Chapter Text
PROLOGUE
Rain tapped softly against the windows, blurring the city lights into streaks of gold and red across the glass. The windshield wipers moved in steady rhythm, back and forth, back and forth, cutting through the storm just enough for the road ahead to stay visible.
The car smelled like takeout containers, damp clothes and the faint caramel sweetness from the dessert Katsuki had begged for after dinner.
It was warm.
Katsuki sat sprawled across the backseat with his soccer trophy balanced proudly in his lap, still wearing his jersey because he'd refused to change out of it. His socks were soaked from running through puddles earlier, but he didn't care. He didn't care about anything except the fact that they'd won.
No.
Not just won.
He'd scored the final goal.
"The look on that kid's face-" Mitsuki barked out another laugh from the passenger seat, turning halfway around to point at him dramatically. "You scared him half to death, Katsuki! I thought he was gonna cry!"
"He was too slow!" Katsuki shot back immediately, grinning so hard his cheeks hurt. "That's not my fault!"
Masaru laughed quietly from the driver's seat, hands steady on the wheel. "Katsuki, you can't just call every player slower than you."
"They are slower than me."
"Cocky brat," Mitsuki said fondly.
"I'm serious! Did you see my goal? Did you see it?" He leaned forward between the seats before either of them could answer. "Dad cried."
Masaru made a wounded sound immediately. "Katsuki-"
"You DID!"
"You cried?" Mitsuki whipped toward him so fast the seatbelt locked against her shoulder. "Seriously?"
"I did not cry."
"You absolutely cried," Katsuki cackled.
Masaru's ears turned pink. "It was emotional."
"Oh my god, you're pathetic."
"He scored the winning goal!" Masaru defended weakly. "And he looked so happy-"
"I was happy," Katsuki interrupted loudly.
The words came easily. Without hesitation.
Because he was.
The happiest he'd ever been, maybe.
Everything felt bright and full and warm in a way he couldn't explain properly. His chest hurt with it. He still felt the rush from the field under the stadium lights, the sound of everyone yelling, his teammates tackling him into the wet grass after the goal.
And then dinner afterward, Mitsuki letting him order whatever he wanted because she'd been so proud she looked ready to explode.
She kept looking back at him now with this expression on her face like she couldn't believe he was hers.
Masaru glanced at him through the rearview mirror, smiling softly.
"There's my champion."
Katsuki rolled his eyes dramatically, but he couldn't stop grinning.
Outside, the rain came down harder.
The car hummed gently beneath them as they drove through the storm, warm air blowing softly from the vents while the windows fogged faintly at the edges.
Safe.
Everything felt safe.
Katsuki leaned his head against the window, eyelids growing heavy as his parents continued talking over each other in the front seat.
Katsuki kept talking.
About the goal.
About the way he'd kicked the ball.
About how stupid his friend Kaminari looked when he slipped in the mud trying to tackle him.
Every sentence came louder than the last, overflowing with the kind of excitement only a ten year old could have after the best night of his life.
Masaru listened to every word like it mattered.
Mitsuki was already scrolling through her contacts, muttering under her breath while typing furiously.
"Tell them I'm amazing."
"You're annoying," Mitsuki corrected automatically, though she was smiling when she said it.
Outside, the rain had finally begun to ease.
The roads still gleamed black beneath the streetlights, reflecting long ribbons of color across the pavement, but the pounding against the roof had softened into something gentler now.
The light ahead turned green.
Masaru drove forward.
Katsuki leaned back into his seat with a satisfied sigh, trophy clutched loosely against his chest. The warmth in the car made his eyes heavy. Everything felt soft around the edges now. Safe.
Then
A horn screamed somewhere to their left.
Masaru's head snapped sideways.
And Katsuki looked up just in time to see headlights.
Too bright.
Too close.
A massive truck burst through the intersection at impossible speed, tires hissing against the soaked road as it tore through the red light.
For one horrible second, nobody moved.
Mitsuki's phone slipped from her hand.
