No, it's you and you alone.

Chapter Four

Hitoshi groans as his alarm pulls him out of blissful, dreamless sleep. He already regrets everything: the late night studying not doing wonders after the taxing day he had yesterday.

As the teen pulls himself out of bed, he struggles to yawn through the muzzle. Years of wearing it made him almost, almost forget about the horrid mask strapped tightly to his face.

Taking note of his attire, Hitoshi scrunches his nose in disgust. He had been too preoccupied with collapsing and sleeping to change out of his uniform and now it was crumpled and pressed into huge wrinkles. He tries to smooth it out as best as he can before giving up and undoing the tie that had loosed in the night. He needed to change anyway.

Shoving the remaining pieces of stationary and books into his bag that were littered around from the late night training session, Hitoshi heads to the bathroom.

Its not that Hitoshi doesn't have clothes, he does. It's just that he doesn't have a lot of them. Its not exactly something Ikeda will go out of his way to buy and Hitoshi would rather spend his money on Aiko.

The result of this is not great, Hitoshi only has two changes of casual clothes and then two changes of each version of the U.A. uniform. He's lucky he has jackets this winter, he can recall before he brought them and those were long and cold times.

It's really not a big deal, Hitoshi normally finds time to wash the clothes, hand washing them if he doesn't want to risk using the old washing machine in the basement. Unfortunately for him, he hasn't had the time to wash any of the casual clothes and so he is left only with his U.A. uniforms.

Hitoshi sighs, his workout outfit will have to be the U.A gym uniform for now, he can only pray that it doesn't make him a target when working out in public. With that in mind, he changes quickly into the uniform, throwing his heavier jacket over the top and marveling at how easy his movement is now. No more bruises to wince over. His wrist feels stiff in the brace but otherwise unharmed.

He shakes off the thoughts and heads back into the bedroom. Aiko is still fast asleep, which makes sense considering the sun has yet to rise. Hitoshi plants a quick kiss on the top of her hair, earning him a sleepy mumble. He smiles and heads off, scampering quietly down the hallway and into the cold morning.

The frigid air makes him shiver, pulling the jacket closer into him. It doesn't help that Hitoshi is freezing already, there isn't an awful lot of body heat to trap. He rips off the muzzle as soon as he is outside, shoving it back into the box and then into his bag.

Swirling water in his mouth to rid himself of the taste of rust, Hitoshi rubs the indents on his face. He's glad they are not visible unless you look very closely. Besides, no one comes close enough to Hitoshi to ever notice. The thought sends a pang of hurt through him before he breathes through the tightness in his chest.

Rubbing his hands together, Hitoshi curses his lack of gloves as he stretches his legs before setting out at a slow jog. He's lucky that U.A isn't too far from his home, he takes the bus for convenience but it should only take forty-five minutes to reach the school at a decent jogging pace, the perfect morning workout.

Hitoshi wishes his phone was a little bit more decent, he wouldn't mind listening to music on his jog. Without anything to distract him, Hitoshi turns back to his thoughts. He still doesn't know exactly what prompted Aizawa to take interest in him.

To be completely honest, his performance in the sports festival was horrendous. Never mind that he got to the third round, Hitoshi can tell exactly how far behind he is from the hero students and it's overwhelming. He only got so far by relying too heavily on his quirk and when that was taken away, it was embarrassing how easy he lost.