Chapter Text
“Admit it,” Kayama said with a grin, “My idea worked. The classroom is way more stable now.”
Shouta sighed. This really wasn’t the time, but of course, Kayama didn’t care that he had paperwork to grade. Or that she had her own either. No. She lorded over his desk, grinning and smug with her hands on her hips.
“I told you moving him back over by Midoriya would be for the best! There hasn’t been a single explosion all week!”
“It’s Tuesday,” Shouta said, “That’s not much of a week yet.”
“And last week by this time I had already pulled them both out of class to tell them to behave,” Kayama said. “They’re doing much better.”
Since Shouta wasn’t immediately agreeing with her, she turned to address All Might, who sat quietly at his own desk, his usually cheerful demeanor overcast with a dark cloud. “Right, All Might? Bakugou and Ashido have done so much better this week than last!”
All Might didn’t respond. He was focused on something on his desk. Kayama cleared her throat and tried again, “All Might?”
“Leave him be,” Shouta said as he turned back to his own work, “He’s doing what he should be doing right now and not gossiping about a handful of teenagers.”
“Discussing the behavior of our students isn’t gossiping,” Kayama said with a roll of her eyes. “They’re doing much better and you know it.”
“What I know is that Ashido and Bakugou haven’t fought recently, at school, but that they did have an argument at Mineta’s wake last Saturday and she slapped him. And I also know that since Todoroki has been spending time with Bakugou and Midoriya he’s acquired a very suspicious couple of bruises, particularly on his neck that he insists isn’t painful or needs to be dealt with.” He leveled her with a hard look, “So yes, maybe, things are going better between Ashido and Bakugou, but it’s only been two days into the week. Things could flip in a second and you know it.”
Kayama’s smile fell. She folded her arms across her chest and sighed. “The wake thing is upsetting, but it happened outside of the school so it’s not like we can do anything about it.”
“They don’t stop being heroes in training on their weekends,” Shouta said, “They’ll need to come to terms with the fact that their behavior reflects on their social status whether or not they think they’re on the clock. People will notice them and remember them if they associate their civilian identities with their heroic ones.” He shook his head and grimaced, “The faster they learn that, the better off they’ll be once they go public.”
“Sounds like it’s time to start working in lessons on optics,” Kayama said. “Just in time, too. The Sport Festival is coming up soon and they’re going to be right in the limelight.”
“They’ll need those lessons soon,” Shouta agreed.
Their conversation was interrupted by a jangling ringtone. Shouta didn’t recognize the sound, though Kayama seemed to and she laughed a little. “All Might, is that your phone?”
All Might jolted out of his intense focus and dug out his phone from his pocket. He looked a little embarrassed as he swiped his thumb across the phone and put it to his ear. “Hello?”
Lowering his voice, and turning away to give All Might at least the illusion of privacy, Shouta said to Kayama. “I’ll admit that the seat change has put Ashido at enough distance from Bakugou to prevent them from fighting, but it only increases my concern for Midoriya’s well-being. And now Todoroki’s as well.”
“Look, I can’t explain what happened with Todoroki any more than you can,” she said just as quietly, “As far as I can tell, he’s friends with them, but he’s not part of their romantic pair so whatever it is that’s going on, it’s not related to that. Are we sure the source isn’t from somewhere else? What about his home life?”
“His father is Endeavor,” Shouta said, “The man’s a hard ass but he’s not going to choke out his own son.”
“That we know of,” Kayama said. She shrugged off his increased glare and said with faux-casualness, “Endeavor’s private life is notoriously in the dark. He has a wife and four kids except the eldest kid is gone and rumor has it the wife is too. If Todoroki’s home life is troubled and his dad is, well, a bit of a control freak with a temper, couldn’t it at least be possible?”
“Theoretically, yes,” Shouta said, “In practice? I doubt it. Have you ever seen the man interact with his son before?”
“No,” she shook her head, “Let me guess, you have?”
