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Izuku kicks his feet on the bench, smiling at the flowers tucked into his shoes next to his feet.
He’s locked in a daydream until a hand settles on his head, ruffling his hair. His eyes jerk up and he meets red eyes, vivid and unfathomable.
Confused, Izuku asks, “Hello?”
“Hey, kid,” the stranger says, and his voice is steady and calming, “I like your shoes.” He comes around the back of the bench as he speaks, voice somehow serious and solemn as he says the last sentence.
Izuku darts a glance at his shoes, and smiles. It’s the first time he’s really thought that the red looks pretty, offset against a small explosion of color.
As the man steps in front of him, Izuku looks down and sucks in a sharp inhale. His shoes are red too, and there’s flowers tucked right in there. Oh, Izuku thinks.
Oh, I see, Izuku thinks as peace sweeps through him. “I like yours too,” he says, playfully kicking one foot next to the man’s. He’s not really a man, Izuku realizes, looking up to see his face.
The youth in his face gives him away. It kind of makes more sense, Izuku would be really surprised to see someone quirkless in their twenties or thirties. This guy is just a really tall teenager.
“You…you’re not holding your breath any longer?” The older boy carefully asks, dancing around truth, tongue coated in euphemisms.
They speak, hidden, in the way they learned to exist. But also because it’s easier, gentler than the blunt truth. And really—really, really they want to have this kindness (just to have some at all.)
Izuku shakes his head, “I miss home.” He doesn’t elaborate and explain that he means home in abstract terms, in the feeling, the belonging, the acceptance. There are no language barriers between them.
The boy sets his hand in Izuku’s hair again, ruffling gently to mess up the curls more. “Sorry, green bean.” The sorry is like an exhale, one that means sorry it ended up like this and sorry that we had to do all of this and sorry it hurt so much and sorry that it wasn’t fair and sorry, that you aren’t home right now.
“It’s not your fault,” Izuku says, looking like sunshine as he smiles at the older boy. And he means it’s okay now and you shouldn’t worry and I am not alone because you are here and I’m sorry too, that we are reflections.
“What’s your name?” He asks.
“Midoriya Izuku,” Izuku replies without hesitation, leaning into the hand on his head.
Before Izuku can ask, the boy says, “Tenko. I’m just Tenko,” and he smiles a crooked little smile, eyes crinkling all the way. It’s rough around the edges, like he isn’t used to smiling, but he looks at Izuku like he’s relieved to have found him. Izuku feels precious.
Izuku beams up at him, feeling radiant in unquantifiable ways. It’s only right that it happens today.
“We should be brothers, today,” Izuku says, glancing down shyly as he knocks their shoes together again.
Softly, Tenko responds, “I’d love that, Izuku.”
They lapse into comfortable silence.
“Tenko,” Izuku says, voice suddenly vulnerable, “We match.” It aches, when he really thinks about it.
Giving in, Tenko buries his face in Izuku’s hair. “We do,” he breathes shallowly, “I’m sorry, sunshine. I’m so sorry.”
Izuku blinks away the tears. “We have to make it the best day ever, then.”
“Yeah,” Tenko says, quiet, “Yeah, we’ll do that. But let’s just stay here for right now, okay?”
Nodding furiously, Izuku turns to give Tenko a proper hug and closes his eyes, feeling safe and held. Their breathing syncs up and it’s just peace. So rare, so hard to come by. Of course, of course it would be today.
Eventually, they pick themselves off of the bench. Izuku smiles mischievously, poking Tenko in the side and calling “Tag! You’re it!”
He runs off, and Tenko follows, calling out a playful, “Get back here, brat!” and they’re nothing but kids.
Nothing but brothers as Tenko gives chase, laughing in wonder. He picks Izuku up by the armpits, swinging him around and smiles as Izuku giggles. They only lose a few flowers from their shoes in the process.
Tenko wonders if the flowers they’re dropping are like shedding parts of their souls. If it’s the start of freedom and relief. Here, with Izuku, it sure feels like it.
