Chapter Text
Hishashi Midoryia had been fired. More specifically he’d been laid off. He was understandably pissed and his job search wasn’t going any better, it was rather atrocious actually. Luckily he and his wife had saved enough to sustain themselves and their son for some months but they’d rather not chew through their retirement funds so soon.
In the backseat of his car was his son, one benefit of the whole getting fired was spending time with his wife and kid. He was a vibrant kid, he loved heroes and was aiming to be a pro despite his lack of a quirk.
He would be lying if he said his quirklessness didn’t bother him, not because it was weird or unnatural but because his son would be able to protect himself. He was clearly getting bullied but he never told his parents.
His son was asleep in the backseat when they had returned home. When he was a kid his Dad always used to carry him up, he undead the seat belt locked the car and took his son upstairs. The door was open and his wife was cleaning, he bumped his feet on some boxes when he walked in.
“Inko what are these boxes for?” Hishahi asked, raising his voice as little as possible in order to not wake the Izuku he was holding.
She walked over pretty quickly and it took her a few seconds before realizing it,
“Oh those are from my mother, it was her gift when we got married I never got around to opening them I was too nervous.”
Hishashi sighed, his step mother was a vicious woman. She was crude and cunning, always getting her way through guilt and subliminal messages. She was the anti him all things considered but her religious devotion was one thing he admired. It showed that deep down she was doing all her annoying things for some reason not out of cruel spite.
So they left the boxes for a summer, until the ten year old Izuku went digging looking for stuff to use for his hero adventures. He was searching in a storage cupboard when he found something hard. Fishing his hand in boxes he found photo frames and books, he had his mothers hair but their eyes weren’t so similar. He pushed into a longer box, this time it was a bit harder to get open but once he did.
In it was a straight up sword, nothing decorative either. It was beautiful having not an inch of rust present. It was a light shade of green which Midoryia thought was odd. He went to pick it up but started to hear a conversation.
“Inko we’ve been struggling for money now for a while and you clearly don’t even like it here, you said Izuku was having a hard time and it's seemingly getting worse every week.”
“What can we do? We've been looking for jobs for the past three months and came up with nothing.”
“What about your mum, she runs a rice field right, I’m sure she won’t object to help, I don’t want Izuku to go to bed hungry and I’m starting to get sick of pretending everythings fine.”
That was the last straw for Inko Midoryia, she broke down not seconds later into her husband's arms. Izuku had forgotten all about his little search and now sat in the cupboard thinking he would be moving probably.
It was true, even he had noticed the way his parents frowned at meals, they wax their stomachs grumble whenever he would eat and they wouldn’t. He didn’t want to leave but he did want to see his gran, he hadn’t seen her in years and meeting her would be fun.
He wouldn’t see Kaachan for a while which wasn’t the worst thing on earth but it left a hole in his heart, like he was running away from the challenge. He hated the idea of Kaachan thinking he was running away but that’s what he was doing right, not like he cared about what Izuku did. To him Izuku was a Deku, someone who was useless and trash.
But Kaachan was his hero. That much probably would never change.
His parents were having money problems and because of him his dad was going hungry and his mum was crying. It took him an hour to leave the cupboard but he came out resolved, he would become a hero not just to save but to support, support anyone who needed it and that’s that.
His parents were more stressed than ever before in the coming week, having to fit decades of stuff into a truck and leave to the middle of nowhere Hokkaido to live with his gran. The car ride had Izuku both excited and sad. Hokkaido was an amazing place and he knew it would be fun to explore with his gran but he was sad. Sad that he didn’t feel one bit bad about leaving.
Not that he had a choice but even if he did he would have a hard time saying no, if he would. He could have actually friends and not have someone curse you for existing.