Masaru inhaled sharply.
Katsuki saw his father turn the wheel.
Then the world exploded.
The sound was unbearable.
Metal screaming against metal.
Glass shattering.
Mitsuki yelling.
Then nothing.
For a while, Katsuki thought maybe he'd fallen asleep.
Everything felt far away. Muffled. Like he was underwater.
When he opened his eyes again, rain was falling onto his face.
Cold droplets hit his skin one after another, slipping down his forehead and into his eyes. He blinked sluggishly, confused. The warmth from before was gone.
The window beside him had shattered completely.
The night air poured through the ruined car.
Katsuki inhaled sharply.
Pain exploded through him.
Something hurt.
Something hurt bad.
A broken sound escaped his throat as he tried to move, and suddenly it felt like something sharp was buried deep in his back, hot and blinding and wrong. He gasped, choking on the pain instantly.
His seatbelt dug painfully into his chest.
The world tilted strangely around him.
The car..
The car was sideways.
No.
Crushed.
The entire left side had caved inward like paper.
Rainwater dripped through broken glass and twisted metal. Somewhere nearby, a car alarm wailed endlessly into the storm.
Katsuki's breathing started getting faster.
"M-Ma?"
His voice came out weak.
Mitsuki was still in the front seat.
Her head rested awkwardly against the window, strands of blonde hair stuck to her face with blood and rainwater. A thin line of red ran down from her temple where she'd struck the shattered glass.
But she moved.
A small twitch.
Alive.
Relief hit so hard it almost hurt worse than the pain in his back.
"MAMA-“
The movement sent agony tearing through him again.
Katsuki cried out.
Something warm trickled down the side of his face. His trophy lay mangled near his feet, one of the broken metal edges smeared red where it had sliced across his cheek during the impact.
His hands shook violently.
"Dad?"
No answer.
Masaru slumped over the steering wheel unnaturally still.
The front of the car barely looked like a car anymore.
The driver's side had taken most of the hit.
The windshield was shattered inward. Metal wrapped around the front seat in twisted pieces. Blood streaked across the dashboard.
"Dad!"
Katsuki's voice cracked this time.
Masaru didn't move.
Rain poured harder through the broken windshield, soaking his father's shoulders.
Something cold spread through Katsuki's chest.
He tried to move his legs.
Nothing happened.
Panic hit instantly.
He couldn't feel them.
His stomach dropped so violently he thought he might throw up.
He tried again.
Nothing.
Nothing nothing nothing-
His toes.
He couldn't feel his toes.
The pain in his back sharpened horribly as he struggled against the seatbelt, breathing too fast now, tears mixing with the rain on his face.
"MA-"
Mitsuki jerked suddenly at the sound of his voice, a weak gasp leaving her as consciousness returned all at once.
"Katsuki..?"
Her voice sounded dazed.
Then she saw the front seat.
Saw Masaru.
And the noise that came out of her didn't sound human at all.
The alarm rang at exactly eight.
Same awful sound.
Same routine.
Katsuki reached blindly across his bedside table until his hand smacked against his phone, silencing it with more force than necessary before the noise could start up again tomorrow in his head.
For a moment, he stayed still.
The room was quiet except for the soft hum of the heater and distant morning traffic outside. Pale sunlight leaked around the edges of his curtains, turning the walls gold in uneven streaks.
Katsuki exhaled slowly through his nose and pushed himself upright.
Six years later and mornings still sucked.
His back ached faintly from sleeping wrong. His shoulders already felt tight before he'd even moved properly. He scrubbed a hand down his face before reaching toward the window beside his bed, fingers catching the curtain.
Light flooded the room.
He squinted immediately.
Outside, the neighborhood looked painfully ordinary.
Wet sidewalks from last night's rain. Trimmed lawns. Retired old people probably already walking their dogs. A kid down the street waiting for a school bus with his hood pulled over his head.
Life moving on like usual.
Katsuki sat there for another minute.
Waking up always came in stages now.
