killing his family.
Even though he didn’t. Tatsuya told them that Hitoshi’s quirk was too dangerous. The leader of the gang told him that he’d cure him.
Hitoshi was thirteen years old when left with the Shie Hassaikai.
Being with the gang was how Hitoshi had met the little silver haired girl that had to have been half his age, perhaps younger.
Days began to blur together. Weeks felt like years. His sense of time had been stripped away because once he entered the Yakuza’s compound, he didn’t leave for a very long time. For a while, he didn’t even know how long he had been in there for, all he knew was that it was long enough for him to begin to forget what outside was like.
Each day was the same while with the Shie Hassaikai.
Hitoshi would be taken to a strange room with overhead glass windows where Overhaul would watch what would happen.
Overhaul never came close after their first meeting & thinking about it, there had only been two instances where Hitoshi had been face to face with him without there being a glass wall between them.
Strapped down to a chair by his wrists & ankles, Hitoshi would be injected with an unknown serum. Then, one of the beak-masked men would unlock Hitoshi’s mask, only taking it off once a poor, unsuspecting soul was dragged into the room.
Hitoshi would be told by Overhaul through an overhead speaker to use his quirk. Except he never could. In the beginning, for a solid month straight, all Hitoshi remembered was being extremely sick every day due to whatever they injected him with that was nullifying his quirk.
Some days his quirk would only be gone for an hour, other days it would be gone for the whole day.
Hitoshi was made to keep using his quirk no matter how unwell he felt, even if he could barely talk to the person he was trying to brainwash.
In a lot of ways, it was similar to how Trigger used to train him.
He was made to try over & over to the point of migraines & nosebleeds. Except the difference was that Trigger could force Hitoshi’s quirk to stay active, force his hold on the others to stay. Whereas here, his ability had been stripped away from him.
He’d keep trying until it worked & the masked people would time how long his quirk was gone for.
As the days passed, the time in which his quirk was gone was gradually getting bigger, indicating whatever drug they were pumping him with was getting stronger.
There were some days when Trigger would show. Those days were the worst.
She had a hand in creating a quirk enhancing drug that was named after her. The Yakuza began to traffic it so they could afford to fund their experiments.
When Trigger was there & Hitoshi’s quirk had been gone for a few hours, he’d be dosed up on her special fucking drug & then would be ordered to do the same thing as always. Try to brainwash someone.
The masked people wanted to see if the quirk enhancing drug could counteract the drug that had taken his quirk away. If it did, then their serum had a loophole & would be rendered pointless.
They wanted to take quirks away for good.
Hitoshi had overheard them say that they needed to be the only ones who held the cure for their quirk-killer serum. He had overheard Overhaul call quirks a disease & the silver haired girl the cure.
The days with Trigger & her drug would result in migraines so severe that even just the synthetic overhead lighting would cause his eyes water. His speech would slur, his nose would bleed & once or twice, his tears would run red too. That always scared him the most.
Hitoshi was barely able to stand when he was removed from the chair. His bloody nose would only be wiped once before the mask that kept his mouth shut was locked back into place. He would be dragged out of the lab & thrown into a room with glass walls & a large, metal door until he had enough energy for the process to be repeated.
The only tiny breaks in the routine were when the mask would be taken off so he could eat & drink enough to stay alive.
The glass room was small, only having enough space for a bed, sink & toilet.
Outside of it was a corridor that acted as a divider between his room & the room opposite.
That room had the same furniture that his did, but it also had a small table, chair & few other luxuries. There were a few books, a few extra blankets & a rugged old bear plushie.
That room belonged to the little silver haired girl.
Hitoshi didn’t know her name. She didn’t know his. Despite not knowing one another, every time Hitoshi was shoved into his room, the door getting bolted shut behind him, the girl would press her hands up against the glass & watch him with wide, terrified eyes.
