Title: Fire Meet Gasoline
Fandom: Boku no Hero Academia/My Hero Academia
Rating: T+
Part: 7/?
Story Summary: A chance encounter between a villain and vigilante leads to an unwise deal made between unlikely allies; an unwise deal made between unlikely allies ends in a final stand neither would have ever dared to take on alone. Together, though, they just might have a fighting chance.
Part 7 Summary: Hizashi takes the night off to spend time with some new faces and some old mistakes.
Part 1 on Tumblr / AO3
Part 2 on Tumblr / AO3
Part 3 on Tumblr / AO3
Part 4 on Tumblr / AO3
Part 5 on Tumblr / AO3
Part 6 on Tumblr / AO3
Part 7 on AO3
“Go-od morning, caller, what can I do for you at this early, early hour?”
It was almost three AM and his midnight coffee was wearing off fast, but Hizashi tried to keep the pep up in his voice for all the late shift workers, insomniacs, and other assorted night owls who tuned in and kept his ratings up.
“Heyo!” Hizashi held back a groan and he recognized Haru’s voice on the other end of the line. “I was hoping maybe I could pick your brain about a problem I’ve been having with a certain brother of mine.”
“I usually don’t give out advice until Friday night’s show,” Hizashi said with a meaningful sharpness, “but I’ll give it a whirl. What’s up?”
“I need some advice on how to get my brother to stop being such a mope-ass and come shittalk his ex over drinks,” Haru said brightly.
Hizashi pursed his lips, rolling his eyes. “Sounds like a real dilemma,” he intoned. “Are you sure he’s moping, or is he maybe just not interested in going out?”
“You don’t know my brother,” Haru replied, her grin obvious in her voice. Hizashi scoffed, clapping a hand over his mouth just in time to make it sound like a blip of static. “He’s usually the first one in line to get white girl schwasted and sing karaoke to get over some dipshit he’s dated, but so far every time I’ve told him he should come out with me and some friends from work he keeps ghosting me.” She paused, then added, “And it was kind of my fault he went out with this particular dipshit, so it’s on me to make up for encouraging bad life choices, y’know?”
“By encouraging other bad life choices?” Hizashi asked, raising an eyebrow even though she couldn’t see.
“By dragging him out of his rut before he fossilizes,” Haru corrected.
Hizashi rolled his eyes, grinning in spite of himself. “I mean, it sounds to me like you have the right idea. Maybe try asking one more time,” he said.
“I dunno, he can be pretty stubborn,” Haru said, fully teasing now.
“Thirteenth time’s the charm, right? The worst he can do is say no,” Hizashi said, texting Okay, okay, message received. Where and when? to Haru as he spoke.
“We’ll see. Thanks, dude. Hey, while I’ve got you on the line, can I make a quick song request?”
“Lay it on me.”
“‘Heroes’, by Bowie,” Haru said, her voice turning a little soft as she said it. Hizashi smiled to himself.
“A favorite of his?” he said.
“Yeah. I think if he’s listening it might cheer him up.”
“Sure thing, caller. I wouldn’t worry about things too much. Sounds like you know your brother pretty well.”
The family joke was that Haruko and Hizashi were actually twins, he’d just gotten lost and showed up three years late. It might as well have been true; both were tall and quick like their father and had their mother’s blond hair and sharp tongue. Haru loved Hinako with all the closeness and affection you had for someone you had shared a uterus with, but there was no denying Hizashi had been her best friend from birth. They’d been attached at the hip basically from the moment toddler Haru had been told she had a new baby brother on the way. So when Hizashi called her in a breathless whirl to say his results letter from UA High had come in the mail, Haru had dropped everything and rushed home.
Hizashi was just about the smartest person Haru had ever met, with amazing recall for the tiniest details and a near-infinite energy for learning new things. Applying that energy, however, had been his downfall from the off; all the brains and ambition in the world didn’t make up for his attention issues, Quirk mishaps, and inability to connect socially with his classmates. He’d spent most of upper elementary school floundering academically, skating by at the bare minimum level to pass in no particular direction.
Visiting Haru at UA during her first year culture festival, however, had been a revelation for him. Seeing the school and all it had to offer someone with a powerful Quirk and a brilliant mind had finally been a tangible goal Hizashi could focus on. He’d immediately buckled down, applying himself to his schoolwork in a way Haru had never seen from him before and he never looked back. He’d blazed through middle school at the top of his class, easily securing his place in the UA entrance exam. No one had any doubts he had blown the written exam out of the water, but it was the practical application exam that really counted when you wanted to be a hero.
And so now here the two of them were, sitting on Hizashi’s bedroom floor with the unopened results envelope between them. Hizashi was vibrating in place, his leg thumping under him and making the rest of him shake. Haru kept looking from him to the envelope and back again, the palpable waves of excitement and nerves rolling off of him making her just as keyed up as he was.
“Want me to do it?” Haru asked, half-teasing.
Hizashi shook his head, still bouncing. “I got it, I just…” he trailed off, the first spots of self-doubt starting to creep in around the edges of his mood. Haru decided to cut that off at the pass, picking the envelope up by one end and holding the other out to Hizashi like it was a wishbone.