“In passing,” Shouta said, “And if anything he’s overprotective of him. If even half the rumors of their household are true, I’m not entirely surprised by that overprotectiveness.”
“Then why wouldn’t he want his throat to be healed if it’s bruised?” Kayama asked.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “He didn’t elaborate and probably won’t unless he’s pressed about it.”
All Might suddenly stood, startling them both into silence again. “Of course,” he said into the phone line, speaking louder now, “I will let him know and extend the invitation on your behalf. I do appreciate this information, thank you.”
There was some short, unheard reply, and then All Might said farewell to whoever was on the line and hung up. He looked immediately at Shouta and said grimly, “That was the detective investigating the villain attack on the Unforeseen Simulation Joint arena last week. He was calling to inform us that the DNA evidence has been returned from the lab this afternoon and they’re processing it now. They should have some information soon, though from what he’s seen so far he’s not very impressed.”
Shouta nodded. He did want to know more about the villains that attacked, but because of his conversation with Kayama, he had Midoriya and Bakugou on his mind. Between one blink and the next he recalled Midoriya looking up at him, blood all down his front, his broken, bleeding lower jaw hanging from his head but showing no pain as he tried, instead, to desperately reunite with “Kacchan”.
He’d already had one dream of the boy’s gargling voice, spoken through blood and broken bones. He was not looking forward to any future ones.
“What about the jawbone? Was that identified?”
“He hadn’t looked over that part yet,” All Might said with a shake of his head. “He is focusing on the villains and will deal with the jawbone later.”
“You told him that it belonged to Midoriya, yes? Someone took a DNA sample from him there to compare it, right?”
“Yes,” All Might said, though with an uncharacteristic frown.
Shouta nodded. He leaned back in his chair, watching as All Might shuffled some papers together and gathered them up. “Was there anything else he wanted us to know?”
“He suggested a visit to debrief us on the details he acquired,” All Might said, “Though it doesn’t need to be a formal one. He was willing to meet either here at the school or at another location, if we didn’t want to go to the precinct.”
“Mm,” Shouta considered the idea of meeting up outside of the school for a work-related event and could only imagine how awkward the conversation would be with All Might. It was already awkward enough, especially when half the time it seemed like the man was perpetually running late somewhere. “At the school would be my preference. Is he going to schedule something or do we need to?”
“Ah, he said he could fit my schedule,” All Might said. He shuffled all his pages together and then said, “I think some time after class would be best. What time would work for you, Aizawa?”
Shouta reached over to his calendar book and flipped it over to examine the rest of his week. “Thursday works for me. Right after school.”
“I will let him know,” All Might said. He tucked his papers into a folder and then put that folder into an almost comically small briefcase he carried. “I must be going now. I have an old friend to visit this afternoon.”
“Sure. Have a good one,” Kayama said with a wave, “See you later.”
Shouta nodded to him.
All Might said his goodbyes and ducked back out of the office.
Kayama half sat on the edge of the desk next to his now, looking after All Might as he headed out through the doors. “You know,” she said after the door clicked shut, “He’s very different in person than I had anticipated.”
“Mm?”
“Sure he’s pretty bombastic, but he’s also a lot more reserved and… I don’t know. Old. I swear, sometimes he reminds me more of my old man than anything else.”
“You know he’s old enough to be your old man,” Shouta said as he turned back to his papers. He’d have to make sure he did enough tonight that he wouldn’t have any overflow for tomorrow if he was going to have to adjust his Wednesday evening to accommodate his Thursday meeting. Honestly, sometimes he wondered why he strung himself out so thin, doing heroic work during the nights made teaching during the day just exhausting.
“What? Really? How old is he anyway? He can’t be more than forty-eight or something.”
“He’s in his fifties,” Shouta said, “I'm not exactly sure his exact age, but it's definitely past fifty. He’s been doing this work for a long time, Kayama.”
