Shoto Todoroki Oneshots

Record of my Youth

"Hi there, and welcome to Blank Space. It's about time, right? To say goodbye."

He remembers the first time he pressed the record button, how his voice had cracked and his hands were shaking so hard the microphone picked it up. He felt foolish, minutes turning to hours as he stumbled through his sentences, pressing play and pause over and over again until he completed his script. Editing had been even worse, he was never fond of his own voice. Some days it was too rough, a sign his body was changing in ways too quick for his mind to catch up with, some days it was deep and scary when the world became a little too small for him to breathe in without inhaling smoke and flames, and on the worst days it would be frail and almost inaudible like his mother's, the days where his heart would beat in frantic rhythms in his chest and his knees were moments away from giving out. 

But he did it, and went through each step of the process little by little, day by day until hours of incomprehensible speech turned into a short fifteen minute episode. Even though some of the most popular podcasts nowadays, especially those he listened to most often, had video features so listeners could feel like they were part of the conversation, he chose to go without, and at the last minute added a voice change function so nobody would recognise him. He doubted that was possible anyway since the number of people he was acquainted with the most that could recognise him were those who walked across the same scorched and over-polished floorboards as him.  

The one thing he spent the most time worrying over was the name, a blank box sitting at the top of the upload page, his type bar going forwards and backwards as he typed and deleted title after title, none of them sitting right with him. It couldn't be something too outrageous nor anything that sounded like teenage angst that would make people wince, so for a while after having uploaded the recording he paced back and forth across his room, the empty box staring at him with its own frustration. But then it hit him: Blank Space. Why fill the box with something trivial or boring when it could be left as it is?

It was done. There on his screen was the first episode of his podcast, a short thing that probably wouldn't mean much to anyone. But it felt like something worthwhile, at least to him, for his voice, his thoughts and emotions to echo beyond the walls that imprisoned him, to reach out to strangers who would never know his face nor his name, but maybe, just maybe, there were more people in the world like him who needed to hear a new voice too...

"It's been six years, right? It feels like just yesterday when I decided to start this journey, when the world seemed so small and there was only my voice to fill the empty space. But these six years have taught me there is so much to discover in the world, and this community we've created I hope has shown you how much love and happiness is out there waiting for us."

He remembers the first time someone commented on his podcast. It was his third episode, back when he was still figuring out what he wanted to talk about, what themes he wanted to have as the focus of his work. At the time it was mostly trivial things, things that you would talk about to fill empty spaces in conversation, but at the time that was all he knew. His views were low, but he didn't feel any particular way about it, this was more for him to hear his own voice every other week, to know that he still existed despite the oppressive, suffocating heat that slept across the hallway. 

The comment was short: "good stuff" it had said, but to know that someone took a few moments in their day, paused their activities and plans just to give him that small bit of encouragement meant so much to him. He would look at it most days, then even more so when one comment became two, then a small group scattered across the different episodes. "This is so refreshing", "like a friend who you can sit in silence with", "I listen to this after a hard day", each comment created a spark of hope that he channelled into determination, and each time he thought about quitting, about how those few familiar profile pics didn't really mean anything in truth, he would keep going for those people if not for himself, to give them that comfort he was still searching for in his own life.