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When Hitoshi walks into class, there is a note on his desk. He freezes for a second, hands shaking as cold dread runs through his spine. For an instant, he is absolutely sure that he knows what this is about — another insult, another ‘you don’t belong here, villain’.
This is UA, he tells himself, taking a deep breath and gingerly walking closer. Things are different here.
And on the whole, they have been. His classmates have been distant, yes, but Hitoshi hasn’t exactly made that much of an effort to get close to them. He doesn’t want to get close to them, not when his goal is to leave them behind and get to the hero course, where he belongs.
But this note… This note just reminds him of too many things.
Hitoshi reaches out to take it and throw it away, but… At the last second, he hesitates. He doesn’t even know why, really. There is no specific reason for it, except maybe a small, quiet what if.
What if someone left this on his desk by accident? What if it was meant for someone else, or what if it isn’t even any kind of note, just something that slipped through another student’s notebook on the way out of class yesterday? Casting his mind back on it, Hitoshi’s pretty sure he’s seen at least some of them scribbling down notes all day during class — what if what he’s found is important?
… Maybe he shouldn’t just throw it out.
The paper crinkles under his fingers and Hitoshi winces, instantly relaxing the grip he hadn’t even realized he’d been tightening.
“Okay,” he says, just to hear his own voice out loud.
It echoes in the empty room — Hitoshi is often the first one to get here, since he takes advantage of the facilities to train before class.
That reminder helps him relax, and he sets down his bag by his desk, slumping down into his chair, the note held out in front of him.
It’s such an ordinary piece of paper — how odd, then, that it can make his stomach roil and churn like a ship cast out on a stormy sea.
The paper crinkles again as Hitoshi finally unfolds it, fingers automatically coming up to smoothen the lines the folding has left behind.
It is a short note. Not class-related, and definitely left behind for him. But it isn’t… mean, or mocking, or anything Hitoshi was still half-expecting to find.
It’s…
Well, to be honest, it is a bit of a mess — the handwriting is cramped and hurried, and the paper itself has clearly been ripped away from a notebook in a haste, but it feels… more honest, maybe, for it.
“Good news?”
The voice startles him and Hitoshi jumps in his seat, heart pounding in his chest as he hastens to fold the note over again and half-attempts to hide it before he realizes his desk is empty of anything to hide it with.
“I— What?” he blurts back, eyes snapping up to find that mumbling green kid’s eyes — Mido-something, maybe? Right, Midoriya. He’d been the only one to shout out his name at Present Mic in their first English class, which had unfortunately raised the volume of that lesson by at least ten percent.
Midoriya smiles back at him, half-sheepish half…expectant, maybe? Hitoshi’s not exactly good at reading facial expressions when they aren’t sneers or pity. “You were smiling,” he says, nodding toward the note.
Hitoshi blinks and opens his mouth before closing it. His cheeks heat up.
He had been smiling, he realizes. The warmth spreads down his neck. “It was nothing,” he mumbles, shooting Midoriya an embarrassed glare. He slides the note across his desk and shoves it into his bag.
“Probably some kind of bad joke,” he adds, feeling the edge of dread curl back along his spine — because that makes more sense, of course it does, why didn’t Hitoshi see it first?
Why would he even allow himself to get drawn in like this, to be fooled like this? He isn’t eight anymore, to be cajoled by some nice words and a half-hearted attempt at kindness.
He is so drawn into his downward spiral that he misses the flash of pain in Midoriya’s eyes — followed by a sharper glint of determination as he sets his jaw.
“W-Well, I’m sure it wasn’t,” Midoriya mumbles, his voice uncharacteristically clear for a moment before the bell rings and he lets out a high-pitched meeping sound, and hurries over to his desk, leaving Hitoshi no time to answer.
Whatever.
Midoriya’s probably doesn’t know what he’s talking about — of the two of them, Hitoshi is the one who’s been leaving with his quirk for a decade, he’s the one who knows what to expect from other people.
