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Sakurai Ayame grew up in an ancient house under the mountains in Hokkaido. In the spring she watched the snow turn into bright, clear water, and in the autumn she watched the sky turn into snow and the mountains turn from green to white, and she spent many hours alone and never minded at all.
When she was eight, Ayame watched her father fade away, sleeping and sleeping and sleeping until he wasn’t sleeping any more but dead. Ayame and her mother kept on living, living and living in the ancient house under the mountains. Ayame grew up and trained as a nurse, travelling through the mountainous country, calling on people who needed help. But when her mother died, she left the ancient house and took a job in the long-term care ward of a hospital in Tokyo, a place that she had never visited and never had any desire to visit. And six months later, Ayame spends hours every day in the quiet, shuffling corridors, the measured, pale rooms, and wonders if it’s the slant of the light that makes the silence of Tokyo so different from the silence of Hokkaido.
In Room 17 of the long-term care ward, there’s a young man named Todoroki Shouto who suffered a brutal beating while trying to stop a gang of villains from blowing up a building full of people. He’s been there for two months, his bruises and cuts gradually fading, his eyes still resolutely closed. He’s a hero, that’s what Ayame’s colleagues tell her. They’re talking about his job. But Ayame thinks that that’s not really what it is. She looks at him, this young man, silent and sleeping, and she thinks: no.
That’s not what it is.
****
“Oh, hello,” says the young man with green hair, jumping up from his chair as Ayame enters the room on her rounds. Ayame’s seen him before, a number of times – he was here three days ago when Todoroki was transferred from critical care – but this is the first time that he’s spoken to her, the first time he’s been on his own. “Sorry, I didn’t realise there was…” He gestures.
“Oh no, don’t worry,” says Ayame. “Good morning, Todoroki-san. I’m going to do some checks on you now.” She checks Todoroki’s blood pressure and then carefully rolls him onto his other side. Todoroki remains silent, eyes closed, hair uneven – long on the red side, shaven on the white side, stitches showing dark against his scalp. Ayame turns back to the young man. “Feel free to come and go as long as it’s visiting hours. I just have to make sure he’s stable.”
The young man nods, but he doesn’t sit back down, standing by the bedside with his fists clenched. Ayame finishes her checks and then turns to him, recognising the expression, the body language.
“Did you want to ask me something?”
The young man opens his mouth and then closes it again. He looks like he might burst into tears at any moment. It’s not unusual; there are boxes of tissues in every room.
“Will he--” the young man says, then seems to shake himself. “They haven’t told us – they just keep saying only time will tell. But I--” He swallows. “Is there anything—?”
Ayame folds her hands. It’s difficult, this part of her job. “I’m afraid there’s nothing else I can tell you,” she says. “But he’ll do better with people he loves around him. Sometimes our patients can hear what’s being said, so feel free to talk to him.”
The young man with the green hair closes his mouth and nods, tears spilling over onto his cheeks. Ayame finds the tissues and hands them over. But although he’s crying, the expression on his face is not one of despair, but determination.
As she leaves the room, Ayame hears him begin to talk.
****
The young man in Room 17 isn’t the first hero that’s spent time in the long-term care ward. “Oh, you get used to it,” says Shiromoto, with a jaded shrug. “They come in and out. He’s a young one, though. And--”
She doesn’t finish the sentence, but she doesn’t need to. Long-term care is a euphemism for coma. It’s one of the quietest wards in the hospital, except occasionally when a patient crashes. They don’t move patients here until the doctors have tried everything to wake them up. Once they come here, it’s up to them. Some wake up. Many don’t. They cling, though, to scraps of life, alive but not awake, not able to claw themselves back but not able to let themselves go. In some ways, it’s the easiest ward Ayame has ever worked on. And in other ways, the most difficult.