“Count of three,” she said. Hizashi nodded, taking his end in both trembling hands. “Okay. One--”
There was a sharp sound of ripping paper as Hizashi jumped the gun and pulled back his end. A single sheet of UA letterhead stationery dropped onto the floor. Haru’s spirit sank as she thought of the thick sheaf of paperwork and the holo-disc acceptance message that had come for her three years ago. Her hope dwindled down to embers as Hizashi shook the letter open. His anxious excitement went out like a snuffed candle, expression falling from eager anticipation to confusion to a blank emptiness as his eyes scanned down the page. His hands were shaking again, clenched around the edges of the paper. His breathing sharpened suddenly into the quick, barking wheezes that usually heralded an asthma attack.
“Hizashi?” Haru asked tentatively, reaching out toward him. Hizashi pulled away violently, snapping to his feet. He looked down at her, breath hissing between clenched teeth. His eyes were wild and unfocused; he looked very young and very lost. “Oh god, Zash,” Haru breathed.
Before she could do anything else, Hizashi bolted from the room and out of the apartment at a breakneck sprint. Haru followed after him as fast as she could, calling after him as she heard him thundering down the building’s staircase. She finally caught him up to him as they both exploded out the building’s side door and onto the street. Hizashi staggered a few steps, barely getting his feet under himself before the next step came. He crumpled forward, back arched into a hard C shape and his shoulders heaving. Haru’s eyes went wide and she clapped her hands over her ears just before Hizashi let out a raw, ear-splitting scream loud enough to make the street jump under their feet. All of the streetlamps flickered and flared as the shockwave hit them and the evening came alive with the cacophonous sound of every car alarm in a two-block radius going off. Hizashi sucked in a hard breath that escaped him as a croaking hiccup as his legs finally gave out. He collapsed onto his knees in the middle of the street, hands buried in his hair as he let out raw, halting sobs. Haru ran to him, wrapping her arms around him and letting Hizashi cling to her and howl into her shoulder. He’d dropped the letter when he fell, and in the dim light from the resetting streetlamps Haru could just make out what it said.
Dear Mr. Hizashi Yamada,
Thank you for your interest in UA High School’s Hero Course academic program. We appreciate your diligence and dedication to completing all required steps of our application and evaluation process.
However, during the course of the practical application exam, an occurrence of your Quirk usage resulted in a one-block section of our video monitoring system being taken offline for a period of approximately 92.8 seconds. Due to a lack of additional coverage angles in this area, we are unable to validate the nine (9) exam points that were registered to you during this outage period.
Unfortunately unvalidated points are not able to be applied to your exam score, bringing your total practical exam score below our passing threshold level.
We thank you again for your interest, and wish you the best of luck in all future endeavors.
The letter was signed by Principal Nedzu and a slew of other names that Haru vaguely recognized as being on the admittance board staff.
Bastards, Haru thought savagely, pulling Hizashi even closer as she stroked his hair. They had no right to dock him that many points over their own carelessness. If that was the kind of regard they wanted to show applicants, then to hell with them anyway. It would serve them right when Hizashi applied somewhere else and became a top-ranked hero all on his own.
But Hizashi didn’t apply anywhere else. UA had been his first and only choice; it had been his dream. Now the dream was gone, taking all of Hizashi’s spark with it. He fell back into his old habits, doing the bare minimum to not fail his classes while his grades toppled around him. Any time not spent sleepwalking through his schoolwork or being nudged into the bare basics of self-care was spent shut up in his room in silence, eyes focused on nothing. Not even their parents’ offer for Hizashi to get a fresh start by moving in with their maternal grandparents and finishing his schooling in America had gotten any kind of reaction out of him. Hizashi had just shrugged, giving a hollow-eyed monosyllable of agreement before asking to be excused so that he could go pack.
The day after his middle school graduation Haru had given her brother the tightest hug she could muster and told him to call her the second he needed anything. Hizashi didn’t respond, turning and trudging listlessly away from her onto the plane.
When he’d accepted Haru’s invitation to “drinks with friends from work”, Hizashi had unfortunately forgotten that Haru had two jobs. Instead of the gaggle of yoga instructors and personal trainers he’d been expecting to meet up with, Hizashi rounded the corner to see his sister standing amid a group of her fellow pro heroes in their civilian finest. He half-recognized most of them by build or face shape, but there was no mistaking the broad frame and wild shock of blue-white hair of the man currently laughing over something on Haru’s phone: the number six pro hero and UA teacher, Loud Cloud himself. A shrill alarm of self-preservation went off in Hizashi’s brain, screaming for him to beg off and leave before things got any worse. Before he could do more than panic and stare, however, Haru spotted him and waved him over.
“Zash! You made it!” Haru said, beaming. Hizashi smiled back weakly and waved as he trudged over, trying very hard to not make eye contact with anyone but her.
“Sorry I’m late,” Hizashi muttered.
Haru waved a hand dismissively. “We only just got here,” she said. “Everyone, this my brother Hizashi. Zash, this is everyone.” She rattled off a laundry list of names that came and went before Hizashi could put them to memory. What did catch his attention, however, was the fact that his presence brought the group to an even number of people. His brilliant mess of a sister had invited him, a multi-platinum wanted criminal, on a group date with some of the most powerful and respected pro heroes in the city. Hizashi bit down on the inside of his cheek to keep in the snort of helpless laughter caught in the back of his throat.
The ploy seemed to become even more obvious as Haru shooed Hizashi down to the opposite end of the table from herself, making sure he sat down across from Loud Cloud (real name Something-Or-Other Shirakumo). Hizashi could feel a nervous sweat beginning to gather on the back of his neck as Shirakumo cheerfully poured him a drink. There was no reason for him to freak out, Hizashi reminded himself sternly. No one at this table save for Haru had any idea he dabbled on the wrong side of the tracks, and not even she knew the half of it. All he had to do was put on a good face and avoid getting “white girl schwasted”, as Haru had so eloquently put it, and he’d be fine.
