#labl

If anyone could see All Might, the rising star of the heroic industry, at the state he was in right now, they wouldn’t believe their eyes. Rumpled shirt and stained jeans in lieu to his dazzling hero suit, a bird nest of a hair that no comb ever touched in the past week. He had a crick that permanently lodged to his back, a result from thirteen hours plane ride from Toronto to Tokyo. He was pretty sure he still smelled like crude oil too.

He literally just got back from an international mission, helping with a massive oil spill near the arctic waters, when Gran Torino called him.

“They found Nana’s grandson”, was all that Torino said, tiredly as if Toshi’s mentor just aged two decades since he last met him. Toshi had to hold back urges to jump straight to where Torino told him he would be waiting, and instead suffered through a taxi ride that seemed to take forever.

So here they were, sitting on some police precinct chair that could barely hold Toshi’s bulk. What they were waiting for, he didn’t know. As his anxieties peaked up no thanks to the coffee, he decided for a more interesting thing to do--picking black crusts off from under his nails.

He swore he already cleaned them off when he hit the shower back at the hotel. That seriously was fourteen--fifteen?--hours ago.

He was too jetlagged for this.

“Cut that off”, Torino scolded and Toshi felt like he was back in high school, with his lanky limbs that seemed too tall and too awkward. Toshi scrunched his nose, but obeyed.

He wished he was All Might at the moment. All Might was handsome, charming, and confident. Toshinori was simply an anxious mess with too dark bags under his eyes and unkempt appearance. But All Might had no connection whatsoever to Shimura Nana as far as the public knew, so that was that.

A detective walked into the room. He was older than Naomasa, with his greying hair and crow’s feet at the corner of his eyes. After a brief introduction, Detective Shiba dropped a stack of files on the table, pulling a picture of what appeared to be a bloody crime scene and a photo of a scraggly looking man.

“Last month, a child welfare worker found a male baby covered in blood at her doorstep”, the detective began. “The blood belonged to someone related to the baby. We ran it through our database and found a match.”

“The late Shimura Nana…”, Torino whispered, eyes glued to the photos on the table. Toshi swore Torino’s eyes were watery behind his mask.

“You told us Ms. Shimura had a son she gave up to the institution, right?” Detective Shiba asked.

“Yes. His name was… Hisui, I think?” Torino’s eyes turned wary. “What happened to him?”

“Assumed dead. We found his blood in his apartment and--”

“And what?” Torino pursued.

“And a hand that belonged to him. A disembodied hand. We couldn’t find a body”, Detective Shiba said, pulling another picture of said hand. Toshi found himself unable to look away, mind blank.

“His neighbors said his wife disappeared the day before the child worker found the baby, so we suspected she’s involved”, the detective continued.

“She killed him?” Toshi blurted out before he could stop himself.

“No”, Detective Shiba answered. “Her body was found two days later in the river, along with a suicide note that explained everything. She said, it was the baby’s Quirk that did it.”

More pictures. A dead body of a woman. The photo from civil registry, of a small white-haired woman with downcast eyes. Then, another picture of the suicide note, written in scribbly handwriting.

“The child worker noticed that the kid’s Quirk is already manifested, so she took him to a Quirk specialist. It’s some kind of Quirk that disintegrates things he touches with his hand”, the detective explained. “From Mrs. Shimura’s note, we know that it was the Quirk manifestation that killed her husband. It scared her, so she decided to get rid of her son--although she did write that she couldn’t kill him. In the end, losing her husband was too much for her, that she ended her life.”

“T-then the baby? Hisui’s son? How is he--” Gran Torino choked. If Toshi didn’t know any better, he expected his old teacher would begin to cry any moment now.

“Ah, well… That’s one reason why I called you. Both of you, I guess”, Detective Shiba clasped his hands. “Gran Torino, I remember you as Shimura Nana’s sidekick and friend. And Mr. Yagi, you’re Ms. Shimura’s protege, you said? You see, Mr. and Mrs. Shimura both grew up in the same orphanage, so they don’t have any relative. You’re the closest thing to a relative to this small family.”

“You want to ask us if we want to adopt him or give him up to the institution”, Toshinori furrowed his brows. He would do it--he would adopt and take care of this child, his teacher’s grandson, no matter what. He would protect his teacher’s legacy.

“That’s not… really what I’m gonna say”, the detective rubbed the back of his neck. “The child welfare worker who found the kid. She, well… She said she wants to adopt him.”

Toshi exchanged look with Torino, their eyebrows raised.