****
Todoroki Shouto is the son of the number one hero, Endeavour. Ayame doesn’t know very much about heroes – the ancient house under the mountains where she lived until six months ago had no TV and barely any internet – but she does know that much. She knows this because even people who live in ancient houses under the Hokkaido mountains know who Endeavour is, and she knows it because sometimes Endeavour comes here, flames doused but instantly recognisable, sitting silently on a chair that’s too small for him, arms folded, face grim. Watching.
In the two months that Todoroki Shouto has been sleeping in Room 17, she’s learned many other things about him. That as well as having a father – silent and grim – he has a mother with a sad smile; a sister who comes every day, unfailingly cheerful; a brother who comes once a week and never seems comfortable. That he has friends, loud friends, who bring him gifts and play him music and argue and laugh with each other by his bedside until sometimes it feels like life itself has barrelled into the ward to sweep away the quiet. That his closest friend is a young man with green hair who cries a lot but smiles a lot as well. And that all of them respect visiting hours except one.
****
Todoroki Shouto is not the first hero to spend time in the long-term care ward, but Ayame has only been here for a few months and he’s the first hero she’s ever dealt with, so at first, she doesn’t know that there are unwritten rules. A few nights after Todoroki is transferred from critical care, she passes by Room 17 to see someone sitting by his bedside. Another young man, about Todoroki’s age, with spiky blond hair and a stormy expression. It’s after midnight and visiting hours are well and truly over.
“Excuse me, sir?” she says, knocking quietly at the door.
The young man looks up. “Hah?” he says. “You need something?”
“Visiting hours are eight till eight,” Ayame says. “It’s late.”
The young man’s jaw tightens. “Whatever. I ain’t leaving.”
Ayame draws herself up. She isn’t tall, nor is she particularly aggressive, and this young man with the slouch and the surly expression doesn’t look in the least intimidated. But Ayame isn’t intimidated by him, either.
“I’m sorry, sir, but like I said--”
The young man surges to his feet, chair scraping back, lip curling. “Like I said, I ain’t going anywhere.”
“What’s happening in here?” says Shiromoto, poking her head around the door. “Oh! Dynamight-san. I didn’t realise you were here.” She comes in fully and bows slightly to the young man.
“You gonna tell me to leave, too?”
Shiromoto glances at Ayame and jerks her head. Ayame follows her out.
“The rules are different for pro-heroes,” Shiromoto says, voice low. “They can stay if they want.”
After she’s gone, Ayame takes a deep breath and goes back into Room 17. The young man is still on his feet, watching her. Wary.
“Dynamight-san,” she says.
“I ain’t leaving.”
Ayame nods. “You can stay.”
The young man’s shoulders drop. He shoves his hands in his pockets and stares at Todoroki for a few seconds. He looks so young, in his baggy jeans and t-shirt. Too young to be a pro-hero. But Todoroki is young, too. Too young to be here, in the long-term care ward.
“Good evening, Todoroki-san,” Ayame says. “I’m just doing the usual checks.” She checks Todoroki’s vitals, aware that the young man is watching her. When she’s done, she adjusts his oxygen flow and turns to leave.
“Hey,” says the young man. “What’s his pulse ox?”
Ayame pauses. “85 per cent.”
“That’s low.”
She nods. “I increased the flow.”
The young man watches her for a couple of seconds. Then he nods and drops back down into the chair, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, staring at the bed.
“It’s Bakugou, anyway,” he says without looking at her.
“Bakugou-san,” she says.
He doesn’t reply.
****
By the time Todoroki Shouto has been in Room 17 for a week, Ayame has started to see his friends everywhere. The green-haired young man – Midoriya – staring out of the front page of every paper on the news-stand. Bakugou sneering from the giant TV screens outside Shibuya station. The cheerful red-head whose name is Kirishima but whose hero name is apparently Red Riot, beaming from a poster advertising protein powder. It seems that almost every one of Todoroki’s friends is a pro-hero, and suddenly Ayame finds herself paying much more attention to the background noise of news and advertising that’s so ubiquitous that she’s never even looked at it before. In Hokkaido, there were mountains and forests, snow and sunshine. Here there are Todoroki Shouto’s friends, smiling out at her from every surface.