“So, what do you do, Hizashi?” Shirakumo asked, making Hizashi jump.
“He’s a self-made man!” Haru piped up from the far end of the table. Hizashi rolled his eyes at her.
“Uh, radio,” Hizashi answered for himself. “I’m the operations manager over at Asahi Radio, and I run the overnight show every couple of weeks if they need something to fill the slot.”
“That’s why you sound so familiar!” Shirakumo said, snapping his fingers triumphantly. “‘Put Your Hands Up Radio’, right? We have it on all the time in the office when we have to pull graveyard shifts.”
Hizashi grinned in spite of himself, a flattered heat in his cheeks. “My sister has a way of inflicting her bad taste on other people,” he joked apologetically. Haru blew a loud raspberry at him but Shirakumo just laughed, shaking his head.
“Nah, we’ve been listening for years, even before Haru hired on. It’s a good pep-up when it’s two AM and you’re still chained to your desk.”
Hizashi couldn’t help preening a little. “Glad to be of service,” he said, bowing.
“How long have you been in radio?” Shirakumo asked.
“Uh.” Hizashi paused, trying to do math despite the ebbing panic scrambling his concentration. “Twelve years now?” he said, almost sure that was right. “I did an internship right after I graduated high school and then I ended up just kind of sticking around. They haven’t gotten rid of me yet, so I must be doing something right.”
The Hizashi that stepped back off the plane after three years in Boston wasn’t the same one who had left, but Haru was glad to see the change. Hizashi saw her waiting inside the doors to the baggage claim and ran full-tilt through the crowd to scoop her up in a tight bearhug.
“Gah! Break my ribs, why dontcha?” Haru laughed, hugging him just as tightly. Hizashi had sprouted up while he was abroad, towering over her by at least three inches even without the tall fluff of hair gelled up over his forehead. He was still the same grinning dork she remembered, though, from his chunky hipster glasses to the way he immediately pulled her into a second hug just as tight as the first.
“I missed you so much, though!” Hizashi protested. Haru grinned, squeezing him back.
“Yeah, me too,” she said. “Now go get your bags and let’s hop-to,” she added. “I’m not the only one who missed your ugly mug.”
Hizashi chattered the entire cab ride back to their parents’ apartment, barely containing his excitement at being home. Haru kept thinking back to the sallow-faced, wilted scrap of a boy she’d seen off at the airport compared to the sunny freckled giant on the seat beside her and had to scrub the corners of her eyes dry before she made a fool of herself. Hizashi made no such attempt to contain his emotions as he walked into the surprise welcome back party everyone had put together for him. They buried him in affection, glad to finally have their family whole again. The gap in their ranks had almost fallen to the back of their collective minds in his absence but having Hizashi back made his absence sharper in retrospect. Hizashi spent the night regaling them with stories about American high school life that sounded to Haru like something out of a grimdark John Hughes movie but he swore up and down weren’t exaggerations. He kept in motion as he spoke, buzzing around the room to emphasize his points with some kind of elaborating miming or clearing away dishes or just pacing the room in the flurry of enthusiasm he always had when he was entertaining an audience.
Late into a story about the hellish test of fortitude that a square dancing unit in gym class was when you were in the middle of a growth spurt, Hizashi was interrupted mid-thought by the phone ringing.
“I got it, Ma,” Hizashi said, waving for their mother to sit back down as he headed off to grab the handset in the hall. “Yah-mada residence!” Haru heard him beaming into the phone. She caught their mother’s eye and they shared a snort and knowing grin. He’d been back all of a few hours and was already running full steam ahead, Haru thought, shaking her head. She could pretend to be disapproving, but there was nothing that made her feel more relieved than knowing he knew he was finally home.
She expected him to come loping back down the hallway after a few minutes after confirming to their grandparents he was safe, but the moment of absence began to stretch out uncomfortably. Haru got up and followed him, a sudden sinking in her chest at the thought that Hizashi’s cheer had been for their sake and he’d taken the excuse to break off and be upset on his own.
“Hey, didja fall in?” Haru asked, trying to keep her voice light as she poked her head around the corner. Hizashi visibly jumped at the sound, fumbling the phone’s handset before slamming it down into the cradle.
“Sorry, what?” Hizashi asked breathlessly. He looked very pale all of a sudden and his eyes had a faraway, glassy sheen to them.
“Everything okay, Zash?” Haru asked, the clench in her chest tightening another notch.
“Huh? Oh! Oh, yeah, I’m good. Wrong number,” Hizashi said, gesturing vaguely at the phone. “Got kind of shitty when I told them. Some people, right?” He gave a slightly unsteady scoff, rolling his eyes. Haru raised an eyebrow.
“Uh...huh,” she said slowly. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Totally,” Hizashi said, brushing past her back towards the living room. “Anyway, where was I?”
The odd hiccup in Hizashi’s mood kept eating at Haru over the next few days, all the more because of how otherwise normal he was acting. He spent his days out of the apartment, nominally looking for a job now that he was settled, and his evenings scouring want ads during commercial breaks while they all watched television together. He was buoyant and excitable, especially the night he came home exclaiming that the webcast talk show he’d spent the last few years running as a hobby had landed him a paid internship at one of the downtown radio stations. Everything was smiles and normality with occasional bouts of especially good news, and that more than anything was putting her on edge.