--

On the way to the orphanage, at the backseat of a taxi, Toshi went through the seven stages of grief all at once. Okay, maybe the acceptance part was more like grudging defeat. He knew that as a hero, he couldn’t always save everyone. Theoretically, he knew this. He couldn’t always be there for everyone.

But the news about the death of his mentor’s son and the ruins of his family hurt Toshi more than he expected. After all, the whole reason she gave up her son up to the institutions was that so he could live long and happy. And yet, he died all because of his own son’s Quirk manifested. It seemed too… unfair? Tragic?

Something hit the back of Toshi’s head, hard , and it took him a moment to pull himself off the internal freakout he’d been doing and realize that Torino had smacked him. He mustered enough energy to glare at his old mentor.

“Stop hitting me!”

“I’ll stop hitting you when I damn please, you stupid meathead”, Torino sighed, sounded more tired than ever. It was only then Toshi realized how old his old mentor had become. Sure, Gran Torino still could pack a mean punch, but his figure had withered from age; his hair turned completely white and his movements stiff.

How old was Torino again? Fifties? Sixties?

“If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I shoulda keep an eye on that boy when she--” Torino paused and looked away, shoulders hunched as if the weight on his shoulders were too much to bear.

A decade passed and Nana’s death still hurt both of them, this was a fact. Toshi mourned for the loss of the closest thing he could get as a mother figure, while Torino mourned for his dear friend and lifelong partner. Toshi knew they had a thing, romantically speaking, that went way before Nana married some nameless, faceless guy who ultimately died at the hands of her nemesis, but their partnership was way more than that.

It was complicated. Toshi knew best not to prod.

--

They finally arrived at an orphanage.

It was one of those Christian orphanages, with its own school and church. The place was surprisingly nice, with green field surrounding the building. The brick walls were covered with vines. It kinda gave off a homey feeling that made Toshi feel at ease.

A handful of younger children were playing in groups, under the watchful eyes of the nuns. They turned their heads curiously as Toshi and Torino crossed the yard. They waved cheerfully at Gran Torino, who was wearing his hero suit. Toshi chuckled as his old teacher gave them a thumbs-up.

If only he was wearing his hero suit now.

The headmaster, Father Ishi, was already waiting for them at the entrance to the building. He was a large man with big jaws and gem-like growths peppering his face and skin. Despite his scary appearance, he smiled and laughed jovially when he shook Toshi’s hand. Toshinori was by no means small, what with his gigantism and muscled build, but he swore he still could feel the handshake rattling his bones.

Father Ishi took Toshi and Torino to a baby room, green hills painted on the walls and the windows tall to let sunlight bathing the whole room in warm, golden radiance. Ms. Midoriya already waited for them inside, sitting cross legged on the carpeted floor with a baby bouncing happily on her lap.

Toshi took a double take when he got in. Ms. Midoriya looked an awful lot like his mentor. No, not physically; Shimura Nana was built like a brick house, tall and muscular, and could bring down an entire building with a single punch. Ms. Midoriya was smaller, looked more frail, but there was that aura emanating from her, that made people around her feel more at ease. Her dark hair and ever-present smile only made her look more like Nana.

Next to him, Gran Torino let out a pained whine, almost inaudible to everyone in the room except Toshi. It seemed that his old teacher got the same impression too.

When Toshi finally tore his eyes away from Ms. Midoriya, it was only then he realized fully who the baby on her lap was.

Nana’s grandson.

The boy had pale hair that looked light-golden under the sunlight and his smile was just as bright. He held Ms. Midoriya’s bangs in a death grip, making Toshinori wince in sympathy.

“Good afternoon”, Ms. Midoriya greeted the three of them, looking as if there wasn’t a baby in her lap trying to rip the hair off her scalp. Right. Child Welfare Worker; this was probably normal for her.

Torino and Toshi echoed her greetings, and joined her and Father Ishi on the floor.

She was younger than Toshinori expected she would be. And unmarried, if the lack of ring on her finger was any indication. Sure, at this day and age, it wasn’t uncommon for women to marry older. But adopting a child before marrying? That was pretty unheard of, not in Japan at least.

Oh well, that was none of his business.

Toshi let Gran Torino take control of the conversation, seeing that, well… his mentor was the closest to a relative to Shimura Nana. Meanwhile, he used his time to observe the baby, Shimura Tenko. It was hard to see Nana in the boy. He just… looked so different to her, with light hair and red eyes. Toshi thought if he squinted hard enough, he could see that famous smile of hers, but he just couldn’t see it.