And then there’s Todoroki himself. The ads – for some kind of high-end watch – come down very soon after Todoroki is transferred to long-term care – perhaps out of respect, perhaps out of some sense that it’s hard to use a comatose man as a spokesperson – but for a few dizzying days, Ayame sees him everywhere, face unmarred by bruises and lacerations, eyes open, like a ghost from another time. After they come down, there’s still one in Ayame’s local metro station – missed in the sweep, perhaps – and sometimes Ayame pauses in front of it and looks at what Todoroki Shouto was before she ever saw his face.
Todoroki Shouto is not the first hero to spend time in the long-term care ward, but it is the first time Ayame’s had someone like him in her care. Sometimes, she stands in front of the ghost of her patient in the metro station, and thinks that this is harder, somehow, to see this.
And she hopes Todoroki will wake up.
****
In the first month of Todoroki Shouto’s stay in Room 17 of the long-term care ward, only one other person ever comes to see him after visiting hours are over. Ayame, used to looking for Bakugou, doesn’t even notice him until she’s finished checking Todoroki’s numbers. She turns and starts, heart leaping into her throat when she sees a shadowy figure in the corner of the room, almost invisible in the dim light.
“Sorry,” says the man. He has long black hair and an eyepatch and sits with his face half-buried in his scarf. “I thought you knew I was here.”
“No, that’s--” Ayame says, putting a hand onto her chest to try to calm her heartbeat. “That’s – fine.” Visiting hours are over and she doesn’t recognise this man – doesn’t know if he’s a pro-hero – but she’s long since got used to the idea that it doesn’t really matter that much, at least where Todoroki is concerned. “Are you a friend of Todoroki-san’s?”
The man stands up, hands in pockets, and goes over to the bed, staring down at Todoroki. “That’s not exactly how I’d put it,” he says. “We work together sometimes.”
“I see,” Ayame says. “Well, it’s nice to meet you.”
“Yeah,” says the newcomer absently. Ayame finishes up and heads for the door, but the newcomer calls out to her before she gets there.
“Hey,” he says. “Has Bakugou been coming here?”
Ayame nods. The newcomer looks back at Todoroki and sighs.
“Tell him to get some sleep, OK?” he says.
“Oh, I’m afraid I don’t really know him very well,” Ayame says.
The newcomer sighs again.
“Thanks anyway,” he says.
****
Todoroki’s sister comes to visit him every day, and most days she brings their mother with her. Both women are polite, smiling, with pale hair and eyes. But the sister – Todoroki Fuyumi – is a whirl of activity, plumping her brother’s pillows, arranging his gifts, talking, talking. The mother – Todoroki Rei – sits silent by her son’s bedside, holding his hand.
Midoriya comes almost every day as well, and usually Todoroki has at least one or two other visitors – his friends, his brother, his father, occasionally one of the older pro-heroes she’s beginning to recognise, like Hawks. During visiting hours, Todoroki is rarely alone for long.
And at night: Bakugou. Ayame doesn’t know if he comes every night, but every time she has a night shift – her favourites – he’s there. Some nights he arrives half an hour after visiting hours end and stays till morning. Other nights he only comes in for an hour, checking his phone and cursing as he leaves. But he’s always there. Unlike Todoroki Fuyumi – unlike Midoriya – he doesn’t speak. Unlike Todoroki Rei – unlike Midoriya – he doesn’t hold Todoroki’s hand. He slouches in sullen silence and glares at the bed. When Ayame checks on Todoroki, he barely acknowledges her, except occasionally to demand information about Todoroki’s vitals. She doesn’t like him, this grim young man. His presence on her silent ward nags at her. But the rules are different for pro-heroes. He can come and go as he pleases.
And so he does. Every night.
****
“Sakurai-san?” asks Midoriya one day when Todoroki has been sleeping in Room 17 for three weeks.