Granted, a complimentary note is a new tactic, but… Hitoshi’s sure enough they’ll reveal their true intentions soon enough.
They always do.
(And if somewhere deep inside his chest, something still aches at the thought of it being real and true, well…
Maybe that eight-year-old Hitoshi hasn’t quite learned his lesson yet, has he?)
The notes keep coming.
A new one shows up on his desk every other morning, almost like clockwork.
They’re always pretty short — a couple of sentences at most, really, but written in that same tiny, hurried handwriting, almost like its writer is used to trying to take up the least amount of place possible while also saying the most they can.
Or maybe Hitoshi is reading too much into this.
But the notes keep on being… nice. Encouraging.
A short I believe you would make a great hero! or Your quirk is so cool, do you know if you can control several people at once? That would be so useful!
(The answer to that is ‘No, not really’, but the fact that someone has put some thought into his quirk and hasn’t instantly thought ‘villain’ makes the hummingbird trapped behind his ribs flutter its wings again.
Maybe… it starts to whisper, before Hitoshi squashes it ruthlessly.)
It gets to a point where the notes kind of pile up on his desk at home, though.
Hitoshi doesn’t even know why he’s keeping them, really. Evidence, he would say if anyone asked — for when the writer inevitably reveals their true intentions. Proof Hitoshi can use to say he’d been harassed for weeks before whatever will happen happens.
But nothing happens, and his mother takes notice.
“What are these?” she asks, an amused twinkle shining in the purple eyes Hitoshi’s inherited from her.
“Nothing,” Hitoshi snaps back, snatching the piece of paper she’d grabbed out of her hand. He flails about for a place to put it for a second, only to realize how useless hiding it would be when the whole pile of them is just right there in front of them.
His shoulders slump as his mother lets out a soft laugh, gently rubbing his shoulders.
“Are they all like this?” she asks, nodding toward the unsteady pile at the edge of his desk.
There are probably a good twenty of them now. Unfolded but not flattened, they suddenly seem to take up much more room than Hitoshi had realized.
It is a lot of effort to put into some mean-spirited joke, his mind supplies him.
Hitoshi swallows. “Yeah.” He sets down his pen and pushes away his math homework — it’s probably hopeless at this point anyway — to grab the pile, smoothening the sheets carefully. “Well, mostly.” He grimaces. “I don’t actually remember what the one you had said.”
His mother rubs his shoulders again. “Looks like somebody’s got a secret admirer…” She winks, and Hitoshi’s cheeks start to burn.
“Mum!”
She laughs again. “Alright, alright, I see how it is.” Her mirth softens as she looks down at him, and Hitoshi feels his anger fizzle down — it is hard to stay angry when his mother looks at him like that, really, all kind and motherly.
She bites her lip and squeezes his shoulder. “I’ll stop, I promise. Just… Promise me you won’t push this away just because you’re afraid?”
“Mum, I—”
“No, I know it’s been hard for you. I wish… I wish you’d gotten a different combination of our quirks. Something… Something easier on you — but you are amazing. Your quirk is amazing — and if you want to be a hero, then I believe you’re going to be a hero, alright? It wouldn’t be the most unlikely thing for somebody else to see that too, okay?”
Hitoshi’s eyes prickle. “Okay,” he repeats, throat suddenly tight.
His mother squeezes his shoulders one last time. “Okay,” she echoes. “So… Just come down soon? Dinner’s almost ready.”
Absently, Hitoshi nods. “I will. Thanks.”
He ends up staring at the notes for so long his mother has to come and get him again. He doesn’t feel any sort of insight from them, but… He may have the inklings of the beginning of a plan, at least.
So maybe Hitoshi has been too harsh on his invisible note-writer.
(He’s not calling them a ‘secret admirer’, because that sounds too cheesy and also completely ridiculous. And also that makes it sound more romantic than it is.)
Maybe his first thought (hope) was right, and this is someone awkwardly trying to be nice — Hitoshi can certainly relate to the awkward part.