“He has her nose”, Torino commented all of a sudden, his voice solemn. Toshi stared, tried to make sense of his old teacher’s words.

Nope. Still couldn’t see it.

“I’m glad that the police can find his relative, even if it’s not by blood”, Ms. Midoriya said with a smile, even though her eyes looked sad. Her hands were gentle, holding to the little boy’s body; but Toshi sensed that she would fight tooth and nail to keep Tenko with her, if necessary.

Toshinori knew, in that moment, that he couldn’t keep the baby.

He was a Pro-Hero. That alone warranted that he couldn’t always be there to take care of a baby. He spent most of his time on the street; fighting villains, doing community works to keep the society safe and functioning, helping solve crimes, or just simply patrolling.

And then there was that constant danger that came with his job. A few weeks ago, he accidentally found out that one of his old teammates at International Heroics was a parent, simply because a villain unknowingly took over their daughter’s school as hostage. Toshi didn’t think he was ready for that nightmare-turned-reality.

So he kept quiet and watched as Torino interacted with Tenko, who abandoned Ms. Midoriya’s hair for Torino’s cape. Without preamble, the baby stuffed the fabric into his mouth before any of the adults could stop him, and refused to spit it out no matter what.

Tenko was very quiet. Ms. Midoriya said, it was due to various reasons; the trauma of losing his parents, possible child neglect. She said, Tenko was a little bit underweight when she found him and he missed some of his developmental milestones, like walking or saying his first word.

As she talked, she made it even clearer that there was no way Toshinori would be able to give the time, care, and attention that Tenko severely needed. There’d be times when he would be away for days, even weeks at a time, mostly to solve difficult case overseas. Eventually, he’d have to choose between his duty as a Pro-Hero and as a parent, and he didn’t think he was ready for that yet .

Tenko deserved a loving home and a loving parent, someone who understood what he needed to grow to his full potential. Someone like Ms. Midoriya, who was already professionally trained for this and was willing to adopt. And she clearly adored Tenko, if judging by the way she was holding him like he was the most precious thing she’d ever seen in her life.

Who was he to come between them?

--

The next morning, Toshinori woke up to Naomasa already making breakfast. It smelled like miso soup. Nothing really beat Japanese-style breakfast, he mused.

Despite having slept for ten hours straight, Toshi still could feel exhaustion settling deep in his bones. He made his way to the kitchen slash dining room and circled his arms around Masa’s waist, resting his head at the crook of Masa’s neck. His boyfriend already showered and Toshi couldn’t help but bask in the fruity scent of the soap.

It was a rare occasion that both of them had an off-day at the same time. Toshi was almost always out doing his hero duty, so between the two of them, Masa was probably the one with more flexible schedule. Whenever Toshi had an off-day, usually after finishing an international hero work, Masa would try to switch his shift so they could spend time doing nothing together.

Sometimes, Toshi felt like Masa was putting more effort into their relationship; but if he was, Masa never said a peep about it.

“If I bribe you with coffee, will you let me go?” Toshi heard Masa chuckling. He mustered enough energy to reply ‘yes’, but it came out as a garbled mess, with his face smushed to Masa’s shoulder.

It took a bit of maneuvering, but somehow Masa was able to finish making the breakfast and grab the coffee with Toshi still hanging off him like a limpet. And with only a minor incident too.

“I wanna say ‘this is why you don’t hug the cook’, but you look so awful I don’t think I’m cruel enough for that”, Masa joined Toshi on the table. The full course of the breakfast was already laid between them; miso soup, white rice with raw egg on top, and fried tofu.

Toshi’s mouth watered. He picked up the soup bowl and drank it in five big gulps.

“Now, you wanna tell me what’s bothering you?” Masa asked, almost nonchalant. Toshi was glad he already swallowed the last gulp.

He still hadn’t tell Masa about Tenko when he got home the day before. He didn’t know how to bring up the topic. They never discussed anything about children. He didn’t think he could just go ‘Hey, I love you so do you wanna help me raise my dead mentor’s grandson?’

Yeah, that totally, definitely couldn’t go wrong at all.

It was all still too sudden for him. It wasn’t uncommon that Toshi felt personally responsible to help everyone he could, but Tenko wasn’t just anyone . He was Nana’s grandson, and Toshi still didn’t know how to feel about that. He really wanted to be personally involved in the poor boy’s life, wanted to raise him so maybe one day he could carry Nana’s legacy.

