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Someone knocked on Denki’s door. Facedown in his pillow, he mumbled an answer that wasn’t words as much as it was a pitiful groan. It didn’t matter. Whoever was out there could choose to come in or not, up to them.
He heard the door swing inward slowly. “Kaminari?”
Jirou, then. Well, if anyone had to witness his breakdown, she was safe enough. He raised one hand to wave at her before letting it fall back to the bed.
She picked her way across the room—it wasn’t that messy, Iida was notoriously strict about that sort of thing—and gingerly sat on the corner of his mattress near his feet. “You wanna tell me what’s wrong?” Jirou asked.
Kaminari grunted, tugging his phone out from under his pillow. It took him a few clumsy tries to unlock the screen, then he pulled up the messages from his mother and tossed the phone unceremoniously to Jirou.
He heard her suck in a breath as she looked at the screen and curled up even tighter against his pillow. He knew what she was reading. The words were already burned into his mind, echoing around his head in his mother’s sickly-sweet voice.
-Keiko? We need to talk, sweetheart.
-I know you’re seeing these messages.
-Stop being so childish, you can’t ignore us forever. We know you had a free weekend last week but you didn’t come home.
-It’s the least you could do. We haven’t seen you since you moved into those dorms, your father and I miss you.
-You have to come home, Keiko.
-After everything we’ve done for you, the least you could do is show us the respect we deserve. We’re your parents, Keiko Kaminari. We deserve that much.
-Answer me.
-Pick up the phone.
[missed call]
-I know you can see this, Keiko.
[missed call]
-If you’re going to be like this, then we’ll have no choice but to pull you out of that school.
[missed call]
-I’m contacting your school to release you from classes next Saturday. Your father will pick you up and bring you home for a visit, and we’ll decide then if it’s just for the weekend or if it’s permanent.
[missed call]
-You’re leaving us no choice, young lady.
-You’ve become willful and disobedient, and those are habits we cannot tolerate.
-You will return home next weekend to face the consequences of your actions.
-We love you, Keiko. We only want what’s best for you.
-Sweetheart, we love you. I know you’re seeing these.
-You cannot ignore your mother.
[missed call]
-Answer the phone, Keiko!
[missed call]
[missed call]
[missed call]
[missed call]
He heard the phone buzz again, and Jirou snarled before silencing it. “Your mom is such a bitch,” she whispered.
Denki almost laughed, but the awful, tight feeling in his chest wouldn’t let him take in a full breath. Fear and shame and anger all swirled together, stabbing him from the inside every time his mother used the wrong name.
“They can’t take you away from school.”
He twisted enough to stare at Jirou, not caring that his eyes were red and swollen and his face was blotchy from crying. “But they’re my parents.”
Jirou was still tapping things on his phone, lips pressed in a thin line. She finally tossed it back to him and he let it lie on the bed, not caring what she might have done. Hopefully she hadn’t blocked his mom; he’d have hell to pay for that.
“You really think Nedzu would allow that?” Jirou snorted. “You think Aizawa would allow that?”
Denki stared at her bleakly. “Jirou. Parents. I don’t think Mr. Aizawa has any sway over them.”
“Yeah, sure. I bet Endeavor thought the same.”
He nudged her in the hip with his foot. “It’s not the same thing, and you know it. My parents aren’t abusing me.”
Jirou went quiet, her eyes suddenly almost overwhelmingly sad. “Kami….”
“They’re not.” He didn’t want to talk about this. Not while he was in such a bad mood. “Just drop it, okay?”
He could tell that she didn’t want to, but she nodded anyway and pulled her own phone out. Denki let himself curl up again, a miserable heap of wannabe hero; disgust and shame rolling over him. He was right—he knew he was right—about himself and who he was. It wasn’t a phase, he wasn’t confused, he was just himself.
“All right, come on,” Jirou said, tugging on his ankle. “Yaomomo’s got some prototypes ready for you, if you wanna try them.”
Denki groaned, but slowly wiggled around on the bed until he could get his feet on the floor. Yaoyorozu was trying to design something for him, and last night he’d spent a long, awkward hour being measured by her, including matching his skin tone to a few swatches of fabric she’d produced out of nowhere.
He kept his head down as Jirou led the way, hoping no one else would notice the evidence of his tears. He’d have to talk to his mother eventually, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it yet. He needed time. Space. A few hours of distraction to clear his head.
“Come on in!” Yaoyorozu, hands close to her chest, waved them in as soon as Jirou shoved the door open. “Kaminari, hi…I hope this wasn’t a bad time?”
He shrugged. When was it ever a good time, anymore? He’d been looking forward to attending UA all through middle school, but his parents were threatening to pull that away from him. Everything was awful and wrong, and he wasn’t sure how much more he could take.
“Okay, well, I have something for you to try.” Yaoyorozu held her hands out; a pale-colored garment draped over them. “It’s a compression tank top,” she explained when he didn’t move. “Slightly modified, of course. I’m trying to design one that’s waterproof, too, but that’s a little trickier. Still, if you’ll try this on, we can see how it fits.”
The garment was light in his hands. The fabric was smooth and stretched a little when he pulled on it.