Hizashi begged off to bed early one night, claiming he wanted to get to sleep early before his internship started the next day. Slowly the living room emptied without Hizashi’s inexhaustible energy to keep them awake. Haru dozed off on the sofa in the middle of texting one of her friends, too lazy to drag herself to bed.
She was shaken awake by the sound of her keychains clattering together as someone took them off the hook by the door. Haru peered blearily over the back of the sofa just in time to see the back of Hizashi’s head disappearing out the front door. Her heart sank as she checked the time: two-thirty AM. A tired, scared part of her wanted to believe it was just nerves keeping him up and he was going out for some air. The look on his face after the phone call at his party came to the front of her mind, though, and wouldn’t let her put it aside.
Haru followed Hizashi at tailing distance, having to quickly duck behind whatever cover she could find as he got turned around and had to retrace his steps. Another nail in the coffin for this being a quick trip out for some fresh air; between his terrible sense of direction and having been gone for three years Hizashi would know better than to wander around unfamiliar territory in the middle of the night. Unless of course, Haru thought as she crouched behind a dumpster and watched her brother knock on the employee entrance of Hanajima’s Garden Supply and Boutique Florist, he had planned to meet with someone.
She tiptoed forward as Hizashi was waved in and the heavy steel door shut behind him. Her heart rattled painfully in her throat as she did her best to peek through the slats of the vent in the door. Haru only caught a flash of Hizashi’s hair and the back of his neon blue windbreaker as he disappeared deeper into the shop. Haru chewed her lip, a fist of panic threatening to squeeze the breath out of her. She wished she’d been thinking clearly enough in the moment to grab her phone on her way out. The smart thing to do would be to go find a patrolling hero or a police station or at least a payphone nearby, but the thought of leaving Hizashi alone to fend for himself if something went wrong made her stomach seize. No one on the up-and-up had meetings in the dimly-lit backroom of a flower shop at three in the morning, that much she was sure about.
Haru shifted from foot to foot, mind racing at a hundred miles an hour but getting nowhere. Hizashi was going to have to tell her the truth now; he couldn’t keep up his facade when he’d been caught red-handed doing something this level of sketchy. She would just have to stick around and find out what the hell he was thinking and the two of them would figure out where to go from here. Haru slowly backed away from the door in case someone inside the shop was watching and crouched down with her back against the shop’s wall to watch the door and wait for Hizashi. She tried to stay calm but as the minutes stretched into decades she had more and more time to stew on the audacity of it all. She and Hizashi had been best friends since they were babies, they’d never kept secrets from one another. It was against every tennant of the unspoken code of trust the two of them held sacred. Now here he was, barely a month back from doing god knew what in America and sneaking around behind everyone’s back. Behind her back. By the time Hizashi stumbled back out the employee door, pushed over the threshold by someone inside, Haru’s temper had risen to a barely-restrained boil.
Hizashi sighed, sniffling hard and scrubbing under his nose with the back of his wrist as he turned to walk away. Haru followed him as he reached the sidewalk, a whole slew of new terrible thoughts sprouting in her mind in the wake of that gesture. Hizashi’s mind seemed thoroughly elsewhere as he walked, not reacting to the sound of Haru’s footsteps behind him until her patience snapped and she spoke.
“Funny,” Haru said, relishing the way Hizashi jumped and staggered around to face her, “this doesn’t look like being in bed by ten because you have work in the morning.” She crossed her arms and channeled her mother’s most intimidating “all right, start talking” eyebrow raise.
“H-Haru--you--what are you doing here?” Hizashi spluttered. His eyes were wide and scared and there was a dribble of blood trickling down from his nose. Concern sparked in Haru’s chest, but she did her best to push it aside for the moment. She could afford to be worried about him once she knew what she was worried about.
“I could ask you the same thing,” Haru said tartly.
“N-Nothing, it’s just. It’s nothing, don’t worry about it,” Hizashi rambled, using a lot of words to say absolutely nothing. Haru bristled.
“Hizashi Yamada, I swear to god--” she began.
“Haru, seriously!” Hizashi snapped, cutting her off. His voice cracked high at the end the way it always did when he was trying to keep himself from crying. Haru realized he was shaking all over, pale and wild-eyed in a way that was horribly familiar.
“Hizashi, is this about that phone call?” Haru asked, her tone softened but no less stern. Hizashi flinched, then nodded hesitantly. He dropped his eyes away from hers, arms wrapping protectively across his chest.
“Mr. Hanajima called. He. He thought I was Dad, and.” Hizashi broke off, shaking his head. “Mom and Dad were in trouble, but I took care of it. Just forget it, okay?” His voice was shaky and pleading.
“What do you mean, they’re in trouble?” Haru asked, a cold chill running up her spine.
“Were, they were in trouble, but it’s fine now, I swear!” Hizashi said. He tried to smile reassuringly but the faltering expression just made him look more scared. “They just. They owed Mr. Hanajima some money, and they were late on payments. He said he was going to have to find a new way to enforce the deadlines if they didn’t pay it all off soon, so I told him I’d take care of it instead.”
“What? Why?” Haru asked. Her tone came out too sharp again and Hizashi flinched away from her again.
“On the phone he kept talking about how it was irresponsible to borrow so much money without a good way to pay it back,” Hizashi mumbled slowly. “And how the university board and Mom’s promoters would want to know about how reckless their employees were being. And how the hero certification board would want to think twice about hiring out someone with parents who were so financially unsound, and the medical board and the admittance committees for all the high schools in town and...and the whole stupid thing is my fault anyway, so I handled it, okay? It’s no big deal.” He pushed the last part out in one rapid, shaky breath.