She huffed out a sharp breath and muttered, “Seriously… It’s amazing he’s been going for so long. You’d think he’d burn out.”
“Endeavor hasn’t yet,” Shouta said.
“Endeavor is definitely only forty-five,” Kayama said confidently. “And he’ll never burn out. We all know how he’ll go out.”
“Mm,” Shouta didn’t bother looking up as he muttered back, “What makes you think All Might will go out any other way himself?”
Kayama didn’t reply to that immediately. In fact, she didn’t reply to it at all. Instead, she gave it a couple of minutes of silence and then pushed off the desk and said, “I’m gonna go get some tea and get back to work. Nice chat.”
“Mm,” Shouta turned over a page and started to work on the next one.
“And I’m right about Bakugou’s placement!” she called over her shoulder at him, “You’re going to have to admit I’m right by the end of the week and they don’t have a single explosive incident!”
Shouta didn’t reply to her, but he did softly tap his knuckle on his desk, knocking on wood to, hopefully, prevent her from jinxing them all.
It took a while for the file to load and when it finally did Mitsuki only skimmed through it. It was a larger batch than usual, containing multiple samples, at least four that were listed as unknowns, and two that were pending confirmation. She sorted through the information, looking for anything that needed to be earmarked for further investigation or appeared to have been mistaken somehow.
She sat back in her chair as she scrolled through the documents, one after another. The mid-afternoon slump had finally hit and she was tired. She told herself she’d get a coffee when she was finished with this order; it had been marked as fairly urgent and had taken a while to process, so she needed to send it over to the police headquarters as soon as possible.
It wasn’t until Mitsuki got to the file about the pro-hero that she realized exactly what file she was working on.
The Unforeseen Simulation Joint Attack.
Katsuki had been there for this, which she’d only found out after the fact.
Sitting up straighter, Mitsuki went back to the beginning of the files and began to read them more thoroughly. Anything that involved Katsuki in any way was something she needed to know about.
The information hadn’t changed since she read it last, but she read it to learn it, not just check it. The first two files were of the villains who had died during the attack. Without any autopsy information, she didn’t know how they died and she could only hope that Katsuki had been far away from them at the time. She did remember the samples associated with these files, though, they had been stagnant blood—to be tested for DNA and run through the system for help in identification and to tie them to anything that had happened before.
In that case, there were a few hits as both of these villains had been fairly active in petty crimes. Robbery, assault, things to get quick cash, and a bump of adrenaline, mostly. Nothing like grouping up to kill a bunch of children.
Mitsuki put aside that information and went to the next, which she had skimmed before because they had even less information than the first ones. The samples here had been different, she remembered that. One had been the end of a finger, the other had been blood gathered at the scene. Neither one of them came back with any hits—neither blood nor fingerprint for the former nor the blood for the latter. As far as she could tell, these two had been unknowns, at least in terms of evidence left behind.
The fifth file was the one that had made everything click before. It was the already-known DNA of Eraserhead, the pro-hero and teacher that had fought off the villains in defense of the children. She was unsure of his injuries and the information given was sparse. It was just to confirm he was there and the blood found was his. His sample had been much like one of the ones before, gathered at the scene, not given in a vial.
After him came the biggest mystery yet. Reading through the information, she thought it had to be mistaken somehow, or perhaps the sample had been damaged or the test had been done incorrectly. There was something wrong with the return DNA information. Too many proteins, too much going on within the sample. She hadn’t thought there was anything wrong with the sample, though she wasn’t so sure now. Had the blood looked right? Hadn’t it been strangely dark?
Looking at this readout, she wasn’t even sure the thing was entirely human.
For some reason, it made her think of Hisashi.
Mitsuki shivered. She closed the file abruptly and sat there, staring blankly at her computer screen. Hisashi had never shown any real interest in creating creatures. He’d really been focused on perfecting people. He wouldn’t make...whatever the hell this thing was.
Would he?