Mind first.
Body second.
Sometimes not at all.
Eventually, he grabbed the edge of the mattress and shifted forward, dragging his legs carefully over the side of the bed. His feet hit the floor with a dull, distant pressure he barely registered anymore.
Not numb exactly.
Just far away.
Like his body belonged to someone else below the knees.
He planted his hands beside himself and paused automatically, mentally mapping the movement before he made it. Bed to chair. Same distance. Same angle. Same process he'd repeated enough times to do half-asleep.
Still dangerous if he got careless.
Katsuki lifted himself with practiced effort, arms straining briefly before he transferred across the gap and landed into the seat of his wheelchair with a quiet thud.
A sigh escaped him before he could stop it.
The chair creaked softly beneath him as he adjusted himself properly. The wheels rolled quietly across the hardwood floor as Katsuki made his way toward the connected bathroom.
His bathroom now.
His room now.
Even after six years, the thought still sat strangely in his chest sometimes.
It used to belong to his parents.
The master bedroom downstairs with the wider doorway, the attached bathroom and the stupidly expensive bathtub Mitsuki had loved enough to brag about when they first moved in.
After the accident, he couldn't get upstairs anymore.
So they switched.
Simple as that.
At least, that's how Mitsuki acted about it.
Like giving up her room for him hadn't mattered at all.
Katsuki knew better.
His old bedroom upstairs had been smaller. No connected bathroom. No extra space to put a nice closet for all her clothes. But it had been hers now for years, and every so often guilt still crawled unpleasantly beneath his skin when he thought about it too long.
Especially because she'd never once complained.
Not even when he argued about it.
Not even when he snapped that he didn't need the bigger room.
Not even when he suggested chair lifts or renovations until Mitsuki finally yelled at him for acting like he was some kind of burden she was forced to tolerate.
So the downstairs room became his.
And the upstairs became somewhere he rarely thought about.
Katsuki pushed the bathroom door open.
The tiles were cold beneath his feet when he transferred briefly out of the chair. He barely noticed anymore. The sensation existed only faintly at the edges, dull and distant and unreliable.
Sometimes he missed pain.
At least pain meant feeling something properly.
The bathroom mirror reflected someone older than sixteen looked.
Messy ash-blond hair sticking out everywhere. Sharp red eyes still heavy with sleep. Deep scar cutting across his right cheek from the incident all those years ago.
The only visible mark the accident had left on his face.
Everything else had happened lower.
Hidden.
He finished quickly.
Routine made things easier. Faster. Less frustrating.
Brush teeth.
Wash face.
Ignore the ache in his shoulders.
Ignore the weird hollowness mornings always carried.
By the time he changed clothes, sunlight had spread fully across the bedroom floor in pale rectangles, warming the hardwood near the windows.
Katsuki tugged a shirt over his head and glanced toward the clock.
Still early.
Still quiet.
Just another morning.
The kitchen was quiet except for the low hum of the refrigerator.
Mitsuki had already left for work.
There was a sticky note slapped crookedly onto the counter beside the coffee machine in aggressive handwriting.
‘DON'T FORGET YOUR MEDS!!
and eat something that isn't garbage.’
Katsuki rolled his eyes automatically.
"Bossy hag," he muttered under his breath, though there wasn't any real heat behind it.
He opened the cabinet above the counter and grabbed the orange pill bottle without looking. Another routine. One he could do half-awake by now.
Pills.
Water.
Done.
Breakfast was less impressive.
An apple from the fruit bowl because it required zero effort and because Mitsuki would absolutely lose her mind if he skipped eating entirely again. He leaned against the counter while he ate, balancing carefully on unsteady legs with one hand gripping the edge.
Familiar space.
Familiar distance.
Manageable.
By the time he returned to his room, the house had fallen back into silence.
Katsuki wheeled himself toward the desk positioned beneath the far wall, sunlight catching softly across the white surfaces and monitor screens. The room looked cleaner than most people's bedrooms ever did.
Everything had a place.