Each day Hitoshi was too tired to do much else other than be slumped in the corner of the room closest to the front wall in the small gap between the end of his bed & the glass. He’d have his knees drawn to his chest, hugging them.
Sometimes he would stare off at nothing, other times his tired eyes would start to droop & he’d begin to doze off, only to be snapped back awake when his head thunked against his knees.
It didn’t take long before he & the little girl that was always wrapped in bandages began to communicate.
It started on his… fifth? Day there. She had held up a piece of paper against the glass wall of her room, showing Hitoshi the messy scribble of what was probably supposed to be a cat. It was mostly just a blob with two uneven & pointed triangles poking out the top of its head.
It was enough to make him smile, even if she couldn’t see it from behind the mask.
Hitoshi had pulled his jacket from where it was awkwardly tucked around him so he could hold up the bottom of it where the zipper had a stupid, shittily made plastic red lucky-cat charm connected to it.
The girl’s eyes widened & she scrabbled to get one of her books, holding a page up to show Hitoshi a vibrant red apple picture. He could only assume she was showing him that they matched in colour.
While he knew sign language & tried to use it to speak, the girl was too young to properly understand, so they communicated through simplified hand gestures instead. In a way, they sort of made their own language.
The girl sometimes used facial expressions to help convey what she was trying to say, but no matter what she tried, she always looked absolutely terrified. It was almost like looking into some sort of fucked up mirror. The fear on her face always matched exactly how Hitoshi felt. He was just better at hiding it.
Some days she would use shaky, barely coherent drawings to talk instead, pressing the paper up against the glass for Hitoshi to see.
They figured out gestures & signals to ask if the other was okay. They would ask every single day, even if they both knew that the other was lying when they said that they were fine. Outside of those little lies, they genuinely did tell one another if things were particularly worse than usual, even if it went against what the boy with the scars had told him.
Don’t ever let them see you hurt.
Some days he failed.
Some days tears would run down his cheeks from where he sat in the corner with his forehead resting against the cool glass, it being the only source of physical comfort he could get.
Some days Hitoshi would sit there trying to pry his mask off, trying to wedge a finger beneath where the sharp edge connected beneath his jaw as his chest rose & fell heavily to the point of almost hyperventilating.
The girl opposite would help. It didn’t always work, but some days it did. She’d use hand signals to get him to copy her breathing. He could see the way her whole body would move as she drew a huge breath in, counting to five on her fingers before exhaling. Hitoshi would mimic it & despite the dizziness from going from hyperventilating to deep breaths, he would always feel better afterwards.
Some days he felt so trapped in that tiny glass room with sticky, drying blood beneath the mask that he couldn’t get off.
Some days he really, really wasn’t okay & the only witness to his breakdowns was the broken little girl opposite.
The other cursed child. That’s all they were.
So while he would never let the gang see him hurt if he could help it, the girl opposite was the exception, because she was hurting too.
Every evening before her bedtime, Hitoshi would sign to her ‘I’ll get you out’.
He could never tell if she understood what he was saying given she didn’t know proper sign language, but it was a promise he was going to keep.
The only thing that terrified him about those words was that depending on whether they were a promise or a lie, they were the difference between being a hero or a villain.
For a while, he didn’t know how he was going to get her out, but then Tatsuya came back.
Just when Hitoshi had been convinced he would never escape long enough to appreciate fresh air again, just when he thought he wouldn’t be able to take a step without a man in a bird mask watching his every move, his handler, Tengai, led him to the main floor of the compound rather than down to the testing rooms.
Turns out Hitoshi had been in the compound for two years.
Hitoshi’s heart shattered into a thousand irreparable tiny little pieces upon learning why Tatsuya had come for him. He was going to have Hitoshi be a villain.
According to the man, the plan was simple.
He said that if Hitoshi wanted to be a hero so badly, then he was going to be just that. Except it would all be fake.
