Chapter Text
Shirakumo Oboro’s funeral isn’t a small event.
Looking around the church, Yamada Hizashi can only recognize a few faces.
He notices Oboro’s mom and dad skittering around the room to make small talk with the other people present.
Oboro’s father has red-rimmed eyes and trembling hands as he talks to other students from his son’s class.
In his two years of knowing him, Hizashi has never seen Mister Shirakumo cry. He’s never seen the man show any emotions for that matter.
But seeing Mister Shirakumo makes Hizashi’s heart feel heavier.
Shouta leans against the wall right next to where Hizashi stands. With Hizashi’s hair being down, he realizes that he’s almost the same height as the other boy.
“Do you want my grandfather to drive you home when this is over?” Hizashi offers in a small voice.
His voice that he couldn’t use to save his friend.
He swallows back the tears building in his throat.
“It’s alright. I can walk home,” Shouta whispers, digging his hands into his pockets farther. If the circumstances were different, Hizashi might’ve teased him for wearing a suit.
Then Shouta’s words register.
Hizashi internally winces.
If Shouta walked home, he wouldn’t get home until after his curfew. The same curfew that his parents would always give him hell over.
Shouta’s gaze is almost unseeing as he glances at the closed casket in the front of the church. There’s a school photo of Oboro smiling at the camera next to the casket on a metal easel covered in fake flowers.
“Yamada, Aizawa, thank you for showing up,” a soft voice says. Hizashi buries his urge to flinch and looks over at the source of the voice.
It’s Oboro’s mom.
With her tall stature, gentle eyes, and cloud-like blue locks that reach her shoulders, she looks just like Oboro.
Hizashi’s heart hurts at the resemblance.
“We wanted to offer our condolences in person,” Shouta replies in a practiced monotone voice. Despite his best efforts to hide it, there’s a slight shakiness to Shouta’s words.
“It’s not either of your faults, dears, okay? Oboro would be upset if you blamed yourselves for this,” Oboro’s mom says. Her words send a stab of pain into Hizashi’s torso.
Shouta nods and keeps his gaze trained on the ground. There’s a slight tremor to his shoulders.
“The speeches are about to begin. Would either of you like to say a few words?”
Hizashi’s throat closes up at the thought of having to talk about his friend in past tense.
Normally, Hizashi loves to talk.
He loves having eyes on him.
But in a too sunny church with too many mourning people, Hizashi doesn’t want any attention on him.
Despite his racing heart and shaking hands, Hizashi’s next words come out a lot stronger than he feels.
“I’ll do it.”
Looking out on the crowd of people in pews, Hizashi absentmindedly observes everyone.
Shirakumo’s mom is holding a cloud-patterned handkerchief on her lap with white knuckles.
Shirakumo’s dad is staring blankly at the ground.
His classmates are in varying stages of grief but all of them are equally silent.
Shouta’s eyes are fixated right on him.
Hizashi clears his throat, hoping that his nerves are swallowed with his saliva.
“Uh, hello. My name is Yamada Hizashi and I’m — well, was — one of Oboro’s best friends. So I’ve come up here today to tell everyone a bit about him,” Hizashi starts. Behind his thin glasses, Hizashi closes his eyes to avoid seeing the pitying looks directed at him.
It feels like his skin is burning under their gazes.
“I met Oboro on my first day at U.A. I went the complete opposite way to my classroom and I was on the verge of tears when I met Oboro. He — he calmed me down with his jokes and we found out we were in the same class. We got to the classroom almost thirty minutes late. I thought our teacher was going to kill us but Oboro just kept talking. Even in the face of our terrifying teacher, he just kept smiling and cracking jokes. That’s just who Oboro was,” Hizashi recalls, finally opening his eyes.
A few people let out forced huffs of laughter at Hizashi’s anecdote.
“Oboro… Oboro was more than a friend to me. He was my hero,” Hizashi concludes, his throat closing up. Tears burn at his eyes, distorting the view of all of Oboro’s friends and family staring at him.
“Thank you for listening,” Hizashi chokes out, hastily walking back to his spot next to Shouta.
Shouta hesitantly puts a warm calloused hand on Hizashi’s back.
“Good job,” Shouta whispers to him in a genuine voice.
