Chapter Text
Spring is Shouto’s favourite time of the year. He knows he’s lucky because his quirk means that he doesn’t get cold in the winter or hot in the summer, but all his friends do and they complain a lot – especially Bakugou – whereas in spring everyone always seems happy. And Fuyumi once told him spring is a time for new beginnings. Shouto likes that, too. He likes the idea of new beginnings.
In the spring after Shouto turns eighteen years old, the spring that he’s due to graduate from UA, new beginnings seem like they’re everywhere. Even so, Shouto is a little nervous. He doesn’t know exactly how friendships work when you’re not living in the same space all the time. He’s not sure if he wants to go work for his dad after graduation even though the old man sends him a text asking for his decision at least once a day. He knows things are going to change a lot, but for the first time in his life, he has things that he doesn’t want to change.
But in the end, everything changes in a completely unexpected way.
Shouto’s not even in a fight when it happens. He’s just minding his own business, walking towards the metro station on a Sunday to go visit his mom. It’s a beautiful day, and Shouto’s thinking about Mom, how much he’s looking forward to seeing her, how things seem almost perfect on this clear spring morning. He’s passing by a park and the earliest cherries are starting to bloom, so Shouto pauses to take a picture to show her. He’s trying to angle his phone to get the clearest contrast between the white blossom and the blue sky when there’s some kind of commotion around the corner of the next block. Shouto’s only half-listening in case it might be something he can help with, still concentrating on the photo, when a woman bursts around the corner and slams into Shouto, shoving him out of her way with one hand to his face so that it’s only Shouto’s years of training in balance and stability that stops him from crashing to the ground. Even so, he has a moment of vertigo and everything seems to turn grey and white.
When the colour comes back into the world, the woman’s gone. Shouto shakes himself and heads down the street in the direction she was running to see if he can find her, but there’s no sign of her ahead or on any of the cross-streets. She must be really fast to have disappeared so quickly. He heads back to the park and around the corner to where the commotion was, but there’s nothing there, either. It’s all a little weird, but there’s no sign anyone’s hurt or in trouble, so he goes back to the park to finish his picture before heading off.
When he gets there, though, he can’t find the tree with the blossom already out, and the sky’s turned grey all of a sudden, even though it was cloudless earlier. Maybe the wind blew the blossoms out. In any case, Shouto promised Mom he’d be there for lunch, so he puts his phone away and sets off towards the metro.
****
It’s not until Shouto gets to the metro station and scans his card to go through the turnstile that things start to get really strange. The turnstile rejects the card, claiming it’s out of credit, which is weird because Shouto’s pretty sure he recharged it last weekend, and he hasn’t used it since then. Still, it’s not a big deal. He heads over to the machine and inserts the card, digging out his bank card to be ready. But the machine makes a disgruntled noise and spits the card back out again. Card void flashes on the screen.
Shouto takes the card and frowns at it. That’s never happened before. But maybe he sat on it or messed up the chip somehow. It’s annoying, but he needs to get to Mom’s so he shoves the card back in his pocket and punches the buttons to buy a new one. He taps his bank card on the reader and waits.
Payment declined, flashes the screen.
Shouto looks at the card. It’s in date, and he knows he has plenty of money in his bank account. It’s not even one of Dad’s cards, so it can’t be anything to do with him. Maybe the machine has some kind of weird glitch. He moves over to the next one. But this one declines his card, too, and then declines every other card in his wallet in turn. Shouto stands, blinking at the machine. He doesn’t have any cash, so – how’s he going to get a ticket?
“Hey.” Someone grabs his arm, and Shouto starts and turns, looking up at a tall, middle-aged man who’s frowning down at him. “Don’t you think that’s a little disrespectful?” the man asks.
Shouto stares. “Sorry?”
The man gestures at him – points at his face, at his scar. “Young people should have more respect,” he says.
Shouto puts his hand up to his scar. Disrespectful? He wonders if this guy thinks he should be – covering it up or something. With make-up, maybe? Maybe he thinks it’s too ugly for Shouto to just walk around with it showing, but – but it’s not Shouto’s fault, and it’s none of this guy’s business, anyway.
“No, I think it’s fine,” he says.
The man glares at him and stomps off, muttering something that Shouto doesn’t bother to listen to. A moment later, a teenage girl sidles up to him.