“I researched binder construction to create the fabric blend and the, uh, the chest,” Yaoyorozu was saying. There was a nervous tone in her voice, and she’d clenched her hands together to keep from fidgeting with her fingers. “I tried to make the fabric light enough to be breathable, but heavy enough to be durable if you wanted to wear it for class or hero work. Just, um, just let me know if something doesn’t fit or if the color is off, okay?”
Jirou had opened the door to Yaoyorozu’s tiny bathroom, and Denki let himself be pushed inside.
He stripped almost mechanically, back turned to the mirror so he wouldn’t see his body. The tank top Yaoyorozu had made didn’t have an obvious front or back, so he turned it around a few times before figuring out which way to put it on. Most of his binders fastened up the front, but he had a few old ones that were pullovers. He rolled the fabric up and slid it over his head and shoulders, then eased it into place over his body.
It fit perfectly. Denki smoothed it down, adjusted himself a little, took a deep breath. It was a little tight around the ribs, but that wasn’t too bad. It felt kind of like an expensive sports bra, but when he looked down his chest seemed to be completely flat.
He turned to pick up his shirt, to show the girls how it fit, and froze. He’d caught sight of himself in the mirror as he turned and there, just for a moment…
It was just him.
Denki stared.
He could tell he was wearing a tank top, but the color blended in with his skin so perfectly that at first glance it hadn’t looked like anything. He just looked like himself. Just another boy. Sure, he didn’t have any nipples or muscle definition on the tank top, but that didn’t matter right now.
It was just him.
Denki braced his hands on the sink, still staring at his reflection. It wasn’t…this couldn’t…it matched so perfectly. He leaned back and raised his arms up, elbows out, and twisted at the waist a few times. The hem of the tank top rode up a little, but it was long enough to tuck into his pants anyway.
His chest was smooth, flat, and featureless. Just the color of his skin, nothing else.
He could live without nipples if it meant being himself, as much as he could be anyway.
Someone knocked on the door. “K-Kaminari?” Yaoyorozu asked. “Is it, um…does it fit?”
Denki threw the door open, leaving his shirt on the floor, and beaming up at Yaoyorozu. She squeaked and backed away, hands over her mouth, but he followed her to wrap his arms around you. “It’s perfect,” he gushed. “This is…it’s just…thank you!”
“Holy crap.” Jirou’s cheeks were pink. “I thought…when you opened the door, I thought you weren’t even wearing anything.”
He released Yaoyorozu and stepped back, spreading his arms to smile at Jirou. “It’s perfect,” he repeated. He felt…he was…it was just him. Just Denki.
Yaoyorozu cleared her throat. “That’s…that’s good. Like I said, I’m working on a waterproof one, too. Something you can wear with your trunks instead of a coverup.”
The thought of that made him feel warm and comforted inside. The thought of going to the pool or beach with his class and just looking like a normal boy instead of the loser in a T-shirt was intoxicating. He could just be himself.
“Anyway, your phone kept buzzing,” Jirou complained, tossing it to him. He hadn’t even realized she’d picked it up, and his heart sank when he saw the number of missed messages and calls on the screen. “Ignore the ones from your mom. The one from Mr. Aizawa looks important, though.”
Frowning, Kaminari unlocked the screen and pulled up his messages. Sure enough, there were nineteen from his mother and one from his teacher. He couldn’t face his mother right now, not when he was finally in a better mood. So, he took Jirou’s advice and ignored her messages in favor or opening Aizawa’s.
-Kaminari. I regret to inform you that I have denied your parents’ request for a home visit next weekend. As I explained to them, the class is about to start a complicated module on hero representation in media and I can’t afford for you to be distracted at this time. I’m sure you understand, and we can revisit this request another time.
He couldn’t help it. A laugh bubbled up in his chest, and he doubled over wheezing. Hero representation in media? Aizawa had told his parents he couldn’t go home because the class was going to watch hero movies?
Jirou snatched his phone away from him and snorted as she read the message. “Oh my god, Mr. Aizawa is savage,” she gasped, holding the phone up for Yaoyorozu to see.
Even Yaoyorozu couldn't hold in a laugh. She laughed primly, like a proper young lady, with one hand over her mouth and the other on her stomach. For some reason that set Denki off more, and his legs collapsed under him as he sat down on her floor, still laughing.
His heart felt lighter, like all his worries and stress and anger were floating away as they laughed. Jirou dropped down to sit beside him, knocking her arm against his as she struggled to control herself. “It’s not even that funny,” she giggled.
Denki leaned against her, hand on his chest. He hadn’t laughed this hard in ages. It felt like something had shaken loose inside him. Something light and free.
Yaoyorozu cleared her throat. “Anyway, Kaminari. I’m glad it fits so well.”
“Yeah. Thank you.” It wasn’t enough, but…she liked tea, right? And maybe Sato would help him bake some cookies for her? He’d find some way to really thank her for this.
No one had ever given his body to him like this. “Do you need this back?”
“Oh, no, I have the specifications written down,” she explained. “Let me know if you want to try something else, all right?”
He nodded. Pushing off Jirou, he managed to climb to his feet and make his way back into Yaoyorozu’s tiny bathroom to retrieve his clothes. He caught sight of himself in the mirror again, smiling at what he saw.
It was just him.
Just Denki.