Those two words break the floodgate.
Hizashi silently cries into Shouta’s side the rest of the funeral.
Shouta is not stupid.
He’s seen his classmates in action and he knows that he’s one of the most capable in combat within his entire class.
Everyone has a weakness.
Whether it’s their family, an old injury, speed, a healing wound, or a trigger for old trauma, everyone has a weakness.
Capitalizing on those weaknesses and using them to his advantage made Shouta a formidable opponent.
His eyes scan over the frame of the hulking woman in front of him through Oboro’s goggles.
There had to be a weakness.
The woman’s quirk was clearly a mutation that gave her the physical build of some type of large ape. Shouta thinks she might have a gorilla mutation, however, he is not a monkey-ologist.
Despite having at least a hundred pounds over him, Shouta knows that there is at least one weakness to the woman.
At the end of the day, she was still human.
Noticing how the woman is putting less weight on her left leg, Shouta allows himself to grin.
With blood staining his teeth from his newly broken nose, Shouta wonders just how scary his smile is.
It’s clearly scary enough to make the woman pause for a second and look a little uneasy.
Adrenaline races through his entire body as he wraps his capture weapon around the railing of a nearby balcony and launches himself feet-first into the woman’s left knee.
At her shriek of pain, Shouta knows that he was right about her weakness.
Being aware of his own weaknesses was just as important as being aware of others.
And Shouta’s weaknesses were Shirakumo Oboro and Yamada Hizashi.
Hizashi stares at his phone screen as he paces around his bedroom.
None of his messages to Shouta have been read yet.
Shouta had arrived at his apartment past his curfew of seven in the afternoon.
Even with his parents being the most horrible people alive, Shouta would always respond.
Hizashi can’t lose anyone else.
He can’t.
He’s already lost Oboro.
He can’t lose Shouta too.
His thoughts are interrupted by a knock on his door.
“You can come in,” Hizashi hesitantly calls out. His voice is subdued and his smile still hasn’t returned.
He’s not sure if he ever will smile again like how he used to.
The door slowly opens with a creak to reveal his grandfather standing with a bowl in one of his hands.
“I’ve brought you dinner, little birdie. Starving to death wouldn’t do you any good as a hero,” his grandfather rasps.
Hizashi’s heart aches at the word ‘hero.' How could he be a hero when he couldn’t even save his best friend?
His grandfather sets the bowl of food on the edge of the desk by Hizashi’s door.
There’s nothing but understanding in his grandfather’s eyes as he makes eye contact with Hizashi.
“It’s not your fault, little birdie,” his grandfather whispers as he closes the door.
Hizashi shudders and scrubs his eyes with the palms of his hands, pushing up his glasses in the process.
He glances at the bowl.
He’s not all that hungry but he knows that he has to eat.
He sits down at his desk and silently eats his ramen.
Hizashi is woken up by the sound of someone knocking on his window.
He doesn’t know when he fell asleep at his desk but he does regret that choice very much.
His back cracks as he slowly stands up from his desk chair to walk over to the window.
Hizashi adjusts his glasses and glances at the digital clock on his nightstand. The clock reads ‘01:43’ in white numbers.
The knocking resumes.
“What the hell?” Hizashi mutters as he stumbles over to his window. He yanks open his rubber duck patterned curtains to reveal an injured Shouta crouched in the window box of flowers.
Shouta waves at him as another drop of blood lands from his nose onto Hizashi’s window sill.
Hizashi opens his window.
“What the fuck, Shouta?” Hizashi hisses, being careful to not activate his quirk.
Shouta smiles. It’s a bloodstained thing and one of his top incisors is missing.
Hizashi’s stomach drops at the sight of his wounds.
“Do you still have some rope left?” Shouta asks in an abnormally calm voice.
“Shouta, you don’t need rope, you need a goddamn hospital,” Hizashi retorts as he steps out of the way. Shouta slides through his window and lands silently on his carpet.
Hizashi wonders how he’s going to explain the blood droplets landing on his carpet.
“There’s an unconscious mugger a street away. I need something to tie him up with,” Shouta explains. Hizashi pauses.
“Shouta, what did you do?” Hizashi cautiously inquires. Shouta shrugs.
“I think I became a vigilante.”
“What?”