“Hey, don’t listen to him,” she says. “It’s a tribute, right? I think you look amazing.”
Shouto feels – like he doesn’t really want any more strangers to talk to him today. “Thanks,” he says, and turns abruptly, heading back up out of the metro station. He sits on the first bench he can find and breathes through his nose. He feels – weird. Everything seems really weird. He suddenly feels like everyone’s looking at him – at his scar – and he flips up the hood of his hoodie and pulls it as far forward as it’ll go.
Tribute?
It takes a couple of minutes, but Shouto finally arrives at a conclusion: Endeavour. Endeavour has a scar now, in the same place as Shouto’s though it looks really different. So they must have thought he was trying to – copy Endeavour, or dress up like him or something. It’s pretty normal for people to dress up as heroes – Kaminari says it’s called cosplay – so Shouto doesn’t know why the man would have thought it was disrespectful. But he definitely doesn’t want people thinking he’s trying to imitate the old man – trying to pay tribute to him – and all the calm and quiet happiness he’d been feeling earlier is gone now, replaced with a creeping irritation. So, what, he’s supposed to cover his scar now so people don’t think he’s an Endeavour fan? That’s just--
Shouto sighs, then takes a deep breath. He needs to let Mom know he’s going to be late, or she’ll worry. He pulls out his phone and flips to his contacts, but when he tries to send a message, it fails. No signal, the error message reads. Shouto checks the bars, but the message is right: there’s no signal at all, no phone and no internet. That’s – really strange. Shouto’s in the middle of the city, and he’s never had any problems with his phone carrier here before. He turns the data connection off and on again, then turns the whole phone off and on again, but there’s still nothing.
Shouto stares down at the phone. Then he looks around himself. His phone doesn’t work. None of his cards work. He – doesn’t know what to do. It’ll take him hours to walk to Mom’s, and by the time he gets there she’ll be worried. So – so he’ll go back to the school. Someone will probably be around at the dorms, and if he doesn’t have any signal still then he can borrow their phone and let Mom know what happened. Not that he really knows what’s happened himself. Maybe there’s some kind of outage in all the communication systems? But no-one else seems to be having a problem, if so. Everywhere he looks there are people using their phones. So then – what?
Shouto gets up, ignoring the unsettled feeling in his stomach. It’s a strange day, lots of strange things happening in a row, but nothing dangerous, nothing that he really needs to worry about. He’ll head back to school and get this all straightened out, and he’ll be late for lunch with Mom, but she’ll understand. He shrugs deeper into his hoodie – there’s a sharp wind blowing now, nothing like the soft, warm air earlier, and even with his quirk he can feel it biting a little – and starts walking back towards the school.
When he gets there, though, the main entrance is closed off, which usually means that a cat or maybe a stray piece of rubbish has set off the emergency intruder alarm. After the war, they retooled the system to be more sensitive, and ever since it’s been causing a lot of problems. Shouto sighs and sits down on the wall opposite to wait – once the alarm’s been set off, no-one gets in or out until the system’s been reset, whether they have a swipe card or not.
Shouto waits. And he waits. After a while, it occurs to him that it’s Sunday, which means students will be coming and going. He’s been waiting for long enough now that he would have expected at least a few others to have arrived back from their Sunday expeditions and be waiting with him. But there’s no-one here, and nothing to indicate anyone inside is trying to reset the system. In fact, it’s – really quiet. Like there’s no-one in there at all. And if it hadn’t been for everything else, Shouto might just dismiss that – it’s chilly, after all, so people wouldn’t be hanging around on the grounds chatting – but--
But.
Shouto’s cards don’t work. His phone doesn’t work. He’s locked out of UA with no sign of any of his friends or teachers. And all those are objective things he can point to that are strange and unsettling, but somehow the thing about the whole day so far that bothers Shouto the most is the man at the metro station who told him his scar was disrespectful. But that whole encounter – it feels like it was some kind of dream. None of it made sense – nothing has made sense for a little while – and Shouto starts to wonder if he really is just dreaming, if he’s going to wake up and it’ll be Sunday morning and he’ll get ready to go see his Mom. Everything feels a little too real and plausible to be a dream, but at the same time, that odd sense of being in reality but – slightly sideways – that could be a dream, right?
Shouto thinks really hard about waking up.
He remains sitting on the wall, staring at the barricaded entrance of UA.
So.