Of course, realizing that maybe you don’t have to wait for the other shoe to fall doesn’t actually make you stop waiting for that.
Especially since Monday comes, and there is no note on Hitoshi’s desk — despite the fact that by his count, he is due one today.
He falters at the sight of his empty desk long enough for one of his classmates to bump into him on their way to their desk — followed by a slightly concerned look when Hitoshi doesn’t move.
It is only later, halfway through homeroom, that Hitoshi realizes the class is way quieter than it usually is. Midoriya’s mumbling, which had annoyed him at first, had somehow faded into the background over the weeks.
Come to think of it, Midoriya hadn’t been there to greet him that morning. He was usually the only other person to get there as early — or almost as early — as Hitoshi himself, and somehow, Hitoshi had gotten used to being greeted by his classmate first thing in the morning without being aware of it.
Hitoshi had been too distracted by his empty desk for Midoriya’s absence to register before, but now that he has, he can’t help but feel a slight twinge of guilt in his chest — and maybe worry as well.
Grimacing, he leans across his chair to ask his neighbor, “Do you know what’s happened to Midoriya?”
Haruma, who’d been chewing on the back end of her pencil, just stops and stares at him.
Hitoshi scowls back, glaring defiantly, silently daring her to say anything.
She stays silent for a moment longer, before snorting and rolling all four of her eyes. “Weren’t you listening? Teach’ said he called in sick.” She says the word ‘teach’’ in English, and so it takes Hitoshi’s mind a second to parse that out.
“Oh.” He blinks back at her. “Alright.”
She snorts again. “Don’t worry too much about him, I’m sure he’ll be fine. Back and ready to geek out about quirks in no time!”
Reflexively, part of Hitoshi wants to bristle at her words — but she doesn’t sound malicious or even particularly annoyed. Her words are actually kind of… fond, almost.
“Right,” he replies, suddenly feeling wrong-footed. Did Midoriya really ‘geek’ out about quirks that much? He hadn’t really ever seemed to approach Hitoshi about that — in fact, it seemed like he’d made an effort not to talk to Hitoshi about his quirk.
At the top of his head, Hitoshi can suddenly recall at least a dozen times where Midoriya had cut himself off at the last moment. Had Midoriya been about to say something all those times.
Hitoshi’s gaze falls back on his desk, across the blank page where he’s supposed to take notes.
Come to think of it, Midoriya does use notebooks. He’s often scribbling into them, too, crouched over his desk and mumbling to himself.
Of course, he’s far from the only student to use them — but he is the only one Hitoshi can remember clutching a notebook to his chest practically everywhere.
“Right,” he repeats quietly, suddenly feeling very sure he knows exactly who has been leaving him all these secret notes.
So.
So.
So.
Midoriya.
Hitoshi walks through the rest of his day in a daze. He goes through the motions, but his mind isn’t really there — the moment he’s the most present is when Aizawa-sensei shows up to supervise his additional training, but even then, he’s busy thinking about Midoriya and the notes and everything, until Aizawa-sensei narrows his eyes at him and tells him to focus or leave.
But it’s hard not to think about it even then.
How is Hitoshi supposed to not think about the fact that Midoriya has been the one leaving him notes for weeks now, all the while saying nothing to his face?
(Only… That wasn’t quite true, was it? He’d asked if Hitoshi liked the notes, several times, when he’d caught Hitoshi smiling at some of them.
In retrospect, it feels obvious — but then again, many things often do.)
He waits until the training session ends and lingers, hesitant, until Aizawa-sensei cracks an eye open and sighs heavily. “Alright,” he says. “Out with it. What’s your teenage drama, and how soon can it be resolved?”
Despite himself, Hitoshi’s lips twitch into a smile. “It’s… It’s kind of weird.” He hesitates again, before remembering his mother’s words. Her voice echoes through his head again, the way it has several times since she spoke to him. Open up a little. Trust someone. Make a friend.