How would she even know? She hadn’t seen him or spoken to him in years. She wasn’t even sure where he worked or with whom he was employed. Any online searches ended in the kind of dead end that was too scrubbed clean to be anything but manufactured.
Feeling a little sick to her stomach, Mitsuki opened the last file.
A password request popped up and she blinked for a second, confused. A password? To open the file? That must mean— She looked at the name of the file and nodded to herself. It had the extension that denoted the file’s origin to be within the department. She wasn’t sure of which part of the department, whether it was related to an open case or not, but she had a password that would work either way.
She turned to a drawer and unlocked it with the key she kept in it during work hours. She pulled it open, fished out her password book and flipped through it to the right page. Punching in the code, she confirmed it worked before putting the book back and locking the drawer again.
As soon as she read the top page she remembered this sample. It had been the lower jaw of an adolescent. There had even been some tissue still attached, which she’d used to procure her DNA sample with. She remembered how delicate it had looked, how there were damaged parts of it like a quirk had begun to dissolve through the tissue to the bone beneath. The points of damage had been on the outer edges, the bone and tissue destroyed to the point where the lower jaw would have been completely unhinged and hanging on by fleshy tissue alone.
It would have been a horrible, bloody injury. It probably would have killed anyone who didn’t receive immediate medical treatment. The fact that there was no listed corpse that was missing a jaw told her that life-saving measures had been taken and the child that had taken this injury was probably still alive. She had no idea how they were doing, of course, but there were methods of regrowing tissue and prosthetics that could be made for things like a lower jaw.
Katsuki had mentioned one of the students had died there, right? Had it been because of this injury? Or was there some other classmate that had gotten injured and was hospitalized that he hadn’t mentioned?
If it was Izuku… Mitsuki swallowed past the lump that rose in her throat.
She scrolled past that information, seeking the reason for why the document had been locked.
In seconds, she found it.
Embedded in the file were two case numbers; the first was more recent and the details were sparse. A man and a boy were working on clearing a beach full of junk and a forgotten appendage had been found there. It had been taken, sampled and tested, but no information came up about it. No information except for another, older case.
Mitsuki’s heart stuttered in her chest as she read through that older attached case. She remembered hearing about this one on the news. She remembered how everyone had gossiped, how everyone had worried about their children. She remembered how worried she’d become about Katsuki being out all the time with his friends that autumn when dozens of bones of some young, unknown, unidentifiable victims were found on the mountain. She told him to stay home more. She told him to be more careful. She told him to watch out for strangers and odd but familiar adults.
Those bones had been taken and sampled and tested not just once but twice. It was all in the file. The first time the tests had come back as so similar that cross contamination had been assumed to have happened. The second time the tests came back with the same results and there was no choice but to trust that they were right. Every bit of bone, every piece of half-decayed soft tissue, every ounce of remains, no matter what they had been were all from the same source.
The same child had lost every one of those bones.
The same child had left that arm behind on the beach.
The same child had their jawbone torn off at a villain attack.
Mitsuki felt cold all over as she scrolled to the bottom of the document.
There had been inquiries and an arrest made on the case. A man who frequently hiked by himself was caught sneaking into the area and everything had been pinned on him. The case had been closed, officially, the remains cremated and given proper rites and the police had moved on.
Mitsuki stared at her screen, unseeing, as her mind whirled. Izuku and Katsuki had spent all that year together, unbeknownst to her. Izuku had an intensely powerful healing quirk—strong enough to regrow entire limbs—strong enough to recover from death if Katsuki’s story on him jumping was true. Katsuki loved to go hiking and that mountain had been one of his favorites. That beach had been near Izuku’s home and the discovery had been during the time that Izuku and Katsuki had been separated. Izuku and Katsuki were now at Yuuei together, in the heroic department, had both attended the Unforeseen Simulation Joint, had both been there for the attack of the villains—
One student had been killed. Another student had been injured. But she had seen Izuku just the day after. She’d seen him whole and unhurt, his jaw attached and everything.
