Blame it on me

Blame it on me chapter 3

It was five in the dawn by the time Shouta's shift ended and he sat into his car with two thin folders in his hand, barely awake. The time he spent being an independent undercover hero, moving from city to city, getting allies at all kinds of places really paid off in situations like such. He needed to make two phone calls to get Katsuki's files handed to him by a former cop who's daughter he saved once back in the day. It might not have been the legal way to get to know more about his son's past, but nobody got hurt and he did it for his family, so he couldn't care less about the legality of his actions.

He wanted to wait to open the files with Hizashi, but curiosity quickly won him over. He opened the police file, knowing exactly what he was looking for: A statement. He scribbled through the papers and soon found one written by one of Katsuki's former teachers, who apparently was the one to report the boy's parents.

In the statement, he claimed the kid went to school with a couple of bruises and when he was asked about them, Katsuki said he got in a fight with another student. His teacher didn't buy it as it wasn't the first time the kid showed up to school covered in bruises, and kept pressuring Katsuki until he started crying and wouldn't answer any more questions. The teacher got suspicious and called Katsuki's parents in to have them explain what happened to their son exactly and they all denied abuse was the case, including Katsuki.

Shouta tossed the paper to the side to check the police report on the next page.

Two police officers were sent to Katsuki's home late afternoon on the same day with the suspicion of an abuse case. When they walked into the house, uninvited, they saw the remains of a broken glass cabinet and some blood on the floor in the living room. Neither of the parents were injured, and the child was nowhere to be seen. The parents claimed their son was currently at a sleepover, but the officers weren't convinced and started to search the house and arrested the parents when they tried to stop them. They found a locked room and had to break in to find the child in there, unconscious and covered in injuries.

The parents were found guilty for physical abuse and neglect. They were sentenced to three years of prison without ever pleading guilty for what they had done to their son.

Shouta didn't think that three years were enough, but all things considered, he was grateful they at least got sentenced to prison and weren't just fined. He took a shaky breath and tried to swallow the fury burning his insides as tossed the file to the passenger seat and opened the folder of the hospital records. It was thinner than the previous folder, which should have been reassuring, but Aizawa doubted he'd find anything even close to reassuring in there.

He opened it and read through Katsuki's medical history. Looking at the lack of files, Shouta realized Katsuki has barely ever been to hospitals. There were only a few occasions, one of them was from almost four months ago, when Katsuki's parents got arrested. The list of injuries was somehow exactly what Aizawa expected, yet nothing could have prepared him for having to read through them, as they painted a painfully vivid picture in his mind.

Bruises covering the torso and arms caused by multiple blunt hits, most likely kicks. Two broken ribs and a cracked ulna. Several cuts on the left arm, chest and face area, Aizawa connected the cuts to the mentioned broken cabinet. Mild blood loss, which left Shouta wonder just how long the boy had been locked in that room before the police found him.

The parents were either too irresponsible to realize the seriousness of the injuries they caused or they simply didn't even care if their son died that day. For Shouta it didn't really matter, he wanted to hunt them down whatever was the case.

He closed the folder and rolled down the window to get some fresh air before drove off and headed home with a heavy heart. Stepping into the house, Aizawa noticed a dim light coming from upstairs. He took off his shoes and walked towards it, ending up at the bathroom. As he stepped to the doorway, Katsuki bumped into him on his way out.