Haru stared at him. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing; her parents had never mentioned anything about money problems to her, least of all the kind that required the help of some racketeering florist. “You lost me,” Haru admitted flatly. “I mean, I get why you’re worried, but. Mom and Dad are grown adults, Zash. If they felt like they were in that kind of trouble they would tell us--me especially! I literally went to school for this kind of thing. How is any of this your fault?”
“What do you think they needed a whole lot of quick money for, Haru?” Hizashi asked, a snippy tone of exasperation coming into his voice. “For their adult daughters who have their own jobs and pay their own bills? For--For the preteens who are acing every one of their classes and are gonna have the world on a string after they graduate? Or maybe it was for their fuckup middle child who decided he needed to have a breakdown over not getting something he wanted!” His voice rose to a frantic, angry shout, echoing loudly enough in the early-morning silence to rattle the glass in a nearby shop window. Hizashi clapped his hands over his mouth, shoulders heaving as he breathed.
The last flicker of anger went out of Haru as she watched him struggle against the impulse to scream. She wondered how long that had been boiling under his skin, waiting to emerge. “Zash, that wasn’t your fault either,” she said gently. “They made a stupid, bad decision and you got screwed. You’re allowed to be upset over something like that.”
Hizashi scoffed, hands dropping to wrap around himself again. “Two hundred forty million yen’s worth of upset?” he asked hollowly.
Haru’s eyes went wide. “What?”
“It costs a lot of money to raise your kid from six thousand miles away,” Hizashi said bitterly. He shook his head hard and looked back up at Haru. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” he said. “I already said I’d take care of it. It’ll take a while to pay off, but I’ve got plenty of time. It’s fine.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself and Haru at the same time. Neither of them were buying it if the current mood was anything to go by.
“Zash,” Haru said slowly. She tried to think of a way to phrase her objection as something softer than “don’t be stupid”. “What are you supposed to do if they decide that paying them back isn’t good enough?” she said finally. “Just keep working for them until you die?”
“I. I dunno,” Hizashi mumbled, shrugging. “I guess I’ll figure that out if it happens. Right now all that matters is making things right for Mom and Dad, and I did that.”
Haru sighed. An exhausted, selfish part of her wished it had been something more straightforwardly wrong that had them hashing things out in the early morning air. Something she could feel justified in yelling at him about, at the very least. “You aren’t going to tell them about this, are you?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
Hizashi shook his head firmly. “No,” he said. He hesitated, then asked, “Are you?”
Haru snorted out an exasperated laugh. “What good would it do?” she asked, throwing her hands up. “They didn’t want to tell us, what good is it going to do to let them know we know by getting them wrapped up in it all over again? I’d run your dumb ass to the cops, but at this point they’re probably in Hanajima’s pocket already.” She sighed, rubbing her forehead. “Just. I want you to promise me something, okay? I’ll keep out of it for now, but you have to swear to me the millisecond that this gets too big for you to handle on your own, you let me help you, got it?”
Hizashi looked uncomfortable giving his word on something like that, but Haru didn’t relent. She set her jaw and held out her hand with the pinky extended. He hesitated a long moment, then linked his pinky with hers and they shook on it.
“I promise,” Hizashi said quietly, meeting her eye again. Haru nodded authoritatively, shaking one last time before letting go.
“Okay,” she said, letting her breath out slowly. “That internship you told us about. Is that a for-real thing, or was it a cover for this whole...thing?” Haru asked, waving a vague hand to encompass the tangled mess the night had turned into
One corner of Hizashi’s mouth quirked up and he brightened very slightly. “Yeah, it’s real. It really does start tomorrow, too. Er, today, I guess,” he corrected himself awkwardly.
Haru nodded. “We should get home, then,” she said, turning him the right direction down the sidewalk. She took his hand as they walked, relieved that his hand was shaking just as much as hers.
Haru hated feeling like she couldn’t trust Hizashi’s word that his internship was real, but that was exactly why she was in the front lobby of Asahi Radio at lunchtime the next day. The receptionist told her it would be a few minutes until the interns were free, so Haru wandered off to kill time reading the wall of award plaques they had on display.
Haru heard her brother’s cackling laughter trickling down the hallway even before she saw him. Hizashi came strolling up to the front with a whole entourage of kids around his age, arms full of boxes and in the middle of one of his many stories about living in America. He beamed as he saw her, almost dropping his boxes as he tried to wave. The interns went in a side room with their load and were dismissed by the woman overseeing the work-study. Haru grinned in a combination of relief and genuine pride as Hizashi jogged over.
“Hey, kid,” Haru said, reaching out and ruffling his hair. “Thought I’d take you out to lunch to celebrate your first day. Pick something expensive, it’s a special occasion.”
“You’re gonna regret that,” Hizashi teased brightly as they walked out the front door. Haru privately doubted that was the part of all this that she’d come to regret.
“Have you guys been having to pull a lot of all-nighters?” Hizashi asked, trying his best to make the question sound casual.
Shirakumo frowned slightly, nodding. “I wish we weren’t,” he said, “but it seems like every time we get a handle on a case we’re working on, three more complications crop up overnight.”
“Which is the boss’s nice way of saying if any of us meet Mockingbird face-to-face, we’re going to kick his teeth in,” the woman sitting on Shirakumo’s left said, jostling Shirakumo with her elbow.