If Izuku could regrow a hand, then he could regrow a jaw.
Mitsuki shuddered.
All those bones—
Mitsuki pushed back her chair and stood up. Hands shaking, she grabbed her mug and walked away from her desk. Nervous energy filled her and made her heart hammer hard against her ribs. What was she going to do?
She was supposed to print these files, bundle them together, and give them over to the police. They were going to see the connection. They were going to figure out it was him. They were going to know.
There was no way they couldn’t make the connection. It was all in the DNA. It was perfectly clear. They would read the file and realize that they arrested an unrelated individual and that Izuku was the one who left those remains on the mountain—
Did Katsuki know about the bones? Had he seen them? Had he any idea what Izuku was doing—
Mitsuki stood in the break room, holding her mug in her hands, thinking about her son and his anxiety and his nightmares and those little things he flinched at, the strange little habits he had picked up. He didn’t hike as much as he used to, which she had chalked up to the fact that they were more in the city, but what if the mountains reminded him of graveyards?
He used to be so much louder, too, but now he kept to himself more. She’d thought that was just part of growing up and becoming an angry, angsty teenager. He was angry too. In fact, his anger had only gotten worse as he got older. How many fights had he gotten into when before he would just yell at someone to fuck off and die?
And there was that strange habit in the kitchen, the fact that he refused to slice any kind of raw meat. When was the last time he’d made dinner with meat in it? It had been egg or tofu for years, now. If she wanted meat she had to buy it pre-sliced or prepare it herself. He even had trouble with fish, especially if it was whole, with the skin and head attached.
She felt sick to her stomach.
She turned around and jolted to a stop as one of her coworkers stepped into the break room and offered her a smile.
“Is there still coffee?” the younger woman asked. Mitsuki stared at her. Coffee? What?
“Bakugou-san, are you feeling all right? You look a little pale.”
Mitsuki pulled herself back together with a deep breath. She smiled, though it felt more like a grimace, “I’m fine, Sasagawa-san. I think I just need some fresh air so I’m going to go down to the cafe for my coffee this afternoon.”
“Oh that’s a wonderful idea,” Sasagawa said with a smile. “Have a good time!”
Mitsuki walked past her and back to her desk. She set her mug down, grabbed her keys, checked for her lanyard, and locked her computer as well. Heart pounding, she walked out of the office.
She needed to clear her head. She needed to make a decision.
She needed to know how much Katsuki knew, how much danger he was in if the police knew what Izuku had done.
Coffee in one hand, phone in the other, Mitsuki swore under her breath. Of course her son had to be the only teenager in the world who didn’t check his phone a million times a day. She wasn’t even sure Katsuki had it with him at school today. He should have—he was supposed to! But did that mean he listened to her and did what she said?
No. Of course not.
If he’d listened to her from the beginning, then this whole thing wouldn’t be a problem. She could just turn over the documents to the police and let them do whatever they were going to do to Izuku.
Izuku wasn’t her problem. Izuku wasn’t her fault.
Mitsuki shoved her phone back into her pocket and fumed silently.
She had to make a decision soon. She could only sit on that information for a day, maybe two, but she was wary to even try. She was too efficient to delay it for very long and get away with it. Could she tamper with it somehow? Remove that extra information, the case files that had been embedded?
No. No. That was too dangerous. If she was caught tampering with evidence she’d get herself in trouble and then what would happen to Katsuki? He needed her to protect him still. He was just a kid.
Mitsuki walked back to the building slowly, anxiety carving a hole through her chest. She sipped absently at her coffee, barely even thinking about what she was doing as she swiped her passcard and got into the lab. As she walked past the reception, she heard her name being called out and she jolted to a stop. “Yes?”
The secretary, a bright-eyed young man that she wasn’t very familiar with, gestured to the man standing at the counter. As her attention turned to him, she didn’t need the secretary’s words to identify him. “Bakugou-san, this is Officer Mukai. He was in the area and thought he’d stop in to see if a case file was ready for pick up.”
