Shoto was sitting on the floor in the dormitory. He hadn't told anyone what had happened, but it seemed to have something to do with his parents. His mother, who was in a clinic to be precise. Kaede had been nodding encouragement to Momo for a while, but she just couldn't bring herself to go to Shoto. Kaede finally decided that they couldn't let him sit there any longer without saying anything. "Shoto, you can talk to us-" "About what?" He didn't look up. Kaede took another step towards him. "About your parents, about your feelings, about everything." "With you?" Kaede didn't let on how much it hurt her that he was spitting the words back at her. "How could I talk to you about parents? You don't have any, remember? Besides-" "Yes Shoto, I'd forgotten. While you all spent your day off today visiting your parents, I forgot I didn't have any and went to visit them anyway. But that's too bad. If you had listened to me, you would know that I said you could talk to us. To us. Everyone here. Not to me now anymore, I'm sorry, but I only let people talk to me respectfully." She turned and walked out the door. Most of them were not back from today yet, so the rest stood around the room aimlessly while Shoto continued to stare at the floor. "I'll talk to Kaede." They didn't know if Katsuki was saying that to the group in the room or to himself, but he detached himself from the doorway and followed her outside.
When she saw that Katsuki was also coming, she wanted to go back inside, but he held her. She looked at his hand, which gripped her upper arm tightly. "I came here because I don't want to talk." "I know, I don't care." "Do you care about anything? Is this how you go through life? I am Katsuki Bakugo! I dont care about anything." "Are you taking your bad mood out on me now?" She looked to the side. "Sorry." She pulled away from his grip. "I wanted to be alone, after all. So I wouldn't." He sat down beside her on the veranda. "You wanted to be alone. What do you want now?" Indecisively, she sought his gaze. She wanted to stay there. With him. It was already dawn, clouds were moving across the sky and it was windy. There was nothing special or beautiful about this evening and yet she wanted this moment to last a little longer. But she also knew she couldn't say it out loud. "I don't know." "Then sit until you do know." She looked across the meadow to the other dorms. He too searched in the distance for something until he couldn't stand the silence. "So you really did this today? You went to your parents?" She laughed. It wasn't the bell-bright laugh he usually had a warm feeling about. It was the bitter laugh that was always on her face when she talked about the past. Or the future. Or her Quirk. "I can't visit them. I killed them, remember?" "You can't visit them, or you won't?" "I don't really know. My father is buried in Norway, with his relatives. I think it was just an excuse so I couldn't see him. And my mother. She's ashes in the sea. I have nothing left of them and I can't see them. It's like a bitter joke. Sometimes I wonder if they did it on purpose to punish me. I mean, wouldn't my parents have wanted to be buried together? He didn't even want to live after my mother-" She froze for a tiny second, but Katsuki noticed, though she quickly pushed a strand of hair behind her ear to cover it. "Do you want to talk about it?" Katsuki was surprised himself that he could bring it past his lips as a question. Everyone was pushing her to tell, why not him now? There was a simple answer for that. Katsuki Bakugo was afraid of being insistent. Because if he was too insistent at that moment, Kaede might go back inside. But she remained seated. She just shook her head. "No." "In theory, I was with my family today. I was sorting Midnight's papers with Eri because she was.... let's say she keeps forgetting she has a job. But it was fun. And I trained with some students from the third who will be leaving for the internship abroad soon." "You train with third graders?" They talked for a while longer. Until it got too cold they sat on the steps and even then they forced themselves to ignore the temperatures. What's freezing breath and blue fingers when your entire body is tingling with heat?
"I knew you would still come." Shoto was standing in the doorway. "Come in, close the door, sit down." "I'm sorry Kaede, I shouldn't have talked like that. I appreciate that you care about me and I can understand if you're upset. I was angry, no, disappointed and I didn't think about what my words were doing to others, I-" "Shoto, that's enough." He looked up. Kaede smiled at him encouragingly. "I don't want you to spend so long talking about what has already been forgiven. I'm not mad or anything, I can understand your reaction. After that I just didn't want to deal with the subject, it wasn't because of you." She stroked his hands. "I would keep punching you until you stopped staring at the floor like that." "That was creepy, wasn't it?" "Yep." He laughed. She sensed something budding inside Shoto. Jerking, Kaede pulled her hand away. "What did I do, use my Quirk?" Confused, Shoto rubbed his eyes. "No." He beamed at her. "You remind me of my mother, you should meet her sometime."
The next morning Kaede fell down the stairs. She had tripped over something, but there was nothing there. "What the hell?" Still half asleep, she got up and ran back. Cling film was wrapped around the posts, so you ran into it. Kaede ran to the bottom floor, where she saw Mina and Denki continuing to handle the stuff. "Guys! Couldn't you have warned me? I almost broke my neck just now." "Sorry Kaede, no exceptions!" "I'll show you exceptions in a minute!" Denki backed away. "Lie down on the sofa and just watch the spectacle!" "Hi." She was startled to see Tsuyu already lying on the sofa. "I guess we're the lucky ones to escape all this?" "Let's make pancakes right now, I'm in the mood for pancakes." "That's the beauty of kitchen duty." It was truly a spectacle. It was worth it if only because at the end they were all in a heap and somewhere between the body parts you could hear Katsuki screaming strangled and Izuku gasping for breath. When Eijiro pulled the head out of the pile, the four remaining ended up in a fit of laughter because he had wrapped cling film around his head. "Now we can start the day fresh." "I hate those jokes."