Fuck, he wasn’t awake enough for this.

Toshi nibbled his chopstick, eyes downcast as he searched for words, before opening his mouth. “It’s just--”

“Ok, I’m gonna cut you right there. You know I can tell when you lie, right?” There was no heat in Masa’s tone, but still it made Toshi wince.

Toshi released a deep sigh.

“I know. It’s just-- I, I mean. It’s still too new for me to process”, he gave Masa a pleading look. “Give me time?”

Since the emergence of Quirk, there had been increasing rate of parents giving up their child to the child welfare institutions. At the beginning, it was parents who didn’t want child born with Quirk. These days, people would easily give their child away when they failed to manifest their Quirk, or were born with dangerous or heteromorphic-type Quirk.

The Child Welfare Department worked tirelessly day and night to establish new laws, build more orphanages, and hired more professionally trained caregivers. They went as far to hire retired heroes who still wanted to serve the society. But the rate of parents giving up their children was still tragically high.

It created a stigma that the institutionalized children were outcasts born with villainous Quirk, doomed to go down a villain’s path.

Inko often saw them coming home crying after being bullied at school. This inspired her to make a scrapbook about heroes with ‘villainous’ Quirk and heteromorphic-type Quirk and showed them whenever she came visiting. She went as far to ask the heroes to sign her scrapbook and hired them on special occasion, like Golden Week and Shichi-Go-San.

Sometimes, these didn’t work. The caretakers still complained about how the older kids came home bruised and withdrawn. It made the caretakers worried that they might become a villain for real. They worked really hard to reach out and offer help. Sometimes those who were too bitter and jaded aged out of the system and became villains. They were never be seen again.

During field work, Inko often had to pick up a crying, screaming toddler while the parents signed the document with unabashed relief on their face. She put her most soothing smile and reassuring words and warm hugs for the child.

When she started working, she used to think that it was probably for the best of the child. The parents were not as trained as her, so maybe if the child stayed with them it would do them all more harm than good.

Now, she couldn’t really say for sure.

--

Sometimes, there were children dropped off at the doorstep of the orphanage, sometimes in the middle of the night where nobody was around. This was the first time, however, that a baby was dropped off at Inko’s own doorstep.

She lived in a house that she inherited from her parents. It was in a better part of the city, but it wasn’t big; it was pretty nondescript, in fact. She wondered how did someone find out where she lived, or what she worked as. She hoped that whoever dropped the child on her doorstep simply chose her house on random and not because she was being stalked.

The baby was bundled in an oversized coat and covered in blood. She could only see the tuft of their hair peeking from the fold of fabric, a pretty white color spattered in red. Inko would have thought they were dead if not for the weak whimpers coming from the bundle.

Maybe it wasn’t her brightest idea, not calling the cops right away. She would, later, but for now it would have to wait. She had a baby to take care of.

Gently, she lifted the bundle and a scrap of paper fell to the ground. Inko picked it up and read ‘Tenko - please care’ written in scribbly handwriting. No surname, no contact information, nothing. A surge of anger burned in her. What kind of parent discarding their own child like some kind of unwanted animal?

Well, the child’s name was written in kanji. At least, that was something… She hoped that the child’s name was in the civil registry or something. That would make her work finding the child’s lineage a little bit easier. Probably.

Opening up the bundle, it took everything in her not to scream bloody murder. The baby’s face was completely covered in blood. Inko was never a squeamish person, but the implication that someone lost that much blood made her stomach twist. She sincerely hoped that it was someone else’s blood, and not the baby’s.

“Alright then, let’s get you cleaned up”, she whispered, steeling herself. She carried the child to the kitchen and grabbed some baby toiletries--grateful that she always kept some baby supplies at home in case she was needed somewhere close to her house and had no time to get back to the orphanage.

While waiting for the sink to fill with warm water, she took a blood sample from the baby’s cheek with a cotton swab and put it in a ziplock bag, to be given away to the cops later as evidence. Hopefully, it would help them identify the owner of the blood.

The baby, Tenko, was revealed to be a boy, probably a year old if not older, and had too little baby fat to her liking. When Inko poked into the boy’s mouth to see his teeth, he squirmed and opened his eyes for the first time. Beautiful red eyes like the color of red spider lilies stared back at her.

“Hello”, Inko cooed. The boy blinked, but didn’t make any noises; instead, he moved his hand as if to suck his bloody thumb. Wincing slightly, Inko gently held his wrist down. “No, not before we clean this up, okay?”