“Mm?” Ayame looks up from adjusting Todoroki’s oxygen mask. Midoriya looks worried, but that’s not unusual. But it turns out that – for once – it’s not Todoroki he’s worried about.
“Have you ever seen Dynamight visiting Todoroki?” Midoriya asks. “I mean – pro-hero Dynamight.”
“Bakugou-san?”
“Oh!” Midoriya’s face lightens a little. “He’s been here?”
Nights on the long-term care ward are long and very quiet, and Ayame has had plenty of time to wonder why she’s never seen Bakugou once during visiting hours. Why she’s never seen him with any of Todoroki’s other friends, even though they’re all pro-heroes so they must know each other. Hero work is rotating shift work, like nursing, she surmises from the conversations she overhears at Todoroki’s bedside, so it wouldn’t make sense that Bakugou would be on permanent day shifts. She’s wondered if maybe he doesn’t like the rest of them. Or they don’t like him. Some part of her thinks that would make sense, although it’s not a very kind part.
“He’s here every night,” Ayame says.
Midoriya’s face breaks into a relieved smile. “That’s great! I mean--” He gestures at the bed, at Todoroki, bruises just ghosts now, but eyes still closed, sleeping, sleeping. “I mean – I’ve been worried – I haven’t been able to catch up with him since--” He shakes his head, looks at Todoroki again. “Is he – does he seem – OK?”
Ayame doesn’t really know how to answer that question. “He’s very quiet,” she says.
“Oh.” It’s clear that her answer wasn’t what Midoriya was hoping for, but Ayame doesn’t know how to reassure him, or even if reassuring him is the right thing to do. Midoriya worries about Todoroki, worries and worries even when he’s chatting away cheerfully. His face is thinner than it was when she first met him a month ago, though still determined, still smiling. She thinks perhaps Midoriya has enough to worry about.
“Well – at least--” Midoriya says, then doesn’t seem to know how to complete the sentence.
“I’ll tell him you were asking after him,” Ayame says.
Midoriya nods. “Thank you,” he says. “Thank you.”
****
It’s a few days before Ayame is on nights again. At night, Tokyo is strange and beautiful, the sky glowing purple and the city tall and shadowy and lit up with neon. The long-term care ward is strange and shadowy, too. It reminds her somehow of the forest above the ancient house where she once lived with her mother – full of whispers and ghosts.
Todoroki is the only occupant of Room 17 when Ayame arrives, but forty-five minutes later, when she checks on him, Bakugou is there, slouched in the plastic chair, staring. She doesn’t know how he got in without her noticing.
“Good evening, Todoroki-san,” Ayame says. “Good evening, Bakugou-san.”
Bakugou grunts, eyes fixed on Todoroki.
“Your friend Midoriya-san was asking after you.”
That gets Bakugou’s attention – perhaps the first thing she’s said that’s done so since the first night they met, excepting information about Todoroki’s vital signs. He looks up, frowning.
“That nerd? When?”
“This morning,” Ayame says. “He’s here most days.”
Bakugou’s lip curls. “Course he fucking is,” he mutters.
Ayame hesitates. One of the downsides of the long-term care ward is that she gets to know patients’ friends and family more than she would in a ward with more coming and going. It can be hard to remember that these people are not her people – that she doesn’t have any people any more.
“You could come in the daytime, too,” she says.
Bakugou glances up at her, then shoves himself deeper into the chair, bringing his knees up in front of him and wrapping his arms around them, scowling at the bed.
“Unlike some people I got shit to do,” he says. “Can’t be babysitting this asshole all the fucking time.”
Ayame opens her mouth to mention that, cumulatively, Bakugou spends more time here than any of Todoroki’s other visitors. Then she closes it again. The light’s low in the ward at night, but when she looks closely, she sees that Bakugou’s face is thinner, too, his eyes shadowed. She looks at the bed, at Todoroki, hair slowly growing back, ghostly bruises not even visible in this light.
He’s the only one, it seems, who’s getting much in the way of sleep.