Everything stayed there.
Partly preference.
Partly necessity.
If something got moved unexpectedly, it became annoying at best and dangerous at worst.
His desk setup took up almost an entire wall. Dual monitors, headset hanging neatly from its stand, shelves lined with figures and books and random junk he'd collected over the years. Soft LED lights glowed faint orange against the walls even during the day.
It was where he did almost everything now.
School.
Gaming.
Movies.
Talking to the only people he still bothered answering regularly.
Life, mostly.
He pressed the power button on his PC and listened to the quiet whir of the fans spinning awake. While it booted up, Katsuki pulled his workbooks from his drawer and stacked them neatly beside the keyboard, straightening the corners automatically.
Math first.
English second.
Physics underneath.
Order made mornings easier.
The monitor flickered to life.
A few clicks later and the familiar online classroom loaded onto the screen. Tiny black boxes slowly began appearing one after another as students joined the morning call.
Most had cameras off.
A few didn't.
Katsuki kept his own off too.
Always had.
He settled back in his chair just as his teacher appeared on screen, smiling with the exhausted energy of someone who definitely didn't want to be awake this early either.
"Good morning, everyone," she said brightly. "Hope you all had a decent weekend."
A couple tired greetings answered back through crackling microphones.
More students trickled into the call.
Katsuki rested his chin against his fist and stared blankly at the screen while the teacher rambled about traffic and coffee and some bakery she'd stopped at before work.
Outside his window, the neighborhood remained still and quiet beneath the morning sun.
The rest of the day passed the way most of them did.
Slowly.
Katsuki moved through classes with practiced boredom, half-listening to lectures while scribbling notes into the margins of his workbook. Math was easy. English was annoying. Physics kept him awake enough not to completely lose his mind.
Between classes, students chatted over open microphones about weekend plans and upcoming exams and teachers they hated.
Katsuki muted everything whenever possible.
Lunch break came and went without much of a break at all.
He spent most of it finishing a test he'd put off the night before, chewing absentmindedly on chips while typing answers one-handed. Outside his room, the house stayed quiet.
No footsteps upstairs.
No television.
No slammed doors.
Just him and the constant low buzz of electronics.
By the time the final class ended, sunlight had shifted across the floor into long golden strips.
3:00 PM.
Finally.
Katsuki shut down the meeting without bothering to say goodbye, closed his workbooks, and powered off his monitor. The room dimmed instantly once the screens went black, leaving only the soft orange glow of the LEDs against the walls.
Silence settled heavily around him again.
He stretched his shoulders with a grimace before wheeling himself out of the room and down the hallway toward the kitchen.
The smell of coffee hit first.
Then Mitsuki.
She sat perched on one of the stools at the kitchen counter still dressed in work clothes, one heel dangling lazily from her foot while she scrolled through something on her phone.
The second she noticed him, her entire face lit up.
Katsuki stopped immediately.
"...Why do you look like that?"
"Like what?" she asked innocently.
"Like you're about to ruin my life."
Mitsuki practically vibrated where she sat.
"We have new neighbors," she announced dramatically, like she'd been waiting all day to say it.
Katsuki immediately narrowed his eyes.
"And?"
"And," she repeated, leaning forward across the counter, "they have a son around your age."
There it was.
The excitement in her voice made something uncomfortable twist low in Katsuki's stomach instantly.
He already knew where this was going.
"Oh my god," he muttered flatly.
"They just moved in next door! I talked to them earlier while they were unloading boxes and-"
"You talked to strangers while they were carrying furniture?"
"That's what normal people do, Katsuki."
"Sounds fake."
Mitsuki ignored him completely.
"The mother was nice, the older sister was sweet, the father's kinda intimidating honestly, and the son-"
"I don't care."
"Yes you do."
"I literally don't."
But Mitsuki had already entered full excited-mother mode, impossible to stop once she started.
"He's transferring to U.A. from Shiketsu apparently," she continued. "Smart kid. Quiet though. Kinda awkward."