This was Hitoshi’s last chance at redemption, his last chance at being useful to Tatsuya, to make up for all of the money he had wasted on training him prior to the Shie Hassaikai.
Hitoshi was going to enroll into U.A now he was old enough. He was going to put his quirk to use & get onto the hero course.
While they thought they would be training him to become a hero, Hitoshi was to find out as much information as possible about the pros that worked there as he could. He was to find out their weaknesses, their schedules, their familial ties, their routines & relay everything he learnt back to Tatsuya.
In return for his cooperation, Tatsuya would keep him alive.
Hitoshi would still be sent back to the gang on the weekends for the same testing until they perfected their quirk-killing serum, but Tatsuya also promised he’d get to keep his quirk so he could stay undercover at U.A. Just as long as the intel he gathered was useful.
Hitoshi, knowing that he was that little girl’s only chance of escaping, agreed.
If he could get in & out of the compound, then he could get her out. If he was free from prying eyes while at the hero school, then that’d give him time to plan a way to break her out. He just had to figure out how to get around Overhaul.
He knew damn well no heroes were going to save them.
No heroes came to save him. Nobody came when Tatsuya introduced a ten year old Hitoshi to Trigger. Nobody came when day in, day out, Trigger would take him to a gym-like building to train him to become stronger & useful.
Nobody came when Trigger would force his quirk to stay activated as though she could brute force it to work as he begged for the person under his control to speak back.
Nobody came when Trigger had Hitoshi fighting people twice his age & height, who had weapons when he didn’t & was told to brainwash them into stopping before they could hurt him.
Nobody came to patch up his wounds. He had to do that all on his own.
He was ten years old when he decided that no heroes were going to save him & he was going to have to save himself.
No hero was going to take him or the girl from the Shie Hassaikai hell. He’d have to do that all on his own too.
Heroes were supposed to save people who were afraid.
So Hitoshi decided that if he was going to become a villain by being a spy, then it would be worth it if he could be a hero to that little girl. That would be enough.
Someone once wrote, ‘Ghosts don’t haunt people, their memories do’.
So for a very long time, it was safe to say that the boy with the unruly purple hair & the ever tired eyes was a house being perpetually haunted by the ghosts of his past.
* * *
When Hitoshi’s back slammed down into the crash mat, effectively knocking the air out of his lungs even with the way his arm was pulled just enough to slow his descent, a rugged voice from above him muttered, “You’re not focused. Again.”
Drawing in shaky, deep breaths, purple eyes fluttered open from where they had momentarily closed, locking onto ever tired black ones. Aizawa stood over him, a look of scrutiny just barely shifting his features from their ever tired looking expression.
After their brief staring stand-off, Aizawa extended a hand which Hitoshi gladly took, helping to yank him up to his feet. They had been sparring for a good forty minutes by that point & that was the fourth time that Hitoshi had been knocked off of his feet so easily.
They had been meeting up in the gym twice, sometimes three times a week, ever since the Sports Festival.
The Sports Festival that Hitoshi had told Tatsuya about. He had listed off all the heroes that were going to be at the festival, which meant less would be on the streets.
All Might had been there, Endeavour too.
Both the number one & number two heroes distracted? It was the perfect time for criminal activity.
Endeavour was known to patrol around Hosu City & with him out of the way, the city was attacked. Hitoshi wasn’t surprised, but guilt began to settle into his gut when he heard about the people that had been injured.
The pro hero Ingenium had been injured so severely that he wouldn’t be able to return to his career as a hero. He was Aizawa’s close friend.
That was Hitoshi’s fault.
Then a few students from Aizawa’s class had got injured during their internships, because one of them had interned in Hosu City after what had happened to Ingenium & got involved with Stain.
It was all the butterfly effect & it was Hitoshi’s fault.
He was the butterfly that would always cause the tornado.
“Again.” Hitoshi murmured quietly, taking a step back to realign his stance from where he was standing on the crash mat. He didn’t say much during their sessions together, mostly opting for single words, but Aizawa didn’t seem to mind.