If he can’t get into UA and he can’t contact anyone, what next? He could walk to Mom’s. Or – to Natsu’s. Yeah, Natsu lives much closer, and he has two room-mates so even if he isn’t in, hopefully somebody will be. Then he can get Natsu to call Midoriya and find out what’s going on at UA. And call Mom so she won’t be worried.
Shouto slips off the wall and starts walking towards Natsu’s apartment.
****
It’s when Shouto gets to Natsu’s apartment that he really starts to worry. Actually, it’s more accurate to say that he gets to where Natsu’s apartment used to be. Natsu moved in the previous year, to an apartment in an old block like the one Midoriya lives in with his mom. There are five blocks in total, ranged along the street side by side.
Except when Shouto gets there, there’s a gleaming office tower, only a few years old, reflecting the grey sky in its hundreds of windows.
Shouto stands on the street and stares up at the tower. Then he goes back to the cross-street and stands looking from one street to the next. He must have – gone wrong somewhere. Taken a wrong turn. Except the little store on the corner is definitely the one on the corner of Natsu’s street. It’s not a chain, just an individual store, so there’s no way he could be confusing it for another one. It’s the one that’s on the corner of Natsu’s street. This is the street where Natsu lives. But Natsu’s apartment block is – gone.
Shouto goes back and stands in front of the office tower. When was the last time he visited Natsu? Maybe a month or two ago. Not long enough for them to demolish his apartment block and build this. And he would have said something about it. Shouto even checks his messages to make sure he didn’t miss anything, even though he knows – he knows he didn’t. It should be here. It should be here.
It’s not here.
Shouto could be dreaming. Maybe he’s dreaming. It would make a lot of sense. He thinks hard about waking up. He walks back up the street, thinking about it. Wake up, wake up, wake up. He thinks about alarm clocks. He thinks about cold water being dumped on his head. He thinks about Bakugou yelling at him.
He doesn’t wake up.
So then – maybe Shouto’s having some kind of – delusions? He doesn’t know much about delusions, but he thinks maybe they should be stranger than this. But on the other hand, maybe they start off normal and get stranger and stranger. He wonders if that’s what happened to Mom. He wonders if Mom’s worried about him. It’s hours past the time he was supposed to be at her house for lunch. He hopes she’s not too worried.
And then he thinks: what if Mom’s house isn’t there any more, either.
Shouto suddenly feels like his lungs are being crushed. He staggers to the nearest planter and sits down on the edge, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth. Just because Natsu’s apartment isn’t there, doesn’t mean Natsu’s gone. Natsu’s just somewhere else. And Mom’s house is probably still there, but even if it isn’t, Mom would just be somewhere else. Or Shouto’s having delusions and Natsu’s apartment is there, but Shouto can’t see it for some reason. But Mom’s fine. And Natsu’s fine. Everyone’s fine except maybe Shouto.
Shouto’s not sure how long he sits on the planter working on remaining calm, but by the time he gets up again, the sky’s starting to darken. He’s hungry – he hasn’t eaten since breakfast – but he doesn’t have any money and he doesn’t – he doesn’t know what to do now. He thinks about going to the police, but my brother’s apartment block has disappeared sounds like the kind of thing someone who’s having delusions would say, and Shouto’s – he’s not sure what the police do with people who are having delusions. He’s not sure he wants to find out.
He goes back to UA, but the entrance is still closed and silent. There are no students waiting outside to be let in. Even though it’s starting to get dark, there are no lights on in the towers of the dorms and the main school building visible beyond the perimeter wall.
So then – what? He could walk to Mom’s, but – but what if it’s not there? What if Mom’s house isn’t there? Shouto swallows hard. He can’t – if it isn’t there, then he – but he needs to go somewhere. It’s getting dark. He needs to go somewhere.
So then: Dad. He’s out of town for work right now, but Shouto still has a key to the house, and at least it’s somewhere he can go while he tries to figure things out. There might be food in the fridge, too. And if Dad’s house isn’t there any more, then – well, Shouto probably won’t care that much.
OK. All right. Shouto takes a deep breath and starts walking down the hill. Dad’s house is a couple of hours’ walk, but at least he has some kind of plan. He’s aware that it’s not a very comprehensive plan – there’s not much to it beyond find somewhere familiar to regroup – but this kind of situation – this is not the kind of situation Shouto has been trained for. If there was a villain – if this was a fight – then he’d be ready, calm, strategic. But now – now he’s aware of a thin thread of anxiety, thrumming in his stomach. So: find a safe place. Regroup. Make a new plan.