As he sets Izuku down, the younger boy turns to look at him, breathlessly asking, “What’s next?”
“Where do you want to go?” And it really does feel like they have forever, just for a little. Tenko feels light, weightless.
“Ice cream!” Izuku says triumphantly, eyes sparkling. He looks like he drops years off his age, younger and softer.
For one day, Tenko and Izuku don’t have to think about tomorrow. Don’t have to think past the joy in their hearts, the adrenaline as they laugh themselves silly. They are nothing more than kids, really. Unburdened by uncertain futures.
People smile as they dash past, casting their laughter into the air around them or when they meander by, with Tenko’s gentle teasing and Izuku’s blushing embarrassment.
Sometime, past afternoon, long after lunch and ice cream and tag, Izuku’s phone begins to buzz. Izuku freezes.
Tenko tilts his head curiously.
Izuku looks at the caller name, seeing Mom written across the screen. He stares, and lets the call go to voicemail.
“I wanted to know how long it would take for her to call,” Izuku says, quietly. If she’d notice at all, if the school would tell her, if she would find out I skipped.
Eyes softening, Tenko cards a hand soothingly through his hair. “It’s okay,” he says, endlessly understanding. He carefully doesn’t acknowledge that it’s dinner time. “I turned off my phone.” He shrugs, not sure that anyone would call anyways.
Izuku stares emptily at the phone screen for longer as it goes dark. Shaking himself out of it, he turns it off too.
It doesn’t matter.
Tenko pulls him into a hug, and then it’s just the two of them again, and Izuku tugs him into a run, sides aching from laughter as they go off chasing constellations.
Izuku gestures grandly as he mimes a hero fight, making faces to get reactions out of Tenko.
Tenko, dutifully, as an older brother, acts disgusted and embarrassed. Izuku takes no offense as the fondness in his eyes gives him away.
There’s a quiet chuckle from behind them that causes Izuku to whip his head around and nearly trip. Tenko narrows his eyes suspiciously.
The chuckle comes from a man wearing a beige trench coat. His eyes crinkle slightly, but makes no comment about Izuku’s reenactment.
“I like your shoes,” the man says kindly, instead.
Izuku smiles and nudges Tenko. Sighing, he gruffly responds, “Thanks. It’s for good luck.”
Izuku whispers, “We’re making wishes.”
There’s a split second that he second guesses their vague answers. “That’s cool,” the man replies easily, and that’s that.
And neither of them say it means goodbye, too. It’s not really goodbye, anyways. More like sorry I have to go home now.
It’s not goodbye if you go together, right?
(Sun’s setting now, below the horizon line. Like the tail end of the lunar cycle, they too, wane).
“Should we take a picture?” Izuku wonders. He’s selfish enough to want some kind of earthly memory of their time together.
“If you want,” Tenko smiles, small and awkward, unused to joy. Izuku loves his smile already, rare as it is. Even as a work in progress. He feels inexplicably spoiled, at the sight of it, the way Tenko indulges him.
Izuku fishes out his phone from his pocket. The selfie he takes is horrible—blurry and illegible besides Tenko’s blue hair half blocked by the head of his own green hair. It’s perfect, in its motion.
Swiping back to the lock screen, the notifications flood in. Unable to resist, he clicks on the singular notification labeled “Kacchan,” finger slipping instinctively.
The voicemail starts: “DEKU—“
Izuku stops the voicemail. “Nevermind,” he says quietly.
He drops the phone on the ground. He hates how tired that one word makes him. Hates the way his shoulders round and everything feels so much less.
“Let’s go,” Izuku says.
Tenko tugs him closer for a hug and doesn’t mention that they leave the phone on the ground, buzzing and lighting up with missed calls and missed texts.
They walk away. (It starts to set in, that this is real. This is happening.)
A man sees a faint glow coming from the grass. It’s glow is obvious now that the sun is setting and it’s getting dark.
The battery is low on the phone as he picks it up, startled by the list of missed calls and texts he sees.