****
Ayame’s still on nights a few days later, when the whispering silence of the long-term care ward is broken by Midoriya Izuku bursting through the double doors. He seems to be wearing pyjamas under his coat and his boots are untied.
“Sorry – sorry,” he gasps. “Just--” He stumbles into Room 17, and Ayame, a little concerned, follows him.
Inside the room, Bakugou is getting to his feet.
“The fuck are you doing here?” he snarls.
Midoriya shakes his head, apparently speechless, and hurries over to the bed, leaning over Todoroki, brushing back his hair. He glances at Ayame.
“Sakurai-san, he’s OK?”
Ayame – more than a little concerned now – hurries to check Todoroki’s vitals. But there’s no sign of anything unusual: Todoroki is fine, insofar as he is ever fine.
She turns back to find both of them staring at her – Midoriya, eyes wide, waiting for the verdict; Bakugou wearing an expression somewhere between furious and alarmed.
“He’s fine,” she says, and Midoriya seems to sag. Bakugou, though, straightens up, fists clenching at his sides. Then he turns to Midoriya.
“The fuck was that?” he says.
“Sorry,” Midoriya gulps. “I just – I had a dream—”
“A dream?” Bakugou says. “You came all the way over here fucking up people’s nights for a fucking dream?”
Midoriya nods. “It was very realistic.” He brushes back Todoroki’s hair again. “Sorry, Shouto-kun. I disturbed your evening.”
“What are you worried about him for?” Bakugou snarls. “He’s a fucking zombie. It’s my evening you fucking disturbed.”
Midoriya blinks. Then he straightens up and turns sharply towards Bakugou, wearing an expression that Ayame has never seen on his face: anger.
“Kacchan, how can you say that? He’s not a zombie!”
“Yeah?” Bakugou sneers. He stalks over to the bed. “Hey, Icy Hot! Wake up!” he says. “Wake up!” He leans right over next to Todoroki’s ear. “Wake the fuck up, asshole!”
Ayame starts forward, but she’s too late. Midoriya has already grabbed Bakugou and shoved him away from the bed.
“Kacchan, he can hear you,” he says in a furious whisper.
“Bullshit,” Bakugou growls. “He’s out to fucking lunch.”
“Don’t you dare—”
“Both of you,” Ayame says, not raising her voice, but pitching it in a particular way that always gets results. They both turn, staring at her like they’d forgotten she was there. “Out, if you can’t stop disturbing my patient,” she says.
Both the young men stare at her for a second. Then Midoriya grabs Bakugou by the arm and drags him out of the room. A few moments later, Ayame hears muffled arguing from the smoker’s balcony.
Todoroki doesn’t stir. Ayame sighs and rearranges his blankets.
“Some of your friends are a little difficult,” she says to him.
Todoroki doesn’t answer.
****
Later, Midoriya comes back and apologises profusely, then spends an hour with Todoroki, holding his hand in silence.
Bakugou doesn’t come back that night.
****
When Ayame was a child she used to play by herself in the woods above the ancient house where she lived with her parents. Her father was sleeping and her mother was always working, and the nearest neighbour was miles away, and so there was no-one to talk to but the birds and the babbling streams and the ghosts.
“It’s a shame your daughter doesn’t have anyone to play with,” said the nurse who came every few days to check on Ayame’s father.
“Oh, she doesn’t mind,” her mother said. “She’s not good with people anyway.”
Ayame was good with the birds, with the streams and the rustling leaves and the ghosts. But people–
But no, not with people.
****
Ayame finds a medical journal article about how many coma patients can hear what’s being said to them even when they appear to be deeply unconscious. She prints it out and leaves it in Room 17.
Later, she’s standing on the smoker’s balcony enjoying the chill in the night air when Bakugou appears, slipping silently through the door and standing looking out at the city as if he hasn’t even realised she’s there.
Ayame waits, breathing in the city night. It tastes of smoke and dirt.
“You really think he can hear me?” Bakugou says at last.
“I don’t know,” says Ayame. “But I know that a lot of coma patients can hear what’s happening around them.”