Shouto’s walking through the centre of town when he sees something that pulls that thread of anxiety suddenly taut. It’s a digital billboard, high above the crossroads he’s passing through, currently showing an image of Hawks beaming out into the gathering dusk, with the caption Japan’s #1!
Shouto stops and stares at it. After a few seconds it dissolves into an advert for Cup Noodles, but Shouto keeps staring. Hawks is – not Japan’s #1. Endeavour is Japan’s #1. Endeavour, not Hawks. The new rankings won’t come out for months, and even when they do, unless a lot of things change it’s likely Endeavour will keep his spot. Not that Shouto cares about Endeavour’s rankings, but he does care about reality, and in reality, Endeavour is Japan’s #1. Not Hawks. It’s not Hawks.
Shouto waits through the Cup Noodle advert, then through an ad for shoes, then one for some kind of high-end watch. Then the image of Hawks comes back. Japan’s #1. There, in red and gold text three metres high. No matter how much Shouto stares at it, he can’t make it say anything else. But then--
But then, if Hawks is Japan’s #1, then where is Endeavour? And where – where is Natsu? Where’s Shouto’s brother Natsu? And what if – what if Shouto goes to his mother’s house and it’s gone?
Shouto takes a step back, reaching out for something to grip onto. He’s – delusional. That’s – that has to be it. That’s bad, because that means he’s maybe going crazy, but on the other hand, it means that Endeavour’s fine and Natsu’s fine and Mom is fine and it’s just Shouto, just Shouto going crazy and nothing bad has happened to anyone. Or--
Or. It could be a quirk. Maybe Shouto – maybe Shouto got hit with a quirk and it’s making him delusional. Yeah – yeah. Because – he hasn’t noticed being delusional before, and he doesn’t think it usually happens so quickly. He doesn’t really have much experience except with Mom, and he was too young when that happened to really have much memory of whether it was fast or slow, but – but a quirk would make sense. He doesn’t remember being hit by a quirk, but he also doesn’t remember Hawks becoming the #1 hero, so – so yeah. So yeah, that must be it. Maybe. And if it isn’t – if he’s just going crazy – then – then he can get treatment or something, it’s something that can maybe be fixed. As long as Natsu’s fine. As long as everyone’s fine.
Shouto stands still for a long moment. He feels lightheaded, but it’s probably just from not eating since breakfast. Everything feels loud and bright – the traffic, the lights, all the people – and he takes a deep breath and straightens his shoulders, then starts walking again, towards the house where he grew up, determinedly not looking up at the billboard. He just needs to get to a safe place and regroup. He just needs to keep walking.
He only makes it three more blocks, though, before he runs into another problem. This one is a full-on villain fight, audible more than visible since one of the villains has some kind of light-cancelling quirk. There’s a lot of crashes inside the bubble of darkness that blocks Shouto’s way, some shouting, the occasional flash of electricity that makes it out of the quirk’s perimeter. Overall, it doesn’t sound too serious, and Shouto’s gauging how extensive the perimeter is so he can figure out how to get round when then bubble of darkness suddenly collapses and reveals three very much restrained villains and Midoriya Izuku, hair wild and smile wide, dusting off his hands and waving at the crowd.
Midoriya. Shouto feels suddenly like his legs might not hold him up any more. Of all the people, Midoriya, the person who Shouto trusts most in the whole world. So now – so now Shouto will be fine. Everything will be fine.
He takes a few steps forward, only to be waved back by the police who are keeping civilians away from the fight. Shouto starts to dig out his hero licence, but then hesitates. What if – he shows it to the police and they tell him it’s void, like his other cards? He stands, hand in his pocket, indecisive, and Midoriya finishes talking to the police, waves once more at the crowd, and starts walking away.
Shouto swallows and turns, walking fast, then half-running, through an alleyway, angling his course so that he’ll cut Midoriya off. It’s not quite right – even as he’s running, even as he can only think about getting to Midoriya so that everything will be fine, he knows it’s not quite right. Midoriya – doesn’t look right, doesn’t quite look like Midoriya. His costume isn’t right, and his hair is too long and – maybe it was Shouto’s imagination, but he seemed – too tall. But Shouto – but Shouto doesn’t care about that. Shouto is probably delusional, and that’s fine. That’s fine, if he can get to Midoriya.
