Chapter Text
Shota considered himself a good man.
Or at the very least, he tried to be. Every day.
He wasn’t the sort of man who announced his good deeds. There were no polite smiles like Hizashi’s, no grand gestures, no charismatic warmth. His goodness showed up in quieter ways: refilling the bowl behind the apartment building for the stray tabby he insisted wasn’t his, checking news articles for familiar student names, dropping off extra coffees in the staff lounge after Nemuri and Hizashi had kept him awake through some misguided “team-building karaoke night.”
Maybe goodness wasn’t loud like All Might. Maybe it was just small acts performed without witness, little things that eased the world’s sharp edges for the people passing through it.
He didn’t think about it too deeply. Philosophy was for people who slept more than four hours a night. He rarely wondered whether his small kindnesses outweighed the uglier parts of him. Of his failures.
But tonight- if patience counted as goodness- then he was on par with the worst of Japan’s villains.
He should’ve been asleep hours ago. A rare opportunity: no patrol, no emergencies, no late-night paperwork, no Hizashi banging on his door with too much energy and a refusal to accept the word “no”. He had accepted the idea of an early night like a starving man seeing his first real meal.
He was prepared: mug washed, curtains drawn, lights off.
He had practically felt the stress of too many sleepless nights release from his back.
It should have been perfect.
And then-
A sharp, shrill cry pierced the thin apartment walls.
Then another.
Then another.
Shota groaned, dragging a pillow over his face with desperation. It didn’t help. The wail carried right through it, stentorian and merciless.
A baby.
A very unhappy baby.
He lay still for three inconceivably long seconds, bargaining with his own inner demons, then rolled onto his back forcefully with the dramatic misery of someone contemplating war crimes.
Surely no parent could listen to that without intervening?
The next cry came louder. Angrier. Almost taunting. A voice that would put Hizashi to shame.
Of fucking course.
He was going to lose his mind.
His apartment building wasn’t meant for families. One-bedroom units, cramped kitchens, thin walls- perfect for the reclusive professional, not ideal for anyone trying to raise an infant. All of his neighbors were quiet, habitual loners: a nurse who worked night shifts, an artist who lived by the tortured poet aesthetic, a law student who never looked up from her books. They operated under a mutual non-intrusion pact.
But this?
This was inescapable.
This was unacceptable.
Would he be an awful person if he knocked on their door and told them to shut their kid up?
Probably.
Was he going to do it anyway?
He swung his legs off the bed and stood with grim determination, slipping his feet into house shoes and stalking toward the door. His hair hung wild over his face, anger quick to rise at the irritation of being awake.
He stepped into the hallway.
The fluorescent lights overwhelmed his vision, burning like the sun in the dead of night.
His nose twitched, a warm, sweet scent at utter odds with the violent screaming echoing through the hall.
Honey? Vanilla?
The scent got more prominent as he walked one door down. The moving van yesterday should’ve been his warning. He hadn’t bothered to introduce himself. Didn’t plan to.
The baby’s cries crescendoed as he approached. His irritation rose with each step.
Just tell them to take care of their baby, and forget he ever had to get up.
That was a… semi-hero thing to do.
He raised his fist and prepared to knock hard enough to alert the entire floor-
-but froze.
There was another sound beneath the screaming.
A voice.
A soft voice. Cracked. Barely holding together through panicked breaths.
He tilted his head and listened, his fist still suspended.
“Please… please…”
A shuddering inhale, the kind right before a sob.
“I know, sweetheart, I know- I’m trying…”
A tiny, broken sob.
Not from the infant.
From her. The mother.
His arm went slack, frozen.
Shouta knew the sounds of breaking. Every hero did.
He’d heard it in alleyways drowned in blood, during briefing rooms with lists of dead, in rescue operations where he was just a little too late. But this wasn’t fear. This wasn’t shock.
This was exhaustion so profound it scraped bone.
Someone overwhelmed. Someone holding too much and trying too hard. Someone who was tearing at the seams, yet refusing to fall apart.
His irritation evaporated instantly, leaving a hollow ache in its wake. Familiarity, maybe.
He let his fist fall slowly, as if afraid any sudden motion might alert the occupant to his presence, to the righteous anger he’d been about to unleash.
He stepped back one step.
Then another step.
And another.
He returned to his apartment quietly, as though noise might disturb the delicate emotional ecosystem happening on the other side of the wall.
Yet that sweetness followed him- the soft, warm scent from just beyond his neighbor’s door. It lingered in the cold, quiet of his apartment.
He sat on the edge of his bed, staring blankly at the chipped paint he’d caused after a particularly brutal patrol.
Alone.
Always alone.
For the first time in a long while, he didn’t want to sleep. Or hear the crying. Or think too deeply about why that woman’s voice cut him so deeply.
The crying eventually softened, turned to hiccups, then tiny murmurs, then silence- sleep finding a home in the quiet of the apartment building.
Shota tried to follow. He tried to force himself to go to sleep, to ignore her whispered “please”. It landed somewhere between the rubble of a long-gone building and a decade and a half of isolation.
He woke before dawn, on autopilot, dressing in the dark and stepping outside while the sun was still only a suggestion in the horizon.
He convinced himself it was irrelevant. An annoyance. Something to forget.
His brain almost believed him.
But the echo of that broken voice followed him out the door- lodged somewhere beneath ribs and muscle in a place he didn’t allow anything to settle. Hadn’t. Not for years.
And it stayed there.
Waiting.