Bakugou nods and lapses into silence. It’s quiet for a few minutes. Then Bakugou shifts on his feet. “Give it to me straight, doc. Is he gonna die?”
Ayame turns towards him, but he’s still looking over the city, turned slightly away if anything.
“I’m not a doctor,” she says.
Bakugou shrugs. “You know more about it than anyone else.”
Ayame takes a moment to think about her reply. She’s not good with words, with people. “It’s hard to say,” she says at last. “But I hope he’ll wake up.”
Bakugou glances at her then, frowning, but not angry.
“Why would you even care?”
And that – that’s a surprise. That it isn’t obvious to him. “He’s my patient,” she says. “Of course I care.”
Bakugou’s lip curls a little. “Right. Not because he’s a hero.”
In fact, Ayame had almost forgotten Todoroki was a pro-hero. They all are, these young people. They’re so young.
“No,” she says. “That’s not it.”
****
The next night, Todoroki crashes.
Ayame is down the hall when it happens, checking on the patient in Room 8. The distant, high-pitched beeping has her running, paging the doctor even as she goes. Room 17 is empty but for Todoroki, convulsing on the bed, monitor shrieking in alarm.
The next few minutes – or maybe they’re hours – are familiar in their dreadful progression: the vitals, the crash cart, the clipped requests from the doctor. Todoroki vomits and Ayame drags the oxygen mask off his face, turning him sharply on his side. New medications, pushed through the IV. Someone turn off that godawful noise. Can we get some more light in here.
And then: he’s stable. I’ll leave him with you.
The doctor and the crash team leave and Ayame is left alone, Todoroki splayed on the bed, sheets stained, alarm silenced. Stable.
But no: they’re not alone. Bakugou is there, standing in the corner, hands flexing at his sides. Ayame doesn’t know when he arrived, how long he’s been watching. His face seems open and too young, eyes too wide.
Ayame cleans Todoroki up, resituates the oxygen mask, changes his sheets, rearranges him so he’ll be more comfortable. Then she steps back and nods at Bakugou.
Bakugou stares at her, those eyes, too wide. She’s never seen that look on his face before. Then he goes over to the bed and leans over, presses his forehead to Todoroki’s, one hand on either side of his head – the first time she’s ever seen Bakugou touch him.
“Fuck you,” he whispers, eyes closed. “Fuck you, fuck you, you fucking asshole.”
Ayame leaves them to it. But later, when she passes Room 17, she hears a low voice talking – something about a restaurant that serves spicy food, along with a lot of swearing.
And after that, she hears Bakugou talking a lot.
****
Ayame has never cared much for celebrities, whether they’re pop singers, movie stars or pro-heroes. She’s aware that she’s a little unusual in this, but it’s not until a day when Todoroki Shouto has been sleeping in Room 17 for two months that she discovers what a different world some of her fellow citizens inhabit.
She’s on the metro on her way home from work. It’s early morning, and there’s a group of young girls opposite her on their way to school, giggling about something on one of their phones. Ayame is exhausted and paying no attention. That is, until she hears the word Dynamight.
“Wow, let me see it again!” says one of the girls, grabbing the phone. “Ohhhh, he’s so hot.”
“Not lately,” says one of the others. “He looks so serious all the time now, it sucks.”
“Well, that’s because--” starts a third girl, and the others immediately break into laughter and shouting.
“Here we go, tinhatting time!” sings the first one.
“I’m just saying, if you look at when Shouto got sick and compare to when Dynamight started looking miserable all the time--”
“We know, and they were wearing complementary colours that one time so obviously they were giving the fans a sign--”
“Well, they were!”
“Hey, do you think if Shouto dies Dynamight will be tragically struck with grief?” one of the girls says. “I bet he’d look amazing as an emo.”
“Don’t say that! Their love will never die!”
Ayame gets up and goes to the next carriage. When she gets home, she discovers that her jaw is so tightly clenched that she ends up with a headache for the whole day.