He reaches the end of the cross-alley to find Midoriya just a few metres away, striding confidently down the street, back to Shouto, cape flowing. For a second, Shouto can’t speak, the words caught in his throat. Then--
“Midoriya,” he says. It comes out croaky and quiet, and he coughs. “Midoriya!”
Midoriya stops in his tracks – freezes, almost. Then he looks back, sharply, frowning, glancing around at the people on the street. Shouto realises his hood is still up and pulls it down. “Midoriya.”
Midoriya’s eyes land on him where he’s standing in the mouth of the alley and get wide, wide, impossibly wide. For a moment, he just stands there, staring. Then he turns, his whole body snapping round, and stumbles forward, almost falls, that confident stride nowhere to be seen now. He stops in front of Shouto, staring at him, and Shouto stares back, that unsettled feeling growing stronger in his stomach by the second. Midoriya looks – pale, chalk-white almost, his freckles standing out. And he’s taller. He’s not as tall as Shouto, but he’s taller than he should be. He can’t be taller since this morning. That’s not how it works.
“Shouto,” Midoriya whispers.
Shouto shakes his head. “I’m – something’s happened,” he says. Midoriya looks so wrong, his eyes so wide, his face is so pale it makes him look ill. “I think – a quirk maybe. I think I’m having delusions.”
“Shouto,” Midoriya says again, like he didn’t hear a single thing Shouto said. Shouto swallows.
“Midoriya?” he says. “Are you all right? You look sick.”
Midoriya just stares for a second longer. Then he jerks suddenly and glances around, then grabs Shouto and pushes him back into the alley, pulling his hood up again. “Shouto,” he says, voice croaking, and Shouto sees that there are tears in his eyes, which – which, Midoriya cries a lot, but there isn’t any reason, right now there isn’t any reason--
“How are you--?” Midoriya says. “How--?”
“I’m having delusions,” Shouto says. He needs to – get this under control. Things aren’t right. He needs Midoriya to help him. “I think – I think a quirk--”
Midoriya’s mouth moves silently. “A – quirk?” he says at last.
Shouto nods. “Natsu’s apartment block isn’t there any more,” he says. “And my phone doesn’t work. And all my cards. And I can’t get into to UA – the entrance is sealed and they haven’t reset the system.”
Midoriya blinks, once, twice. “U-- UA?” he says.
“Have you been back this afternoon?” Shouto says. “The entrance is sealed.” He thinks it’s sealed. Maybe he was just imagining that.
Midoriya’s breathing is loud in the quiet alleyway. He doesn’t say anything for a long, long moment. Then: “A quirk?”
“I think maybe a quirk,” Shouto says. “I think – maybe I’m seeing things that aren’t there. Natsu’s – Natsu’s apartment block isn’t there any more.”
Midoriya nods. “How – old are you?”
Shouto frowns. “Eighteen. Why?”
Somehow – somehow – Midoriya’s eyes get even wider. “Shouto,” he whispers, tears spilling over onto his cheeks. “Shouto.” Then he grabs Shouto and pulls him in, hugs him tighter than Shouto’s ever been hugged before. Shouto hugs back – it feels good, it’s good, now he’s found Midoriya, Midoriya will help him figure the quirk out. Midoriya’s great at figuring quirks out, better than anyone Shouto knows. But right now, Midoriya is sobbing into Shouto’s neck, holding him so tight that it’s a little difficult to breathe, and Shouto wants to think that everything will be fine now but at the same time, this is – this doesn’t feel quite right.
“Midoriya,” he says, voice a little muffled by Midoriya’s hair. “Why are you crying?”
Midoriya gulps audibly by his ear. He keeps hold of Shouto for another few seconds, then lets go and steps back, wiping his hand across his eyes. He grabs Shouto’s shoulders, squeezing them tight.
“Oh,” he says, producing a watery smile. “You know me, I – I cry – I do a lot of crying.”
Shouto nods. It’s true, Midoriya cries a lot. But right now – right now there’s no reason to cry. “Do you know anything about what’s happening with UA?”
Midoriya’s expression doesn’t really change, but his smile starts to look – a little weird. “Listen – Shouto, I think – I think you should come back with me and then – we can figure things out about UA.”