It took more self-control than Hizashi thought he possessed three beers into the night to hold back a bark of laughter at that. He waited until he thought he could speak without giggling, then asked, “He’s still active? All of our news contacts are at loose ends trying to come up with anything new about him.”
“That is a whole-ass mood,” the woman said, nodding. “Hey. Haru says you’re pretty brainy,” she added, pointing speculatively at Hizashi.
“I guess so,” Hizashi said with a shrug.
“Maybe you can riddle this out for us,” the woman said. “Say you were tracking a criminal, goes by a code name that rhymes with ‘blocking herd’. The guy by definition is a lone operator, and he follows a pretty standard pattern of ebb and flow in what he does. Then one day he falls off the face of the planet. Not a peep out of him. Well, other than a couple tangents that people blame him for, but you can’t pin ‘em on him, so they don’t really count. Then right in the middle of that, suddenly there’s a whole new face who shows up and causes a scene, supposedly on the first guy’s behalf. But there’s still no sign of the guy himself in any of it. What say you?”
“I would say maybe you need to switch to water for a while, Misa,” Shirakumo said meaningfully, tugging the half-full glass of beer out of her hand and swapping it for a glass of water. Misa frowned at him, but chugged it obediently. “None of that constitutes an official statement from the agency or anyone affiliated with it, by the way,” Shirakumo added to Hizashi. He was still smiling, but there was a definite “or else” hiding in his tone.
Hizashi nodded dismissively. “Obviously. Just a hypothetical over drinks with friends,” he agreed. He took a long sip of his drink, pretending to be thinking the situation over. The fact that Aizawa was now officially implicated caused a sharp squirm of guilt in his gut, but he did his best to ignore it.
“I see what you mean about one problem being solved causing three more in the process,” he said finally with a thoughtful nod. “Assuming the new face is legitimate, that opens up a couple options. It could mean your main suspect is getting cocky and adding to his ranks, or he’s getting scared and wants some insurance that he won’t go down alone,“ he continued, ticking the options off on his fingers. “Either way, you at least have your reason for him staying quiet.”
“How so?” Shirakumo asked. He was looking more closely at Hizashi now, an impressed interest clear in his expression.
“Why would he risk showing his face if his pets are walking around doing his wet work?” Hizashi explained, wondering too late if that skirted too close to the truth. “Cockiness leads to laziness, fear leads to paranoia,” he added, weighing the words in his hands. “Either way, not great. And then you also have to consider the option that the whole thing’s a lie, and the supposed new muscle is just a contractor for a competitor or someone your guy pissed off who’s trying to get him into extra trouble by pulling stunts in his name behind his back. If so, who’s behind that?” He shrugged, very sure now that everyone was looking at him that he should have kept his mouth more full of booze and less full of words. “Sounds like a total headache. No matter what solution you’re looking at you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”
“Damn,” someone muttered from the other end of the table.
“Told you,” Haru replied, preening. Hizashi shot her a look that she cheerfully ignored.
“So, we’re hiring this dude for our analysis team, like, yesterday, right?” Misa asked Shirakumo. Hizashi laughed awkwardly, shaking his head.
“Thanks, but nah. I’m not really the hero type, I’m just a DJ with an overactive imagination. I’ll leave the crime fighting to you guys and just use the talents I was given to help wherever I can,” Hizashi said, raising his glass in a salute down the table.
Haru drummed her heel against the floor, arms crossed tight across her chest and her back against the closed door of her room. Hizashi was sitting at her desk, eyebrows tightly knit together and a hand over his mouth as he re-read the handwritten letter in front of him. Haru’s fist was clenched around the envelope it had come in so tightly she could practically feel her parent’s names written on it along with the return address of Hanajima’s Garden Supply and Boutique Florist.
“This is insane,” Hizashi said finally, his voice hollow.
“Not the word I would have used, but. Yeah,” Haru sighed. She was doing everything she could to suppress the urge to say “I told you so”, but the words kept bunching up in the back of her throat if she thought about them too long. She could only thank her lucky stars she’d been the first one to get home and check the mail today. Right at the top of the pile had been the letter from Hanajima. Haru had snatched it up and ripped it open before she even bothered to take off her shoes. Haru had already been dialing Hizashi to come home before she reached the end of the letter; all it had taken to get him moving was the word “Hanajima”. The two of them had barricaded themselves in Haru’s room, reading the letter one after the other in tense silence.
Dear Yamadas,
It has been quite some time since we last corresponded, and I wish that it could be for a better reason.
Some years ago, you were granted forgiveness on a large lump-sum loan debt to me due to outside assistance. However, it had recently come to my attention that, putting aside the forgiven amount, there was unaccounted for interest remaining on the amount registered as paid off which has in turn gathered interest in the intervening years.
Per our previous agreement, as this amount was accrued prior to your loan forgiveness, the sum total of seven hundred eighty-thousand yen remains on your account in need of repayment. I understand that you may need some time to gather such an amount. I am willing to work out an attenuated payment plan similar to your previous repayment schedule, should you need such accommodations.
I hope this letter finds you all well, and I look forward to hearing from you regarding the issue I have outlined above.
Sincerely, Keijiro Hanajima
Hizashi sighed, scrubbing his hand over his face. “He’s got to know he can’t pull this over on me,” he said, thumbnail scraping irritably at the corner of his mouth. “I’m too deep in his money, I know this is wrong.”
“He was probably counting on Mom and Dad not telling us,” Haru said. “He knows they didn’t tell us about the loan, and that you still haven’t told them that you’re the one that got them off the hook.”