Training with Aizawa was so very different from what he & Trigger had done when he was younger that the difference was almost enough to give him whiplash.
There was a lot more time to breathe when with his mentor now, but Hitoshi still didn’t know how to ask for a break when his body was getting too tired. That wasn’t something that had ever been an option before. When he was younger & in the gym with Trigger, he couldn’t just ask his opponent to stop, he’d have to make them. He couldn’t take a break, he had to earn it.
So there was still a habit of pushing himself as far as he possibly could for fear of disappointment if he didn’t that he couldn’t quite shake.
His tutor watched with that same scrutinizing look as Hitoshi demanded for them to go again, it was a look that said he knew damn well that the result would end the same & was deciding whether or not he wanted to tell Hitoshi that. It was a look that told him Aizawa wanted to see if he would know his limits & call it a day.
The teen drew in calm breaths, trying to remember everything that Aizawa had taken the effort to teach him so far; the little things that had never been taught by Trigger.
Such as how to keep his centre of gravity. He focused on his footing like they had been practicing, as well as keeping his posture right so when Aizawa did come at him, he wouldn’t be completely thrown off guard.
“Clear your mind, Shinsou. A clear mind is a logical one. The less you think about other things, the easier it’ll be to catch your mistakes before they happen. Draw in a deep breath, focus on your footing. Ready?”
“Yes.”
To be honest, he wasn’t ready. He never really was, but he didn’t say that.
From the moment Aizawa had found him on the verge of a panic attack after the Sports Fest & offered to take him under his wing, Hitoshi hadn’t been ready.
Not when he was training with a man who he had put in harm’s way at the U.S.J.
Hitoshi knew villains were going to attack, yet he didn’t say a damn word to anyone who could have prevented it. Because he stayed quiet, Aizawa was nearly killed.
But Aizawa told Hitoshi that with his help with training & if he worked hard enough, then he would personally vouch for his case & try to help move him to the hero course.
How could Hitoshi say no?
Tatsuya had no clue that he was in General Studies. He had lied straight to the man’s face for fear of being considered useless if he found out that he wasn’t on the hero course. Aizawa was Hitoshi’s chance of Tatsuya never finding out that he lied.
He knew the second he said yes that he was walking on thin ice.
He promised himself that he wouldn’t get close to anybody.
He promised he wouldn’t make any friends, he wouldn’t ask for help. He had to keep collateral damage to a minimum.
He promised he’d focus on school work, even if he was really dragging behind due to the years of school he missed after being taken out of education when he was ten.
He promised he would put on the front of a student that was trying his best to improve his grades & be the best he could be so as to not raise suspicion as he snooped around to gain information.
Information that resulted in people being hurt.
Eraserhead was hurt because of him. His hero. The man that became his mentor.
Eraserhead, the hero that had single handedly put a huge dent in the trafficking of Trigger’s quirk enhancing drug. He only knew that because prior to being in the Shie Hassaikai’s compound, he had heard her be very vocal about the loss of profits because of Eraserhead & he knew damn well she still had a grudge.
Ever since then, Hitoshi had decided that if he had to choose a favourite, it’d be Eraser.
That admiration only amplified when he learnt how the hero became a pro. Battling against all the odds that were stacked against him due to the nature of his quirk. That he was a hero despite gaining almost no recognition for it.
Aizawa hated the media, he wasn’t interested in praise or glory or money. He wanted to save people alongside training kids to be the next generation of pros.
In Hitoshi’s mind, if one were to search up the definition of altruistic, it’d just have Aizawa’s name written beneath it.
Aizawa was the hero that Hitoshi had always wished upon a star would come to save him when he was a little kid.
He knew he should have said no when Aizawa offered. It was too dangerous. While it came with the heightened chances of getting into the hero course, it also came with the inevitability of growing closer to Aizawa & that could be used against him.