Swiping to the emergency contacts, he calls the number. Immediately it picks up, and a voice comes across: “IZUKU, WHERE ARE YOU? WHY HAVEN’T YOU BEEN ANSWERING MY CALLS?”
He clears his throat. “Hello, my name is Detective Tsukauchi and I found this phone in the grass from XXXX Park. I’m afraid the owner must’ve accidentally lost it. You can pick it up at the Musatafu police station tomorrow.”
“Detective, if you have his phone, where’s my son? Where is he? He’s only 14. You have to help me.”
“Is he not out with a friend? Did he tell you he was going somewhere? How did the phone end up in this park then?
“He never showed up to school. He’s been gone the whole day. I don’t know where he is. Please, help me,” her desperation is audible, even through the phone.
Tsukauchi sighs. “I’ll do my best. Can you give me a description?”
“His name is Midoriya Izuku. He’s about 168 centimeters tall. Green hair—“
Tsukauchi thinks of two boys, one with green hair, one tall and with pale blue hair.
“—green eyes—“
He thinks of their earnest answers, at ease and relaxed.
“—freckles—“
He thinks of their eyes, crinkled with full face smiles. Surely not—
“—a hoodie. He was wearing a hoodie, and—“
The clothes the smaller boy was wearing was the same—
“— red shoes. He only has those shoes. They’re bright red.”
Mostly, Tsukauchi remembers shoes. Bright red and stuffed with flowers.
His instincts scream.
“Does…does your son have any older friends?”
She laughs into the phone, voice choked, “No. My poor baby didn’t have many friends at all, let alone anyone older than him.”
“You…have never met an older teenage boy then? With pale blue hair? Tall, maybe 185 centimeters?”
“No…not at all. Detective, what in the world are you talking about?”
“I saw a boy today, who fits the description of your son. But he was with another boy, an older one, who had the same red shoes.”
“Oh,” she says over the phone, sounding small. “They’re both quirkless, then.”
It hits Tsukauchi. He starts cataloging the facts, the boys’ vague and abstract answers to his questions, the fact that the phone is dropped on the ground with no cracks or damage, the fact that Izuku skipped school. The way they were so uncharacteristically, undeniably bright, youth rounded in joy.
“Is he—is he a suicide risk?”
“Who do you think you are?” Her voice rises across the phone, indignant. “My baby would nev—“
“I need you to answer me,” Tsukauchi cuts across her tirade, eyes going intense as the pit in his stomach grows. He’s calm but unwavering as he asks, “ Is your son a possible suicide risk?”
She hesitates. “Detective— I—I don’t know.”
“You need to tell me where he likes to go. Any places that are important to him. Anything.”
If you dig deep enough, you’ll realize that flowers are… goodbye.
Pressing the heels of his hands in his eyes, Tsukauchi feels his heart drop reading the forum post.
Buried in the vast web of the internet, found only because of the strings he pulled, he stares at the post. The website is named an ambiguous Q, the domain strange and unknown.
But the post is anything except ambiguous.
sittingathome275:
The shoes always give us away. I think I’ll put flowers in mine, and wear them around before I leave. It’s a win-win-win scenario. I won’t hate the shoes as much. They’ll be pretty, for once. Maybe one of you guys will see me and it’ll be our secret. And it’s…like flowers at the grave, you know? Sorry to be morbid. I just feel like it would be nice.
It’s one of the most popular posts on the forum.
The comments vary, but none of them try to dissuade her. They don’t necessarily encourage her either, but they comment that the idea is sweet, that they hope she’s well, that she is good, wherever she is.
Mostly, the comments agree, I’d like to do this too. If I go. When I go. I think it would be nice.
Tsukauchi isn’t sure how to process. How to reconcile with tragedy two centuries in the making, built into society.
He wants to believe he’ll report this website, and it’ll stop. The website will go down and he will save countless people. But he isn’t naive. The truth is, there are plenty of quirkless suicides with no shoes and no flowers. With shoes and no flowers. Suicides that aren’t really suicides at all, but there’s no evidence otherwise, because that’s what they’ll write.