Shouto nods. That’s good. They’ll go back to UA and Midoriya will help him get back inside, and then they can figure the quirk out. Aizawa will help them, and Recovery Girl.
Midoriya touches his ear. “Listen, I’m going to need to cut patrol short tonight. Yeah, it’s an emergency. Yes, thank you, that’s great.” He pulls out his earpiece and then just stares at Shouto again, like he’s never seen him before.
“Patrol?” Shouto says. That doesn’t make sense. Midoriya’s still in high school. And Midoriya – isn’t this tall.
“I’ll – explain,” Midoriya says. “I’ll explain when we get home.”
Then Black Whip appears, wrapping firmly around Shouto, and a second later, they’re airborne, the wind whistling past Shouto’s ears. He wraps his hands tightly around the tendril of Black Whip – not that he thinks Midoriya would ever drop him, but it’s always good to have a back up – and closes his eyes against the stinging slipstream. By the time he opens them again, they’re descending, landing gently on the street in front of the door of a gleaming apartment tower.
Shouto looks around. The area isn’t familiar. It’s definitely not UA.
“Where--?”
Midoriya presses his palm to a glowing panel beside the door and it slides open. “Shouto, I’ll explain,” he says. “Please.”
Maybe it is all a dream, after all. Or maybe something else. But Midoriya will explain. Midoriya understands what’s happened. So Shouto follows him inside, up in the elevator, through a corridor with an unnecessarily thick carpet, to a door with a number on it. Midoriya unlocks the door, and Shouto follows him inside. It’s an apartment – a nice one, though not very traditional in terms of décor. Shouto takes off his shoes in the genkan, and Midoriya’s just stepping into the hallway when a voice calls through from inside.
“Hey, Izuku, you back already? Wasn’t expecting you till morning, man.” The voice is Kirishima’s, and even though Shouto’s concerned about – everything, about this apartment and why Midoriya has a key to it and why Kirishima is here too, even though it doesn’t make any sense, the fact that Kirishima is here makes him feel like whatever is wrong, they can all figure it out. He’s just – really glad to hear Kirishima’s voice.
Midoriya, though, doesn’t seem so glad. He’s frozen, one foot in the genkan and one in the hall. “Oh,” he says. “I – didn’t think you’d be here tonight.”
“Yeah, my date blew me off so I--” Kirishima appears in the hallway, holding a takeout container and pausing mid-sentence. “Oh, man, sorry, I didn’t realise you had a date--”
Shouto puts his hood down.
Kirishima drops the takeout container.
“It’s a quirk,” Midoriya whispers. “He’s eighteen.”
Kirishima just stands there for a second, staring at Shouto. Then he surges forward, shoves past Midoriya into the genkan, and flings his arms round Shouto. Kirishima’s always been great at hugs, and Shouto has no objection to receiving them, but it’s clear there’s something here that he doesn’t understand, and it doesn’t feel like it’s a good something. Still, Kirishima feels warm and solid and real, not like a delusion at all, and Shouto hugs back and wonders if he’d have understood by now if he wasn’t feeling so lightheaded.
“Shouto, man, fuck,” Kirishima says in his ear, voice choking like he’s crying. “Fuck. It’s so good – it’s so good to see you. Bro, it is so fucking good to see you.”
The foreboding feeling in Shouto’s stomach kicks up a notch. Kirishima is definitely crying. Not that Kirishima doesn’t cry fairly often as well, but--
“You saw me this morning,” he says. Maybe he’s delusional about that, as well.
Kirishima sucks in a breath, then gives Shouto one last tight squeeze and steps back, holding Shouto’s shoulders like Midoriya did in the alley. He looks Shouto up and down, then glances at Midoriya, just briefly, like he can’t stand to look away from Shouto for more than a second.
“A quirk?” he says, voice rough with tears.
Midoriya’s crying as well, Shouto sees. “I haven’t figured out all the details yet,” he says. “I just – found him on the street.”
Kirishima nods. “Fuck,” he whispers. “Fuck, what are we--” Then he stops, mouth half open, eyes wide. “Izuku,” he says. “Shit, bro--”
“What is it?” Shouto asks. He just – wants to understand what’s happening here.
But Kirishima’s shaking his head, staring at Shouto, but not talking to Shouto.
“What are we gonna tell Katsuki?”