She worked quickly to wipe the blood and grime away. This wasn’t an easy task, as the baby was fully intent on squirming away from her grasp, all while crying loudly as if the whole bathing process hurt him. All attempts to calm him down was met with an even louder wail, accompanied with hitting and kicking.

She was relieved as more skin was revealed and the baby didn’t seem to sustain any injury, though it was short-lived as Tenko increased his struggle when she tried to put on a diaper. Thinking that he might be hungry, Inko put him down on a blanket spread over the couch then quickly prepared the formula.

Tenko calmed down as he sucked, much to Inko’s relief; but then he grabbed the bottle with his tiny fingers, and it disintegrated.

It began with dark tiny cracks, like veins on old leaves, before the plastic crumbled like ashes between his fingers. She was quick enough to pull what remained of it from Tenko’s grasp, but by then, the milk already spilled over the yellow onesie she put on him.

His Quirk, was Inko’s first thought.

She didn’t want to think what it did to whoever owned the blood on the boy.

“I guess that’s why you don’t like to be touched, huh?” Inko wondered aloud as she changed his clothes and cleaned the mess on her couch. At least, nobody got hurt, though she could tell that Tenko was just as surprised as her.

--

Once Tenko cried himself to sleep, Inko called the cops. A middle-aged detective with graying hair and his partner arrived in a cruiser not long after. She told them everything in precise details about how her morning was. The detective seemed upset when she got to the part where she cleaned up the baby.

“Please don’t do that next time. I know you did it for the sake of the baby, but you might be also tampering with the evidence”, he said.

“I’m sorry. I wanted to make sure if he’s injured or not.” Then, she remembered. “But I keep some of the blood on a cotton swab. And there’s the coat wrapping the baby.”

“That might help. Can you also give us the piece of paper that you found? We might be able to find something on it”, the detective nodded.

After handing the items to the detective’s partner, Inko shared her concerns about the possibility of someone stalking her; but the number of people who could be stalking her was too big. She’d been working for two years, after all, and handling quite a lot of cases. In the end, the detective couldn’t offer anything but speculations and he promised to give updates once they found something more substantial.

“In the meantime, you should probably bring him to a hospital to get him checked”, the detective said as he was preparing to leave.

“I know. I’m going to do it after this”, Inko replied. “I just got him calmed down. He hates being touched.”

“We can offer you a ride to the--Muraoka Hospital is the nearest, right?” the detective asked his partner, who nodded in affirmation.

Inko accepted the ride.

--

The ride to the hospital was blessedly short, which Inko was infinitely grateful because Tenko began to fuss. She expected him to be exhausted enough to sleep a little bit longer, but apparently that wasn’t happening. The detective and his partner spared her empathetic look as they dropped her on the lobby.

Dr. Asagiri, one of the pediatric ward, knew Inko due to her work in child welfare service and frequent visits. It only took them one look at the fussy baby in Inko’s arms before they ushered her inside.

The examinations took a little bit longer than expected. Tenko was fully awake and absolutely hated being handled. At one point, he puked on the front of Inko’s dress and disintegrated his blanket, which in turn made him even more upset. Finally, one of the nurses had the bright idea to wrap a bright hero-themed bandaid on his thumbs and distracted him with a dinosaur plushie. He calmed a bit after that, but Inko wondered if he just ran out of energy.

Inko excused herself to change her clothes and called her boss. Her boss understood her situation and promised to find a good orphanage for Tenko. It would take awhile, though, as some of the orphanages were already overcrowded or severely understaffed. In the end, Inko agreed to foster Tenko indefinitely.

When she came back to the pediatric ward, she found Tenko asleep on the examination table, the dinosaur plushie hugged tight to his chest. She took a seat across Dr. Asagiri, carefully pulling the chair so she wouldn’t wake the boy. Then, Dr. Asagiri shared the result of her examinations.

As Inko previously guessed, Tenko was a bit underweight, though a specialized diet would be able to fix it in no time. Thankfully, there was no sign of physical abuse or health problem. What was concerning, though, Tenko seemed to have a developmental delay in speech and motor skills--he still couldn’t form words or stand unassisted.

“It could be anything; neurological disorder, learning disability, psychological trauma, parental neglect. You said the cops are handling the case?” Dr. Asagiri asked.

“Yes. The detective promised to give me updates”, Inko nodded.

“I see… Keep observing him if he also has social, emotional, or cognitive delay”, was all Dr. Asagiri told her in the end.