Hizashi’s expression clouded over even more at that. He chewed the inside of his cheek, then shook his head. “I’ll take care of it.” He said it like that was the last of the conversation, holding out a hand to Haru for her to give him the envelope as he dialed a number into his phone. He looked up at her when she didn’t hand it to him, flexing his fingers in a “dude, c’mon” sort of getsure. “Mr. Hanajima, it’s Yamada. Yessir, I’m well, how are you?” he said, glaring at Haru when she moved the envelope to her far hand.
“Put it on speaker,” Haru mouthed, signing the words as well to make sure he got the point. Hizashi widened his eyes meaningfully at her as he shook his head sharply.
“I’m handling it,” he mouthed back. “Yessir, everything’s fine, I just had something to talk to you about if you have a minute,” he said brightly into the phone. Haru replied by signing “Not leaving. Speakerphone. Now.” and crossing her arms. Hizashi gritted his teeth, grudgingly putting his phone down on the desk and turning on speakerphone. He put his middle finger to his lips, reminding her to keep quiet and flipping her the bird all in one motion. Haru rolled her eyes at him but did her best to not to exist for the moment.
“I’d say there were better times, but I’m sure you’ll get to the point,” Hanajima was saying from the other end.
“Of course. It’s about a letter that was sent to my parents today,” Hizashi said. He was keeping his voice on the lighter end of neutral, but his expression was stormy and his leg had started thumping irritably.
There was a short silence on the other end of the line, then Hanajima asked in a pointedly calm voice, “Do you make a habit of reading other peoples’ mail?”
“Only when I assume from the return address that it’s mine,” Hizashi said, coldly chirpy. “There, uh. Seems to be a discrepancy between what I was told when I signed on and what you’re telling them in this letter, sir. Something about unforeseen interest?”
“I know my own business, Yamada,” Hanajima said coolly.
Haru barely held in a snort, rolling her eyes. “What a tool,” she mouthed to Hizashi, who bit back a grin and waved for her to keep still.
“I’d never dream to imply otherwise, sir,” Hizashi said. “It’s more a question of numbers. I’ve been keeping a log of my payments and theirs for a while now, sir, for my own records. There’s nothing that would add up to the kind of money you’re asking for.”
To Haru’s surprise, Hanajima gave a sardonic, almost patronizing snort of laughter. “I’m sure that’s how it is in your records,” he said. “It would be rather inconvenient for all of you if it suddenly happened that you owed an even greater sum to me than previously thought, wouldn’t it? But unfortunately sometimes that’s just how these things go.”
“With all due respect, sir--” Hizashi began, his thinning patience beginning to show in his tone.
“Which is a lot, Yamada, and I would hope you and your parents keep that fact in mind,” Hanajima said. “You have a diligent mind, Yamada, but human error can make numbers do a remarkable amount of things, particularly when there is a conflict of interest to spurr it along. Money is owed and money will be paid. That’s just business.”
Hizashi’s jaw went rigid, hands balling into tight fists on the desk. “Of course, sir,” he said through gritted teeth. “My mistake. Obviously.”
“Obviously,” Hanajima agreed. Without any kind of pleasantry or signoff he hung up, leaving Hizashi seething in his wake.
Haru let out a long, low whistle. “That went well,” she muttered in a half-hearted attempt at levity. Hizashi didn’t reply, his eyes staring hard into the middle distance. He straightened up in the chair, coming to some grim decision.
“Haru?” he asked.
“Yeah?”
“I need you to do me a favor,” Hizashi said as he stood up.
“What?” Haru asked warily. Hizashi fixed her with a determined stare. She had the sudden thought of how grown up he looked now; the past five years had taken the last of the adolescent roundness out of his features and made him all sharp angles and seriousness.
“When I go out tonight, don’t follow me,” Hizashi said.
“Zash,” Haru sighed, just on the edge of wheedling. Hizashi’s expression didn’t falter. Haru frowned, nodding in grudging agreement. “Fine. But you remember that promise you made me, got it? If this goes to shit, you call me,” she said, poking him meaningfully in the chest.
Hizashi’s mouth quirked up into a very slight smile. He wrapped his arms around her and gave her a tight squeeze. “I know, I will. Everything’s going to be fine, I promise.”
“Oh my god, did you guys hear about what happened with Mr. Hanajima from the flower shop?” Hoshi asked a few days later over dinner. Haru’s head jerked up at the sound of the name, heart in her throat. She shot Hizashi a glance out of the corner of her eye, but he had his eyes locked on his plate as he calmly cut his steak into increasingly smaller pieces.
“Who’s that?” Hinako’s stepson Hitoshi piped up.
“An old friend of Nan and Jii-chan,” Hinako said, motioning for him to not get distracted and finish his dinner.
“What about him?” Haru asked as Hoshi all but vibrated in their chair with the barely-restrained excitement of a teenager with hot gossip to share.
“Okay, so get this: everybody thought he was just a florist or whatever, but he’s actually been running this huge money scheme out of his shop and loansharking all these people and has all these ties to, like, yakuza and stuff,” Hoshi said.
“What’s a yakersha?” Hitoshi asked around a mouthful of vegetables.
“It’s ‘yakuza’, don’t talk with your mouth full, and never mind,” Hinako’s wife Mara said, once again turning the eight-year-old’s attention back to his plate.
“Fumiko Nakamura from the second year class says she heard from her uncle that Hanajima lost it and just spilled everything to the cops over the phone,” Hiro added, catching the spark of his twin’s infectious energy. “They got him on tape and everything.”