Katsuki rolled himself toward the fridge mostly to avoid eye contact.
The discomfort kept building anyway.
He'd never been good at... people.
Not really.
Even before the accident, friendships had always happened to him rather than because of him.
Deku was different. Deku had attached himself to Katsuki when they were little and somehow never left despite years of Katsuki yelling at him to get lost. Their friendship existed in that weird way childhood bonds sometimes did. Too old and stubborn to fully break apart.
Kirishima was newer.
One of the only good things that came from Katsuki's disastrous attempt at attending high school physically last year.
Kirishima had been loud and persistent and weirdly impossible to scare off. Even after Katsuki stopped going to school entirely, they still gamed together online whenever their schedules lined up.
That was enough.
More than enough.
He didn't need Mitsuki trying to throw random neighborhood teenagers at him like a social rehabilitation project.
"This is good for you," she said suddenly.
Katsuki nearly groaned aloud.
"There it is."
"You need more friends."
"I have friends."
"You have two emotionally constipated boys you yell at through a headset."
"They count."
"One of them cries when you insult him."
"Because he's weak."
Mitsuki snorted loudly at that.
Katsuki grabbed a bottle of juice from the fridge, mostly to give himself something to do with his hands.
His mother watched him carefully for a moment.
The excitement softened around the edges just slightly.
"...It might be nice," she said more quietly this time. "Having someone nearby."
The worst part was that she sounded hopeful.
Not pushy.
Hopeful.
Like she still believed something about him could change.
Katsuki looked away first.
"Don't start planning my new friendship already," he muttered.
Mitsuki grinned immediately.
"So you admit there's gonna be one?"
***
Katsuki ended up at the window twenty minutes later despite himself.
Not because he cared.
Obviously.
He just happened to wheel past the living room and notice the moving truck parked beside the house next door and then happened to stop and then happened to stay there glaring through the blinds like some judgmental old man.
Totally different thing.
Outside, people moved back and forth across the driveway carrying boxes through the open front door.
The woman Mitsuki had mentioned stood near the truck speaking softly to one of the movers. Even from a distance, she looked fragile somehow. Long white hair shifted gently in the breeze, pale clothes moving around her like she barely occupied space at all.
Like if someone spoke too loudly near her, she might disappear.
Katsuki frowned slightly.
Then his attention shifted to the man beside her and immediately everything about the atmosphere changed.
Jesus Christ.
The guy was huge.
Broad shoulders strained against a dark shirt while he lifted boxes that probably should've needed two people. Bright red hair. Sharp posture. A long scar dragged down the left side of his face in harsh uneven lines.
Even from across the yard, he looked intimidating.
Not loud.
Not aggressive.
Just... overwhelming.
The kind of person that naturally filled space whether anyone wanted them to or not.
A younger woman stepped out of the house next carrying smaller boxes against her chest. White hair too, though streaked faintly with red near the ends. Older sister maybe. Early twenties.
She smiled at one of the movers.
Too nice-looking to belong to that terrifying giant of a man.
And then
The boy.
Katsuki narrowed his eyes slightly.
Okay.
What the hell.
The kid looked like somebody split two completely different people down the middle and stitched them together afterward.
Half-white.
Half-red.
A scar around one eye.
Even his eyes were mismatched colors, visible faintly even from where Katsuki sat by the window.
Brown and grey.
Or maybe grey and blue.
Hard to tell at this distance.
The boy stood near the back of the truck holding a box against his hip while the older man spoke to him. He nodded once at whatever was said, expression unreadable.
Quiet.
Stiff.
Weird-looking.
Katsuki watched him for another second longer than necessary before immediately scowling at himself and looking away.
"Creepy bastard," he muttered under his breath.
Outside, the boy suddenly glanced toward the house.
Toward his window.
Katsuki jerked the blinds shut instantly.
Silence.
A beat passed.
Then another.
"...Shit."
***
Katsuki had retreated to his room under the excuse of homework.
Not that he was actually doing any.