Mukai gave her a friendly smile and touched his cap in acknowledgment, “I brought some samples for testing last week and was hoping to see if you’d had any news.”
Mitsuki blinked. Her whole body was tense as she said, “I’ll have to check. I just returned from a break.”
“Do you mind if I accompany you?” Mukai asked. He held up a visitor badge, “I’ve already checked in.”
“Please do,” Mitsuki said numbly. “It’s this way.”
She led him towards the elevators. He followed her silently and stepped in with her. Her hand clutched her coffee so tightly it was starting to ache but Mukai just stood at ease beside her, hands clasped together in front of himself as he hummed softly under his breath.
Mitsuki wanted to scream.
She couldn’t lie right to his face, could she? She had no time to tamper with the file— She couldn’t do anything—
“Do you remember the case I am asking for, Bakugou-san?” Mukai asked her.
“I process a lot of cases,” she said as evenly as she could. Maybe he was here for something else. Maybe she was worried for no reason— “Would you mind reminding me which one you need?”
“It was a multiple DNA trace for an attack last week at a place called the Unforeseen Simulation Joint,” he rattled off a case number as well and Mitsuki’s heart sank. Of course he was here for that. Of course there was nothing else.
“Mm,” she looked away, “It does ring a bell. I’ll have to see what I have. It might’ve just come in this morning.”
The elevator stopped and another worker went in, making them all shuffle a little and Mukai stepped closer to her. Mitsuki sipped her coffee and tried to remain unsuspicious. Finally, it was their floor and Mitsuki led the way out and down to her desk.
She had some privacy from her coworkers with the low walls around her desk, but not enough privacy that they didn’t notice Mukai standing nearby, waiting for information. Mitsuki did her best to treat this as she always would, gesturing for where she wanted him to wait and then sitting down at her desk. She unlocked her computer and flinched.
The file about Izuku was still on her screen. She’d been so out of it before she hadn’t even closed it.
She hoped Mukai didn’t notice her flinching and closed the file. She scrolled up and down through her emails and then clicked on the right one again. “Ah,” she said, “It looks like it did come in a little earlier. I’ll just print these off for you.”
“I’m so glad,” Mukai said, “We’ve been very interested in the results available. Did they all come back accurately?”
“I haven’t had a chance to look over them very closely yet,” Mitsuki lied, keeping her eyes on the screen as she methodically went through each attachment and sent them to the printer.
“I see,” he said. “Well, if you do look at them and notice anything peculiar, please let me know.”
“Of course,” Mitsuki said, “It should all be printed now. I’ll go fetch it.”
She left him behind at her desk and went to the printer. It hummed along, printing and stapling the jobs together for her. When it had finished, she took the still-warm paper from the tray and brought it back. She didn’t hold it tightly, despite the fact that she wanted to. She wanted to clutch it and hold it tight and keep it from Mukai until she figured out what to do about that file on the bottom.
Instead of any of that, she handed the files to Mukai. “Would you like a folder to put those into?” she asked.
Mukai flipped through the papers idly, nodding as he did, “Please.”
Mitsuki sat back down and rummaged through a drawer until she found an empty folder. When she straightened back up, she saw Mukai was skimming through one of the files, eyes widening. She couldn’t tell at a glance which one it was, since he was lifting from the bottom corner and all the others were still on top. She cleared her throat and held out the folder.
Mukai blinked, lowered the pages, and then took it. He slid them in and said, “Thank you very much for this.”
“Would you like me to send a digital copy over this afternoon?” Mitsuki asked automatically. It wasn’t strictly protocol to do so, but it was so commonly requested that she didn’t even think about it before asking, defaulting instead to a routine behavior that she immediately regretted.
To her surprise, however, Mukai shook his head, “There’s no need. You can file that email away, Bakugou-san. I have all the information here, after all.”
