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His bedroom door closes behind him. At the last second, he’s able to stop himself from slamming it—his mom is napping and has a late shift later, that’s not fair—but it still closes hard enough to make a poster on the wall sway. Hitoshi’s hand closes around the nearest object he can find. It’s a shitty tourist snow globe from some place he’s never been, bought for him by either his aunt or his grandma. Who cares.
He throws it as hard as he can at the wall.
It hits true, because there’s no way it could miss. It shatters with a crash that would be satisfying if Hitoshi could imagine ever enjoying anything ever again. The glass hits the floor in musical shards and the liquid—it’s not just water, it’s too viscous for that, what even gets put into a snow globe?—spreads a dark stain over his carpet.
Who cares.
Hitoshi feels the words like his heartbeat, and the lie in each syllable. Who cares, who cares, who cares. Hitoshi cares. He wishes he didn’t care. He cares too fucking much.
His jaw hurts from how hard his teeth are clenching.
It shouldn’t bother him anymore, all the bullshit people say. Most of the time, it doesn’t. There’s only so many times you can hear something before it goes numb, and he’s heard it all before. Evil quirk and future villain and danger to everyone. Get some new fucking material, is what he says. At least try to be original.
He hasn’t flinched from being called a villain since his first year in middle school. So it doesn’t matter. Who cares. Who cares.
It’s just that—
That—
It’s just that Wakana is his friend. They met in debate club, and she’s funny, and they did a history project together and got a perfect score. It’s just that Wakana has never said anything about his Quirk before. It hasn’t been something that’s came up.
Hitoshi knows that she must know about it, because everyone knows about it. Everyone in the whole school knows about the shitty active threat on the tip on his tongue. He’s never going to escape it.
But Wakana didn’t seem to care.
Until today. Until they’re joking on the walk to the bus, ribbing each other back and forth, and Hitoshi says something—he doesn’t even really remember what, it’s something stupid and hyperbolic, like “Oh, yeah, or you could go jump in a lake about it.”
And Wakana had flinched as if he’d struck her.
He’d stopped in his tracks. He’d stared at her.
They’ve never talked about it. Her shoulders are up by her ears, and she looks…well. She looks scared.
Of him.
As soon as he processes it, Hitoshi starts walking away.
Behind him, he hears her call his name. “Wait, Hitoshi—”
He doesn’t turn around. He doesn’t say anything at all. He's not planning on talking to her again.
Now, he watches the liquid not-water from the snow globe spread out across the carpet. Red clouds the edge of his vision, venom in his pulse.
Who needs her. Who needs anyone. Who needs friends. Who cares, who cares, who cares.
If Hitoshi could change two things about himself, the second thing would be to make himself care less.
The first thing would be to swap his Quirk for the ability to breathe underwater, or know the PH balance of something by touching it, or tap into the emotions of cats. Anything else. Anything but something that made people flinch whenever he opened his mouth.
He’s so sick of people being afraid of him.
Hitoshi wishes he could throw something else, but also the sight of the broken pieces on the ground is making him sick.
“‘Toshi?” he hears his mother call, sleep thick in her voice. “Are you okay? Did something break?”
“No, Mom,” he lies. “Everything is fine.”
He’s going to get into UA. He’s going to get into the hero course. He’s going to be the best fucking hero anyone has every seen.
He's going to show all of them.
And then no one will ever flinch from him ever again.