Instead, he sat against the headboard of his bed with the curtains cracked open just enough to peek through.
The room next door was directly across from his.
Of course it was.
Just his luck.
From this angle, he could see straight through the other bedroom window. Right now it was mostly stacks of moving boxes and half-assembled furniture, but still.
It bothered him.
A lot.
Katsuki frowned harder as he stared across the narrow gap between the houses.
Could the guy see his room too?
His desk setup.
His bed.
The wheelchair.
Everything.
The thought made something tense unpleasantly between his shoulders.
He hated being perceived on a good day.
Now there was apparently some weird half-red half-white neighbor kid with direct visual access into his room whenever the curtains stayed open too long.
Fantastic.
Katsuki adjusted the curtain again, narrowing the gap slightly.
Still enough to see out.
Not enough to be obvious.
Probably.
Before he could overthink it further, his bedroom door burst open hard enough to hit the wall.
"Katsuki!"
He jumped violently.
"The hell is wrong with you?!" he snapped, twisting toward the doorway.
Mitsuki stood there holding a ceramic baking dish covered neatly with foil, looking entirely too pleased with herself.
The smell hit him immediately.
Curry.
Homemade.
Still warm.
"I'm bringing them a welcome gift," she announced proudly.
Katsuki stared at her.
"...Why are you telling me this like I'm supposed to care?"
"Because," Mitsuki said slowly, in the same tone people used with difficult toddlers, "normal neighbors do nice things for each other."
"You made enough curry to feed an army."
"They're moving. They probably haven't cooked."
"That sounds like a them problem."
Mitsuki ignored him and continued toward the bed, balancing the dish carefully in her hands.
"You should come say hi."
"Absolutely not."
"Oh, come on."
"No."
"Katsuki-"
"I don't wanna meet your weird science experiment family."
Mitsuki blinked once.
"...My what?"
"The kid looks genetically engineered."
She barked out a laugh so suddenly she nearly dropped the dish.
"Oh my god, you already looked at them?"
"I didn't say that."
"You're literally sitting at the window."
Katsuki looked away immediately.
Mitsuki smirked knowingly but thankfully didn't push further. Instead, she adjusted the foil over the dish and headed back toward the door.
"I'll be back in a bit," she said casually. "Try not to scare the neighbors before I return."
"No promises."
"You're unbelievable."
The door clicked shut behind her.
Silence returned.
Katsuki waited exactly three seconds before looking back out the window again. He told himself he was only checking to make sure Mitsuki didn't embarrass him somehow.
Which, honestly, was a real possibility.
From his spot by the window, he watched her walk across the driveway carrying the dish like she was delivering a sacred offering. The woman with white hair answered the door first.
The older daughter appeared a moment later, smiling politely while Mitsuki immediately launched into conversation at full speed. Katsuki couldn't hear anything through the glass, and the angle made reading lips impossible, but judging by the animated way his mother was gesturing, things were apparently going well.
Of course they were.
Mitsuki could make friends with a brick wall if given enough time.
Katsuki rested his chin against his hand with a sigh before his attention drifted automatically toward the bedroom window across from his own.
Still open.
Still visible.
And-
Oh.
The boy stood inside now.
Directly facing the window.
Facing him.
A box rested easily in his arms while mismatched eyes stared across the gap between the houses with unnerving steadiness.
No surprise.
No confusion.
Just calm observation.
Like he'd caught Katsuki peeking five minutes ago and had simply accepted this as normal human behavior.
For one horrifying second, they made direct eye contact.
Katsuki's soul nearly left his body.
"AH-"
The sound that escaped him was somewhere between a screech and a dying animal.
He yanked the curtains shut so violently one nearly came off the rod.
Holy shit.
Holy shit.
Heat flooded straight into his face as he stared at the now-closed curtains in absolute horror.
He'd been caught.
Watching.
Like some creep.
"Oh my god," Katsuki muttered hoarsely to himself, hands pressed against his forehead. "Kill me now."