Mitsuki nodded. “Is there anything else that you need?”
Mukai shook his head, “No. Thank you for your hard work. I can see myself out.”
She nodded again and watched as he turned away and left.
With the immediate pressure of having to pretend everything was normal gone, Mitsuki’s mind was reduced to static as she sat there, staring at nothing. She could only hope that Katsuki wasn’t tied to anything that happened on the mountain. She could only pray that if the police did do anything to follow up with Izuku, it would be somewhere Katsuki wasn’t able to see or find out about until later.
And in the meantime… In the meantime…
She would work. She would talk to Katsuki. She would do whatever she could to protect him. She would find out who his father was and…
Mitsuki sighed and closed her eyes.
It wasn’t supposed to have turned out like this…
Shouto knew this moment would happen. He was ready for it. He had had a whole day to prepare himself.
His father stared at his face, at his cheek, at his neck, and Shouto could see the fury building in his narrowed eyes. “What,” he ground out, “happened.”
“Sparring match,” Shouto answered.
They were in the gym, of course, Enji had come home and almost immediately went to the gym, where Shouto had been working out on his own, hopeful to miss his father’s attention again like he had managed the night before. No luck there.
Whatever had infuriated his father at work hadn’t bled out yet and so the vein in his temple pulsed as he glared at Shouto, like it was Shouto’s fault he was injured and Shouto should have done something to prevent it.
“And you weren’t healed? Doesn’t Yuuei have a nurse on staff?”
Shouto blinked as if that hadn’t occurred to him in the least. “It wasn’t that serious.”
“Your neck is bruised,” Enji snarled. He took a step towards Shouto.
Shouto didn’t move. He wouldn’t give ground unless he had to, unless that was the right thing to do to make his father relax and he knew instinctively that it wouldn’t help him now. Instead, he lied, “It was a headlock that got a little too tight. My opponent didn’t realize their own strength and let go when I tapped out.”
“And your cheek?” Enji demanded.
“Sparring match, a different one,” Shouto explained. He added, almost like an afterthought, “Recently, I’ve started to bruise easily. I don’t know why.”
Enji’s fury was curtailed for a moment by this new information. Shouto could see him considering it, thinking over the implications of easy bruising.
Shouto himself didn’t think that was the case. The ghost’s grip on his neck had been tight enough to keep him from breathing and, though Bakugou had probably pulled his punch, it had still hurt quite a bit. But his father’s interest in his physical well-being was one of the few trump cards that Shouto had in order to turn his father’s wrath from himself.
Enji stepped over and reached up. He held Shouto’s chin in his hand and turned his face to look at the bruise. Shouto stared at the wall and waited. Then Enji lifted his chin to look at the bruise on his neck. Shouto didn’t resist the guided movement.
“I’ll schedule an appointment with the physician to have you examined,” Enji said quietly enough that Shouto believed that he was sincerely convinced. “He’ll run some tests to see what’s wrong and if you have a vitamin deficiency or something. In the meantime, be more careful with your sparring. If your moves are sloppy enough that you’re getting struck and grappled so easily, then you must work harder.” He let go of Shouto and stepped back, “Finish your stretches. I’ll be running you through your stances tonight until you can prove to me that your body remembers whether or not your mind does.”
Shouto said nothing. He just nodded and waited for his father to step back and give him some space.
A doctor’s visit was very low on the scale of terrible punishments his father could have given him. Relieved, Shouto was careful to keep his expression blank. He didn’t want his father to misinterpret his relief and grow suspicious again. All he would have to do is call the school to ask about the alleged sparring matches to know Shouto was lying, but he didn’t think his father would investigate that. Not when he had the greater concern of Shouto’s health to worry about.
It might mean that he’d have to get Dr. Okazaki to help him, but Shouto knew that would be easier than lying outright to his father himself.
Dr. Okazaki was a very different sort of man compared to his father.