He’d have to tell Tatsuya everything he was learning about the hero. No doubt Trigger would pay good money to get her hands on that sort of information so she could get her revenge on him.
He knew he should have said no.
But Hitoshi just couldn’t.
Maybe he was a coward, too afraid to face Tatsuya.
Or maybe it was the ache in his chest. Aizawa’s offering was something that Hitoshi knew he didn’t deserve, not with his ulterior motive of being in U.A. But it was something that he craved with all that he had.
He craved so desperately to be good, to escape, to help those in need & Aizawa saw that potential in him. That had to count for something. Right?
He craved to have a sense of familiarity that didn’t come hand in hand with a mask that cut into his jaw & drugs that took his ability away.
It was such a strong desperation that had wrapped itself around the very core of his existence, Hitoshi couldn’t snuff it out no matter how much he tried.
He hated with all that he had that he was only even at U.A to gain information. He hated that he was out here with fresh air in his lungs & days without being a lab rat while the silver haired girl was still trapped in the compound.
He hated that he wasn’t strong enough to save her yet. Not with the Shie Hassaikai in his way. Not with what Overhaul could do.
Hitoshi just hoped that when Tatsuya forced him to spill all he would inevitably learn about Aizawa, that the training the hero was helping him with would be enough to aid in his end goal of saving the girl.
Hitoshi’s back collided with the crash mat again.
Make that five times in the past forty minutes.
Frustrated at himself, Hitoshi’s hands came up to scrub at his face, being cautious as to not rub at where the concealer covered the scars across his nose & cheek from his mask.
He swallowed to dampen his throat, leaving his hands over his face as he focused on his breathing, squeezing his eyes shut.
His body was crying at him to take a breather & despite his brain trying to convince him that he shouldn’t let his guard down, he ignored it knowing that Aizawa wouldn’t mind.
Aizawa actively paused their sparring sessions so Hitoshi could not only take a moment to breathe, but to drink some water too.
He never forced Hitoshi to the point of passing out from exhaustion. He never threw him into a fight with no warning with complete strangers. No, instead Aizawa always made sure they had the gym to themselves & actually trained him in self defence & hand-to-hand combat.
Without Hitoshi even completely realising it, with each session that passed, Aizawa was carefully undoing everything that Hitoshi had known prior & was reconstructing it in a way that would be beneficial to becoming a hero.
He taught Hitoshi ways to defend himself against an attacker with a knife, without ever using a weapon that could actually cause harm. He never came at him with a knife & no warning. He never waited until Hitoshi’s guard was down. He never used cheap shots by using Hitoshi’s inexperience against him.
Not just that, but he also went through the painstakingly long process of teaching him how to use a capture weapon too.
Strangest of all? He always dropped these subtle hints that Hitoshi could talk.
He told him it was okay to speak, to ask questions, to ask for a break if he needed one. He told him that it was okay to just be.
That wasn’t something Hitoshi could quite wrap his head around.
“Shinsou?”
Some days, Hitoshi even earnt the subtlest of smiles when he did something right. He had never received those prior to Aizawa taking him under his wing.
“Shinsou?”
While Hitoshi was constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for Aizawa to snap, waiting for… something, anything, the routine they had built up developed into that familiarity that Hitoshi had craved.
He was slipping.
At some point, Hitoshi began to recognise that his front of being a student trying their best wasn’t really a front anymore. It wasn’t an act.
His frustrations at the Sports Festival were not an act. His hope at being moved to the hero course wasn’t an act.
This was what he actually wanted & he hadn’t even realised it until it was too late.
He didn’t just want to be there to get closer to the pros & relay the intel back to Tatsuya. He genuinely wanted to be a hero. He wanted to save people with his quirk, not hurt them.
He wanted to save more than just the silver haired girl.
He was slipping, slipping, slipping & like an idiot, Hitoshi did nothing to try to stop it from happening.