This is probably not what she’d meant, but he doubts she’d disapprove.
“So… I have this classmate, and he— they’ve been leaving me notes on my desk?”
Instantly, Aizawa-sensei’s eyes narrow. “What kind of notes? Do you need to report them — you should do that to your own teacher.”
For a moment, Hitoshi doesn’t understand — despite having jumped to the exact same conclusion not that long ago, somewhere along the way, Hitoshi suddenly realizes he had… forgotten to keep reminding himself not to trust this writer.
“Ah, no, it’s fine.” He scratches the back of his head and bends down to pick up his water bottle. “They’re… nice notes?”
Aizawa-sensei’s glower lightens. “Right. Then what’s the problem?”
Hitoshi licks his lips, mind grasping for the right words and feeling them slip through his mental fingers like smoke. “It’s just…” He shrugs, frowning a little and scuffing his shoes on the ground. “Why wouldn’t they just… talk to me?”
He realizes it’s stupid as soon as he says it — Midoriya does talk to him (well, he says hello at least), but it would probably be easier to leave an anonymously written note for something like this.
Or at least Hitoshi imagines so — he can’t exactly picture himself trying out anything similar.
Aizawa-sensei, if possible, looks even more tired. “They probably just want to be your friend,” he says, pronouncing the word ‘friend’ like it is some kind of terminal disease.
Before Hitoshi can figure out how to answer that, Aizawa-sensei drops to the ground and wiggles himself into his bright yellow sleeping back, before crawling out of the room.
It is, unfortunately, not the first time he has done this to get out of a conversation — or really, just any time he deemed their training sessions over — and at this point, Hitoshi just stares after him, unfazed.
It is still very, very weird though.
Midoriya returns to class the next day.
Hitoshi knows this because there is a new note on his desk, even though by his count there shouldn’t be. Now that he looks for it, it is also kind of easy to see the way Midoriya practically vibrates on the spot when he walks in and finds Hitoshi sitting at his desk, the note in front of him.
“Hello, Shinsou-kun,” he says.
“Midoriya,” Hitoshi replies. For once, he raises his eyes and really looks at Midoriya. The boy looks… tired, but not unhappy — a typical morning for any student, then.
He plays with the edge of the note a little bit longer, letting the paper rasp against his thumb. He hasn’t opened it yet. Part of him is curious to know exactly what it says, but he already knows enough — and suddenly, he also wants to hear those words come from Midoriya’s mouth instead.
Instead, he feels his eyes narrow. “I didn’t come here to make friends,” he says.
Something almost pained flashes in Midoriya’s eyes as they start to well up with tears, and Hitoshi winces internally.
“That’s okay,” Midoriya starts to say, with a smile so fake it looks like it hurts.
“But,” Hitoshi continues, interrupting him, “I guess that as long as you don’t… slow me down in trying out for the hero course, I wouldn’t be… opposed to testing out some of the things you’ve mentioned in your notes.”
“M-My notes?” Midoriya’s voice goes high-pitched, and if Hitoshi hadn’t already been convinced his classmate was a terrible liar, the half-guilty, half-panicked look he throws at the note on Hitoshi’s desk would have been more than enough proof for him.
“They’re nice,” Hitoshi says gruffly. “They’ve been… nice.” He grimaces, feeling almost ready to break out in hives, but Midoriya’s face breaks open into a grin so wide it doesn’t seem like it should be possible.
“R-Really?”
Hitoshi nods.
“A-And you want to try out s-some of my ideas?” Midoriya’s voice raises higher and Hitoshi would swear there are now little stars sparkling in his eyes.
Feeling like he’s probably going to regret it, he nods again. “Sure.”
Midoriya’s eyes water again ad he bows deeply and so rapidly he almost hits his head on the table. “T-Thank you! Ipromiseyouwon’tregretit!”
Hitoshi pats him gingerly on the back. “I’m sure I won’t.”
(And he doesn’t.)