****
Todoroki’s friends bring gifts. Flowers, teddy bears, balloons. A lot of packages of dried soba for reasons she can only guess at. And merchandise: photos, plastic dolls, plushies, keyrings, fridge magnets, all relating to one or other pro-hero. They seem to think it’s particularly hilarious to bring Dynamight-related merchandise, and as the weeks pass, the room starts to seem like it’s black-and-orange themed, Dynamight’s savage grin reflected on every surface. It’s an expression Ayame’s only ever seen on photos and video. Bakugou himself, quiet and sullen, slouched in the chair beside Todoroki’s bed, seems like an entirely different person.
One day, Ayame arrives for the night shift to find someone has tucked a mid-sized Dynamight plush into the bed with Todoroki. She smiles at it and makes sure it stays there when she turns Todoroki over.
When Bakugou arrives, stinking of smoke and still wearing his costume under his jacket, he scowls at it for a few seconds, then plucks it out from under the blankets and shoves it onto a shelf.
“It might be good for him to have something familiar with him,” Ayame says.
Bakugou glares at her and, without breaking eye contact, deliberately takes Todoroki’s hand.
Ayame decides that’s probably good enough.
****
“Hey, you from Hokkaido?” Bakugou says to her one night. They’re on the smokers’ balcony – neither of them smoke, but both of them find themselves out here regularly anyway, often barely exchanging a word.
“I am,” Ayame says. “You could tell from my accent?”
Bakugou shrugs, nods, shoves his hands in his pockets. “I’d like to go,” he says. “Nice and quiet. You lived in Sapporo?”
“No, in the mountains.”
“Huh.” Bakugou leans on the balcony. “Why’d you come here?”
Ayame doesn’t know why she came here. The air tastes of smoke and there are people everywhere, but she hasn’t had a single conversation outside the ward this week. “My mother died,” she says. “And there was nothing tying me there.” Nothing but the woods full of ghosts and water.
“What about your friends?”
It’s Ayame’s turn to shrug. Bakugou raises an eyebrow.
“Really?” he says. “Fucking weird. You’re good with people.”
Ayame doesn’t answer. But when Bakugou leaves, she spends a long time staring out over the city.
****
When Todoroki Shouto has been in Room 17 of the long-term care ward for two months and twenty-four days, he wakes up.
There’s no warning, no alarm. Ayame passes by Room 17 on her way to get a coffee and glances in to see that Todoroki’s eyes are open and that he’s blinking blearily at the ceiling. She hurries inside to find Bakugou’s jacket on the chair by the bed, but Bakugou himself not in evidence. But that’s not important right now. What’s important is Todoroki trying to lift his hand towards his face, mumbling something under his oxygen mask.
“Todoroki-san!” Ayame cries, taking his hand gently so that he won’t pull on any of the tubes and wires that are attached to him. Todoroki blinks up at her and mumbles again. She pats his hand.
“Welcome back,” she says. “You’ve been asleep. Let me just check--” She runs an eye over the numbers, then carefully removes the mask and finds the cup of ice chips that’s always ready and waiting by every bed in the ward. “You must be thirsty.”
“B’kugo-” mumbles Todoroki. “Where’d he – go?”
“He’ll be back in just a moment,” Ayame says.
“He’s loud,” mumbles Todoroki, eyes still only half open.
But Bakugou, as it turns out, isn’t loud. The only reason Ayame knows that he’s standing in the doorway is because he drops a glass of water on the floor, where it rattles but doesn’t shatter, water spilling out in all directions. Ayame starts and looks around. But Bakugou isn’t looking at her.
“He’s there,” Todoroki says. “Where – you go?”
Bakugou does look at Ayame then. Ayame steps back from the bed and gestures. Bakugou stands for a moment longer, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. Then he storms forward.
“Where’d I go?” he says, loud, much louder than Ayame expected. “Where’d I go? The fuck, Icy Hot, I’m not the one who checked out for three fucking months! Lazy fucking asshole! I should fucking kick you into next week!” He climbs onto the bed – mindful of every single tube and wire – and grabs Todoroki by the shoulders, squeezing tight.