Perhaps he was just trying to soak up as much of this strange & foreign place he had been thrown into while he still could. The summer break was coming up in a few days & Hitoshi didn’t know if he was going to be able to return to U.A once the vacation days were over. He’d be back with the Yakuza while the break was happening. Back in his glass room.
What if he never made it out of their compound again?
If he didn’t get some solid & useful information to feed back to Tatsuya soon, he knew damn well that his luck would run out.
Aizawa was right. He wasn’t focused. Not in the slightest.
“Hitoshi?”
A gentle hand on his shoulder snapped Hitoshi out of his spiraling thoughts with a violent flinch.
His hands dropped from his face & he rolled out of the way & up onto his feet in a fluid motion where he could drop into a defensive stance, momentarily completely forgetting that he was with Aizawa & not Trigger or the bird masked men.
Aizawa slowly stood to his full height from where he had been crouched, fixing him with an unreadable look as though he was picking Hitoshi apart from the inside out. In turn, Hitoshi was mindful to keep his carefully crafted bored expression in place.
“We’re done for the day.” Aizawa spoke, being the first to break their momentary staring & made his way over to collect his gear. Hitoshi jogged in the opposite direction towards the changing rooms to change back into his uniform as quickly as he could.
Once he was done, just like always, Aizawa was waiting for him at the gym’s doors & when he saw Hitoshi, he pulled the door open & waited for him to catch up.
No comment was made about Hitoshi’s sudden reaction to being touched.
Hitoshi shook his head as though he could shake the tangled mess that was his brain into one coherent string of thoughts instead. He jogged over to catch up with his mentor, nodding in thanks for him holding the door as they made their way out of the gym & across campus.
He stuffed his hands into his pant’s pockets as he trailed right behind Aizawa, expecting this to be the part where the man would bring up that Hitoshi’s head was clouded & would ask him if there was something he needed to talk about because he wasn’t 100% focused.
Every time Hitoshi would shake his head & mumble some excuse about having a lot of homework to catch up on or some other lie that rolled off his tongue a little too easily.
With every time that question was asked, Hitoshi’s resolve & dedication to refusing to allow anyone to see him hurt crumbled just a little bit more. The apathetic look he tried to keep plastered on his face like the mask he was forced to wear when with the Yakuza was beginning to fray at the seams.
With every ‘Shinsou, are you sure there’s nothing wrong?’ , the guilt in his stomach & the tightness in his chest would deepen just a little bit more.
He knew even when he didn’t say a word, Aizawa could read him like a book.
There were times when he hadn’t eaten all day & somehow Aizawa could just tell, resulting in him making a habit of bringing extra protein pouches so Hitoshi wouldn’t be training on an empty stomach.
There were times when Hitoshi’s insomnia was kicking his ass more than usual & Aizawa would cut their sessions short by ten or twenty minutes. He knew full & well that if he didn’t, then Hitoshi would push himself to the point of passing out from exhaustion.
Although he had yet to decide if that was such a bad thing. At least then he’d get some rest.
Aizawa was nothing if not observant, but Hitoshi didn’t realise just how much attention the man paid. He was becoming more painfully aware & he knew it’d only be a matter of time before the hero would start to get suspicious of his behaviour if he wasn’t careful.
Right as his mentor looked as though he was about to ask that stupid question, right as Hitoshi contemplated whether it was worth lying for the thousandth time, they were interrupted by the green haired boy he had fought during the Sports Festival.
Midoriya, if he remembered correctly.
“Sensei! I’m sorry to interrupt, oh hi Shinsou! How are you doing?” Midoriya’s voice was chirpy & far too happy. He was always so enthusiastic, no matter how much of a cold shoulder Hitoshi had tried to give him. If anything, it was almost like the boy tried even harder to get through to him.
It was infuriating.
Hitoshi just silently stared at Midoriya, hoping he’d get the point. Or at the very least, get uncomfortable by his silence & say what he came to say instead.
