The Night We Met (KamiShin)

All Of You

Hitoshi wandered the school halls mindlessly. The past night had been a mess. Shota hadn't stopped lecturing and complaining about every little thing there was to whine about. He brought up his attitude, his grades— everything. But nothing could hurt Hitoshi as much as a certain line that accidentally came out of his mouth. It would be engraved in his head for the next to weeks, a token to hold on to; a free pass to remember why he was so angry at his father.
"The second my son decides to socialize, he just had to get in the worst possible person's pants."
Hitoshi flipped over that. He had never talked back or screamed at his father as much as he did that night. It was safe to say that his apartment had become an absolute chaos at eleven in the night. His sister cried out of sadness; claiming that she had missed Hitoshi quite a lot. Hizashi tried to calm everyone down, but Hitoshi couldn't help also taking his anger out on him.
He cried himself to sleep that night. Something which hadn't happened in over a decade. In fact, he couldn't recall the last time he'd cried before that. He wanted to check if Denki was alright. His blood burned as he remembered the blond's father hitting him. He'd never felt so angry at someone. Hadn't the man seen that his son was scared?
He texted Denki— multiple times, but he didn't receive a response. Of course he hadn't. He'd probably had his phone taken away. He finally wished him a good night, following it up with an "I love you" before dozing off to sleep.
The next day was also a mess. All his comrades from class 1C came up to him, asking where he'd been and why he hadn't returned to school. He shrugged them off. They didn't really care. They just wanted gossip, something new to obsess over. He overheard one of his classmates mention Denki's name, how he'd also mysteriously gone missing.
"Stay out of it, asshole," was what Hitoshi wanted to say. It was what he wished he'd said.
But it was none of his business. In fact, it was none of their business. Everything that had gone down would stay between him and Denki, and maybe their parents too.
Or so he thought.
At lunch time, he was immediately swarmed by Denki's squad of weirdo friends. He was bombarded with questions— first about him and his whereabouts, and then about the blond. At that moment, he took notice of his boyfriend's absence, looking around for a bit before finally minding the others.
"He's not here?" Hitoshi said.
Sero and Ashido shook their heads.
"He's not answering my calls either! I've been trying to reach him for the past twenty minutes," Kirishima added.
"Yeah, and that's especially weird since dunce face is always on his phone," Bakugo said.
Hitoshi hummed in monotone.
"I see."
"You went missing too! Did you happen to run into him?" Ashido asked.
Hitoshi began to walk away from the group, irritated.
"That's between Denki and I. I'm sorry," he said.
Worry began to take him over. Was Denki safe? He wished he could visit him, though he didn't exactly know where he lived. He began to chew on his fingernails. Anxiety bubbled in the pit of his stomach.
Afternoon rolled around slower than Hitoshi would've wanted it to. Shota was going to be the one to take him to the gym, since he no longer trusted Hitoshi on his own. The indigo-haired boy tried to negotiate, stating that it would be better if Hizashi was his chaperone. But nothing ever worked out for him.
As Hitoshi stepped into the car, Shota eyed him with an intense glare through the rear view mirror.
"What?" Hitoshi spat.
"Don't speak to me like that," Shota mumbled.
"Then don't stare at me."
He heard his father sigh.
"You've been a model son for all your life until now. You've never acted so irrationally or emotionally. You almost never talk back—"
"If it's about how Denki is a bad influence I don't wanna hear it. Speaking of which, you're his teacher. Why wasn't he at school today?"
Shots gripped the steering wheel tighter.
"He's sick."
"Oh..."
Hitoshi thought back to their time inside the river. It had been quite cold and they hadn't dried off completely. Now that he thought about it, even his throat felt a little raspy. Denki most likely had caught a cold.
Still, that fact couldn't eradicate his bubbling feeling of terror. His urges to see Denki once more began eating at him from the inside, like harsh moths on an old wool blanket. His stomach felt heavy, as if someone were punching him very slowly. His throat tightened as his heart began to pound heavily. No... this couldn't be happening. His anxiety attacks had long disappeared. So why now? At the worst possible moment.
He gripped the seatbelt, squeezing his eyes shut. He counted to twenty, and whispered some words that had remained unspoken long ago. Words that he hadn't needed to say to himself. A repeated poem with a random message.
Shota turned his gaze to the mirror, watching his son contorting slightly with emotional pain. Shota cringed, frowning at himself. Had he been too harsh?
He parked the car, letting out a long sigh.
"Hitoshi... we're here," Shota said.
Letting out one last breath, the other boy sat up as if nothing had happened. He opened the backdoor, slamming it shut. Shota watched his son storm into the gymnasium. Hitoshi had always been such a mystery to him. He went from a somewhat happy, traumatized child to a quiet and reserved teenager, each time more dissociated than the last. Shota gripped the wheel tighter as his eyes began to water. He punched the horn, screaming a curse word before sobbing onto the wheel.
"Hitoshi really doesn't know anything about that boy. It's going to break my son when he finds out."