“He totally got arrested right in front of me and Hiro while we were walking to school today, it was crazy!” Hoshi finished, eyes bright.
“He always seemed so...legitimate. You never do know with some people I suppose,” their father said haltingly with a slightly strained laugh. Their mother reached out and squeezed his hand.
Haru stared hard at Hizashi, not so much as blinking until he finally relented and looked up at her. He met her gaze smiling calmly with nothing behind his eyes. It was disconcerting how easily he could switch himself off like that.
“How?” Haru signed to him, using the smallest motions she could.
“Don’t worry. It’s over,” Hizashi replied. Haru frowned, having had about enough of his sideways, noncommittal answers.
“You two all right down there?” their father asked before Haru could press him for details.
“I took the last popover and she needed to call me a few things she can’t say in front of the shortstack,” Hizashi said brightly, grinning over at Hitoshi.
“Language,” their father teased with a faux-stern look at Haru.
“He started it,” Haru groused, sticking her tongue out at Hizashi. Hizashi gave her a tight smile of thanks for playing along. Haru rolled her eyes but nodded back. This would just get added to the mounting pile of things about her brother she was never going to get a straight answer about, she supposed moodily.
“It was really cool to finally meet you, dude,” Shirakumo said as he and Hizashi walked down the street towards the train station. “Haru talks about you all the time, I think we were all kind of chomping at the bit to finally meet the mythical Hizashi.”
“I am pretty great,” Hizashi joked, tossing his hair over his shoulder. Shirakumo let out a loud, snorty laugh. It was really no wonder he was such a popular hero, Hizashi thought. His height and broadness gave the impression of an intense bearing when you first met him, but it was quickly balanced out by his open ultra-honest personality. Even the jagged scars that cut through his right eyebrow and down the side of his face seemed charismatic in their own way, giving him a well-traveled, swashbuckling kind of charm.
“Sorry about Misa jumping on you like that, by the way,” Shirakumo went on with a self-conscious grimace. “It’s been so long since we’ve taken a break from work that I think we’ve all kind of forgotten how to switch off and chill out.”
“No worries, I know how that goes. You should ask Haru what it’s like trying to get me to shut up when we get someone interesting in the studio for an interview,” Hizashi replied, waving the apology away. “I end up annoying myself half the time.”
Shirakumo snort-laughed again. “I dunno, that seems pretty interesting to me. Maybe we could grab something to eat sometime and you can tell me about it instead.”
He said it so smoothly that Hizashi almost agreed offhand without thinking about it. The word caught behind his teeth just in time as his brain caught up with what was actually being said. “Erm. Right,” he said instead, not having to force the awkwardness in his tone. “Haru told you I’m fresh off a breakup, didn’t she?”
Shirakumo flushed. “She...might have mentioned something about you being in kind of a funk,” he hedged.
Hizashi smiled in spite of himself. Two for two on dashing heroes who can’t lie to save their soul, he thought, amused. “I appreciate the offer, don’t get me wrong. But I, uh. I’m not sure it’s a great time for me to have something going on with someone,” he said, trying to be as gently vague as he could.
“Yeah, no, I totally get that,” Shirakumo said. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to push, I just--”
“Haru made you promise to hit me up at least once tonight,” Hizashi guessed, letting him off the hook of trying to put it into nicer words. Shirakumo grinned.
“Guilty,” he admitted. He paused, then added. “I think she’s been worried about you, to be honest. I mean, Haru isn’t really the worrying type, but you can tell sometimes.”
“Yeah, she does that,” Hizashi agreed, fondness creeping into his tone. For all the shit he gave his sister about meddling and fussing over him, he couldn’t help being grateful for the concern. “It really wasn’t as big a deal as she seems to think, though. We went to coffee a couple times, for drinks, hung out at his place, nothing too intense.” Aizawa’s face flashed to the front of his mind, twisted in terrified fury as he called Hizashi nothing but a problem in his life. Hizashi shook his head. “We just realized we wanted different things out of the relationship. People are people, what are you gonna do?” he added with a breezy shrug.
“True,” Shirakumo said, nodding, as they reached the train station doors. “So, can I maybe platonically give you my number instead?” he asked with a slightly cheeky grin. “I wasn’t just hitting on you when I said it was cool hanging out with you tonight.”
Hizashi hesitated, drowning in irony with no hope of explaining why to Shirakumo. He needed to let Shirakumo down gently and walk away, but his brain seemed to want to help him precisely not at all in thinking of a way to do that. “Sure,” Hizashi said finally, unlocking his phone and handing it to Shirakumo. “I’ll text you the next time Haru threatens to muzzle me for talking her ear off about celebrity gossip.”
“Deal,” Shirakumo said, handing his phone over so that Hizashi could put his number in as well. “Don’t be a stranger!” he added as they swapped phones back and he turned to head home.
Hizashi considered doing just that most of the train ride home, staring down at the newly added “Oboro Shirakumo” in his contacts. As an extra little flourish, Shirakumo had added a fortissimo and a thundercloud emoji after his name. On the one hand, this was a terrible idea and Hizashi needed to lose Shirakumo’s number before he ended up doing something stupid. On the other hand, tempting fate by doing stupid things with heroes was practically his signature move at this point. With Aizawa freezing him out, keeping Shirakumo on deck was the only way for him to stay on brand. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, right? Hizashi shoved his phone into his pocket, hating the weight of preemptive dread that settled on his shoulders as he tried to preserve this small bubble of normality that had come into his life.