That is what is easier.
That, somehow, horrifyingly, is easier to stomach than the alternative.
( Her mother put her to sleep. Then herself.
His dad hit too hard this time. It was an accident, of sorts.
She jumped. Even though her body indicates someone pushed.)
“It’s pretty,” Izuku says, staring at the building.
Tenko ignores the ugly concrete exterior, eyes climbing up right towards where Izuku is looking. He can almost feel the breeze in his hair. Like flying.
It’s private too, cornered between warehouses.
“Yeah, it is pretty. Let’s go look, sunshine.” Tenko keeps Izuku tucked into his side as they meander in, building empty and unlocked like it was waiting for them to come along.
They make it on the roof with no issues.
“Pretty,” Izuku whispers again, watching the city sprawl out below them.
Tenko rubs his cheek on Izuku’s curls, “Mhm. You like this one, Izu? Or should we keep looking?” He doesn’t feel like he’s ever felt quite this permanent. Real.
“Whatever you want,” Izuku responds, “As long as I’m with you.”
Tenko freezes for only a moment before tucking Izuku even closer. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Izuku nods and looks up to beam at him.
“Okay,” Tenko whispers, choking on the warmth and hating that he’s only met Izuku now. “Okay, I like this one. View’s nice. Not a lot of people either, it’s peaceful.”
Izuku nods.
They lay down on the concrete of the roof, bunching their hoodies into pillows and ignoring the breeze by curling into each other.
“Do you think anyone’s waiting?” Izuku whispers.
“After?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if there is an After. But, if there is, I’d like to think someone’s there. Like maybe my great-great-grandpa, who lived before quirks. Or maybe, quirkless kids stick together even in the After. I don’t know.”
“That would be nice,” Izuku says, “To stay with you.”
“Forever?”
Izuku nods enthusiastically, almost knocking his head against Tenko’s chin.
Tenko laughs, “You’ve only known me for a day.”
“But then I’d get forever to know the rest of you.”
Izuku says it so nonchalantly, like it’s fact, and Tenko is struck by it, lightning flying up his veins as he realizes: if this is the kind of devotion, the warmth Izuku can give to a stranger, than he must love stronger than stars can collide. More than anything, Tenko thinks, this is how he got hurt. This is why he’s here. Izuku is unbearably vulnerable. Unwilling to shield his heart.
In some stories, it makes him incredibly strong. In this one, it’s just another symptom.
“Thanks, sunshine,” Tenko whispers, “That means more than you could know.”
They lapse into silence.
Quiet, so quiet, Izuku asks, “Will you still call me sunshine? After?”
Tenko wants to rage and scream and demand better of this world, which broke him and broke Izuku and broke all the other kids with red shoes and some kind of heart. Mostly, Tenko wants to hold Izuku forever, in a place where this world cannot reach them, and cannot taint what very little they have left.
So easy, easy as breathing, easy as when it stops, he says, “Yeah, Izu. I’ll call you sunshine for an infinity. As long as you want.” He ignores the tears in his eyes, the way it hurts so much he wants to choke.
“Forever, then,” Izuku says, matter of fact. He curls closer to Tenko, “Can we tell them we’re brothers? After?”
“Of course, we’ll tell them that. Is that not what we are?”
Izuku beams up at him, brighter than the sun and sweeter than honey. Imprinting it in his mind, Tenko thinks he’s justified in hoarding these smiles. In making sure only those who deserve them get to see them.
Eyes flicking to each side of the roof, Tenko wonders. They need to get to safety. The idea of separation bites at him.
Tenko sits up, carefully lifting Izuku with him. He laughs softly at the whine of annoyance and puff of breath Izuku exhales as he’s moved from the position where he was comfortable.
Smushing his face into Izuku’s hair, he asks, “Which side, sunshine? Which one do you like most?”
Izuku looks around, turning in Tenko’s hug to look over his shoulder. “One of those,” he says, pointing to the ledge to the right and in front of them. “The skyline blocks the sky from the other ones.”