“Don’ kick me,” Todoroki mumbles. “’ve been in a coma.”
“Wow, fuck you,” says Bakugou, and then leans over and presses his forehead to Todoroki’s. He’s crying, Ayame sees, tears dripping onto Todoroki’s cheeks. Todoroki reaches up a clumsy hand and touches Bakugou’s hair.
“Glad you came back,” he mumbles.
“Fuck you,” Bakugou whispers.
Ayame goes to find the doctor.
****
The long-term care ward is rarely place of much activity. The only time anything happens is when a patient crashes – or when a patient wakes up. By the time visiting hours officially begin, Todoroki’s room is already half-full of people – the doctor has been and gone, but Bakugou and Midoriya are there along with all of Todoroki’s family, except for Endeavour, who’s apparently busy shouting at people in the recovery ward where Todoroki will be moved in a few hours – and the air is somewhere between jubilant and hysterical.
Todoroki himself is asleep.
“Asshole,” Bakugou says, packing Dynamight merchandise away into an oversized shopping bag. “As if he hasn’t been lazy enough.”
“What about food?” Midoriya says. “How long before he can start eating again?”
Ayame opens her mouth to answer, but before she can, Todoroki himself speaks.
“Can I have soba?” he mumbles, eyes still closed.
“You’ll have fucking pureed mashed potatoes and like it,” Bakugou snarls.
“It’ll take a little while before you can digest soba, I’m afraid,” Ayame says.
“Fucking soba, why are you such a moron?”
“I can’t help it, I’ve been in a coma,” Todoroki says without opening his eyes.
“Are you gonna use that excuse for every single thing from now on?”
“It’s not an excuse. I have been in a coma.”
Ayame had never really thought about what Todoroki Shouto might be like when he was awake. But she thinks that she likes him.
****
When the orderly comes to take Todoroki to the recovery ward – accompanied by his procession of visitors carrying bags stuffed with soba and pro-hero merchandise – Midoriya presses Ayame’s hand and bursts into tears. Bakugou shoves his hands in his pockets and glares at her.
“Don’t worry,” Ayame says. “The best reward I could get is to never see any of you in here again.”
Midoriya sobs louder. But Bakugou just nods, like that’s a promise.
****
A few months after Todoroki Shouto is discharged from the long-term care ward, Sakurai Ayame moves back to Hokkaido. She sells the ancient house under the mountains where she grew up with her sleeping father and absent mother, and moves down into the valley, to the edge of the village. The forest is still close, with all its cheerful streams and smiling ghosts, but here – there are people here, too. On her first day in her new home, she introduces herself to her neighbours, and a few weeks later she invites them to play mah jongg. She gets a job at the nearest hospital, on the recovery ward.
In January of the year after she moves back, she receives a letter from Tokyo. Inside is a photo of a very solemn-looking Todoroki Shouto, making a peace sign at the camera, and a frustrated-looking Bakugou Katsuki glaring at him. Written on the back in spiky, neat handwriting is the following: he said he could hear me yelling at him to come back so I guess it’s a good thing you told me to get my head out of my ass. The message is unsigned.
Ayame pins the photo to her fridge with the Dynamight magnet she found in Room 17 the day after Todoroki was discharged. The following year, in January, she receives another photo, this one of Todoroki eating soba and Bakugou apparently yelling at him. This one has no message, and nor do the others that arrive year after year, every January, until Ayame looks up the date of the postmark and discovers that it’s Todoroki Shouto’s birthday.
Eventually, Ayame buys a frame and makes a collage of all the photos. When her neighbours ask her if the young men in all the pictures are relatives of hers – nephews, maybe – she says no. And sometimes they recognise them – even here, most people have TVs and internet, even Ayame these days – and ask if they’re those famous heroes. But Ayame says no: that’s not what it is.
They’re friends.