It only took a few moments before Aizawa fixed Hitoshi with a look, but quickly realised that his silence wasn’t going to budge no matter how much he subtly tried to drop hints that he could speak outside of his very little words in the gym. That it’d be good to try to get to know the other kids in the hero course given he was going to help him get onto it.
With a quiet sigh, the hero looked back to their guest as he muttered, “What do you want, Midoriya?”
“Oh! Oh right, I just wanted to double check that everything’s still a-go for the training camp! My mom seriously worries too much,” Midoriya’s sentence was cut off with a nervous laugh as his scarred hand came up to rub at the back of his neck awkwardly. “Ever since Hosu, she’s real nervous about me being away for long, y’know?”
Hitoshi’s head ticked to the side slightly as he studied those scars. He saw them at the Sports Fest briefly. He saw the way the boy would damage himself with his quirk as though he didn’t fully understand its power. As if it wasn’t made for him.
It reminded him of the boy with the strange scars & staples. The way his body looked like it didn’t like his quirk.
Hitoshi wondered if he’d ever be able to walk around in short sleeves as confidently as they did.
He was always so careful to be sure that his school clothes covered the majority of his body. If anyone saw the mess of scars that lay beneath, too many questions would be asked that would result in answers he didn’t know how to give.
He wondered what it felt like not having to hide. Not having to pretend.
“Everything is still going to plan. If it eases her mind some, then you could tell her that I’ll be there along with Vlad & four other pro heroes. Before you ask, no, I can’t tell you who they are. It’s a surprise. No, I can’t tell you where it’s being held. Again, it’s a surprise.”
Six pros in one place.
Now that… That could save him from never leaving his glass box of a room. That could be enough to convince Tatsuya that he was capable of being a spy & would be enough to be sure he came back after summer break. Just as long as he could find out where they’re going.
That guilt from earlier began to gnaw at his insides as he watched the way Midoriya’s face lit up at the comment about the pros. It swirled around his gut, eating away at his stomach until it could escape & become all consuming.
Was he really going to put Class 1-A in danger? Again?
Aizawa in danger? Again?
Hitoshi tried to argue with himself that these kids were a strong bunch, that they’d be able to handle themselves if he were to go by what he had seen at the Sports Fest & heard about the U.S.J.
They’d fought villains before. They’d be okay, right?
Hitoshi grit his teeth together enough for his jaw to ache. This was for the little girl.
He couldn’t save her if he was dead. He couldn’t save her if he was just as trapped as she was.
He had to do this. He had to put them in danger. For her sake. These kids could defend themselves, that little girl couldn’t.
“Sweet, thanks! I’ll let her know. Shinsou, do you have any plans for the summer?” The mention of his name had Hitoshi snapping out of his thoughts yet again. He really needed to stop zoning out like that. It was going to get him killed. Literally.
He looked at the bright green, wide eyes that were looking at him. Paired with that ever present smile, Hitoshi was beginning to feel guilty over being such a prick to this kid.
Midoriya really was dedicated to trying to befriend anybody he could, huh? It was weird.
Just when the silence dragged on for a little too long, Aizawa ever so subtly bumped his shoulder against Hitoshi’s as if to prompt him to speak.
“Oh, uhm…”
Lie. You can’t exactly tell them that you’re going to become the Yakuza’s lab rat. Lie, Hitoshi. Lie! Quickly!
“I’m going… Going to visit my little sister.”
Well, it wasn’t exactly the truth, but it wasn’t a complete lie either.
He was going to visit the silver haired girl. They just were not siblings by blood, if anything, the only thing that tied them together was the shared trauma. He didn’t even know her name. But he couldn’t exactly tell them that.
All he knew was that when he got her out, he was never letting her out of his sight. He was going to keep her safe for as long as he could.
By the looks on both Aizawa’s & Midoriya’s faces, he said something right.