“Mmm. Smart. I agree,” Tenko says.
“You pick!” Izuku demands, eyes wide and glittering.
Sighing jokingly, Tenko stands up. He bends down, and Izuku hops onto his back, circling his arms around to hold on as he rests his head on Tenko’s shoulder.
Tenko marches over to the right side, eyes half closed in happiness as Izuku laughs in his ears.
“Cute,” he mumbles.
“I’m not cute,” Izuku disagrees, but his wide eyes contradict his own disagreement.
“No, you’re my most adorable little brother,” Tomura replied, obnoxiously drawing out his words.
Izuku opens his mouth to disagree again, but hears the end of the sentence and huffs instead. “I’m your only little brother.”
“Hmm…I guess that is true. Very adorable.”
“Teenagers aren’t supposed to be adorable!”
“Uh-huh,” Tenko vocalizes noncommittally.
Izuku drops his head into his hands. Tenko thinks there is no better way to make a departure.
Looking consideringly at the ledge, he asks, “Shoes…on the ledge or on the roof?”
With soft and tired eyes, Izuku answers, “Ledge.”
Tenko doesn’t answer out loud, their communication subtle and unspoken. He gently swings Izuku to the ground. They both tug off their shoes. Tenko sets his on the ledge, making sure the few flowers left stay inside. Izuku places his pair next to Tenko’s, carefully arranging the flowers before grabbing the right foot shoes on both pairs and switching.
“We match,” he says softly. He stares at the two pairs of shoes, one bigger than the other in each pair, both bright red and filled with color.
“We do,” Tenko responds. “I’m sorry, sunshine. But I’d rather it be with you.”
Izuku whispers, stilted, “Me too. I’m afraid to imagine today without you.”
“You won't ever have to. We’ll be safe. It’ll be okay.”
“We’re going to be okay,” Izuku echoes, voice full of wonder.
Carefully climbing onto the ledge, Tenko sits down and beckons Izuku. Izuku climbs on and leans into Tenko’s side, practically merging them together.
“I’ll be right here, okay? I’m never leaving you,” Tenko reassures, steady, inevitable, fond.
Izuku buries closer, hiding his face in Tenko’s shoulder. He doesn’t hear as much as he feels a “love you,” mumbled into his shoulder.
They don’t have to finish the exchange as Tenko presses a kiss into Izuku’s hair. Easy as breathing. Easy as stopping.
Carding a hand through Izuku’s hair, he whispers, “Just go to sleep, okay? And when you wake up, we’ll be in a better place. You were strong. Now it’s time to rest.”
Izuku nods into his shoulder. He peeks up to give Tenko a look that is content and affectionate, rubbing their cheeks together. Then he lays his head on Tenko’s shoulder and closes his eyes.
Tenko ignores the tears that come up. He hates that this easy affection, without disgust, without fear, is only found here. But in other ways, finds that he cannot imagine it anywhere else. Maybe, in every story, this is how it ends.
Quietly.
Fifteen minutes go by in a blink, and Tenko looks down to realize that Izuku’s breaths are much deeper. He looks young and happy and sweet and Tenko is glad to know him. So lucky to have had him, even for a day.
“Sweet dreams, sunshine,” he murmurs.
His next breath feels deeper, more relaxed. It’s all peace.
He wants to chase constellations with Izuku forever. Maybe quirkless kids are fallen stars, tripping out of their home constellations. Maybe they’d do anything to get back into the sky, reckless and yearning. Maybe quirkless kids are a gift from the sky, a love letter to Earth, and maybe when you don’t treat them right, they find their own ways to go home.
Maybe.
But maybe, they just wanted something a little kind.
Maybe they’re just kids.
Tenko gathers Izuku closer, pressing a cheek to his hair.
He closes his eyes—breathes—and tips them off the edge.
I loved you so much that I went looking for forever.
Where everything was fiction, future, and prediction—
Now, where am I? My fading supply.
Did you get enough love, my little dove?
Why do you cry?