Serendipity

anchorage

Shouto is confused, again. They called Mr. Suzuki because his next meeting has been postponed for the holidays. Mr. Suzuki told him that he should try being looser with his schedule, that he should learn how to be without it. Now, all the things he's done are all messed up in his head, swapped around and unorganized. He keeps getting lost in them, and father tells him to go back to the dark room one minute, but the next, Aizawa is telling him that he won't go back there. Shouto's sneakers are buried deep in the sand.

But he's at school, raising his hand for the first time. Iida smiles at him and moves on. He freezes Shoda in training and then he eats lunch with Aizawa and Present Mic. But lunch always comes before hero training, so that all has to be wrong, right?

Missing school on Monday already messed him up. Aizawa visited him, Shouto pushed him out of the way so he won't get hurt and Aizawa forgave him. I promise, he said, when Shouto begged him not to go.

And he made Shouto food, even though Shouto clung to him like a baby.

But Aizawa tries to explain to him that those memories all happened on different days, that he can still keep his schedule if he needs it, for now. But Shouto doesn't want to disobey Mr. Suzuki.

"You won't," Aizawa tells him. "He's there to help with what you need. He won't force you to do anything. Even if you wanted to keep your schedule for the rest of your life, he'd help you with other things."

That confuses Shouto, too.

When he's in his room at night, he sits in front of the balcony door and watches the snow as it either falls, piling up on the deck outside, or melts, turning into big puddles of cold water. He keeps his notebook close. He writes in it, Mr. Suzuki went over the things he wrote down and told him he's doing very good at writing in it. He told Shouto his handwriting is very nice.

Mr. Suzuki didn't answer his question the way he wanted him to. He hadn't planned on asking him at all, but Mr. Suzuki caught him trying to hide the scribbling. He says that Father hurt him because he wanted to control Shouto. That there were things he wanted him to do and that he is a bad person for hurting Shouto.

Shouto looks at the snow piling on the railing outside. His pencil lead glides over the paper:'snow'. He knows he already wrote it, before, but he feels that he should write it down again.

Under it, he writes down what Aizawa told him, earlier. "Eri's birthday." He's never met Eri, but Aizawa tells him that she's pretty much his sister in the way that Shinsou is his brother.

Shouto thinks of the children he was made to replace. He tries to remember their names, but they mix around, just like his memories, and stop making sense.

Instead, he circles the white haired woman's spot on the list. He's trying to be brave enough to ask Mr. Suzuki if she's real or not.

Bakugo has still been running with him in the mornings. They go on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. They didn't run today, he doesn't remember running today, at least. So it must be Tuesday or Friday, or it's the weekend. Bakugo likes the sunset. The last time they ran together, he told Shouto to wait on the trail a little away from the peak. Then, he called someone. Shouto doesn't know who, but Bakugo was smiling so it must've been safe.

Bakugo is safe, he's decided. Just like Shinsou and Kaminari and Iida and Aizawa. Even though they fought before, Bakugo hasn't hurt him since. And Shouto tries to apologize for attacking him, but the words never come out.

Some nights, he has trouble sleeping. Often. He writes in his notebook and erases the things he writes, or keeps them if he thinks they fall under nice.