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In a quiet neighborhood, incapable of being meaningfully contrasted from the four residential blocks surrounding it, there lay an equally unassuming house. It was 3:00 P.M.; all the busybodies and pencil pushers had gone in search of their daily bread. Now free from all the inquisitive and gossiping minds common in such commonality, scandalous business could be done, and even was being done, in this particular house. There, a man was roaming, half naked and barefoot: nothing but a pair of loose-legged dress pants, hotly engaged in self-conjecture.
"Are the rose petals nicely scattered? Yeah, I think so. Uh—is the bathtub warmed, and is the lingerie waiting for her in the bathtub? Yep, yep! Are all the candles placed on top of non-flammable areas? Yeah, wouldn't want an incident like that one happening again—haha!..."
He reached into an old and laden student bag sitting on the long couch just behind him, bringing out a great variety of... tools, each stranger and more complex than the next, as well as some standard erotica for couples reading.
The man was overweight and pasty as fresh plaster, though if he could, he would vehemently express his reinterpretation as "plump and plush as fresh canvas". He was tall and of solid face, frame, and musculature, particularly his pectorals, which were abnormally developed. He had wild, unkempt hair that reached his torso, and was unshaven and hairy all along his waistline and abdomen.
"Condoms? Yeah, check! Goodies basket? Okay, all good!...
The man hastened his efforts in reaction to the chiming of the grandfather clock: he'd moved all family pictures and similar quotidian arrangements out of sight.
He'd shut off all the lights so that only the sunbeams peering in from the hot summer day had illuminated the living room.
The only artificial sources of light, apart from the candles, came from the bathroom, though they were refracted due to the steam pouring out from the running bathtub.
He sat with his arms sprawled across the long couch in great anticipation for Her.
"She should be here any minu-"
But then all at once, and quite bombastically, a woman burst into the apartment, launched her high heels, purse, and phone all in random directions, violently slammed the door behind her, and wailed at the top of her lungs.
She was in a buttoned dress skirt frilled under the collar with a waistcoat finish, and a simple pencil skirt, attire you might see any respectable institution demand from their employees. Her blazer had earlier been violently thrown towards the direction of the coat rack, but was lying on the floor.
She had a pair of gargoyle wings on her back from her quirk.
She was stout and tended to be quite animated, but she was blessed with such apologetic and unimpressionable features, and adeptness in masking contemptuousness and insolubility, that to her contemporaries, she was an overwhelmingly normal, and even a venerable member of the local community. Most of what she said was unintelligible: really not much more than a mix of idioms and interrogatives. "Why!? Oh—What!? The rea- ...an! Oh my!" She kept on having to breathe between attempts due to the ruined mascara running into her nose and mouth.
The man stood upon her arrival.
She then leapt, from her position at the door, onto one of the island sofas the man had moved from the forward area of the living room. The man, not having the time to process the performance, had reflexively caught her from the middle of her flight path into his arms.
"Baby—are you okay?!" the man inquired.
"Unhand me; Now! Now! Now! Now! Now! Now! Now! Now!!"
She inexhaustibly repeated herself, flailing around until he managed to mentally resituate himself and bracelessly drop her on the hardfloor.
"Ooh— you senseless man-shaped gorilla!!"
"I'm sorry."
"Does the savage wish to kill me?!"
She got up and again attempted to reach the sofa but slipped on a clump of rose petals, landing on her wings again.
"Wha—?!!" she gasped in shock.
"I'm sorry!" The man had prepared the apology in advance.
It took her a moment to get up this time, and when she did, she did not reply.
The second fall had decisively winded her, expelling a great deal of excess and malignant energy. As an externality, her body language had been tempered from a great fury to an almost agreeable, and even common, irritancy.
She scaled the sofa, then lay belly first; her hair covered her face as she sank into the couch.
The man sat on the long couch, next to the student bag.
After some while, she mumbled something to herself and slightly propped her face up, still facing away from the man and the living room and staring at a window.
"Go turn the lights on."
The man did as he was told.
Some more time had passed.
"... Do you have the bag?" The woman inquired.
"Uh—Yeah, right next to me."
"Then, did you bring my vibrator?"
"Ah! I knew I forgot something! I always do; I'm sorr-"
"Don't bother."
She further buried herself in the cushion of the couch.
"He brings all that ridiculous nonsense, and yet can't remember something so simple...!"
The man resigned, cursing himself under his breath.
"...Turn the water off and go away; not today."
At first, the man did not react, still hanging his head. Then, all of a sudden, he had shot up, ostensibly to carry out her wishes, but had stopped to peer at her. After a moment, he had even dared to approach her. And finally, he'd sat next to her.
"Hey, baby, what's wrong?"
He had evidently concluded that she was ready for conversation; she did not reply.
He had lain down such that her face would meet his if she panned to her immediate left.
More time had passed before he made his next bold venture: he started to neatly brush away single strands of her hair with a secret agenda to part a clearing of her nape, just enough to caress with the underpass of his fingers, then soon, his palm.
And when this task had gone so undisturbed and unresisted, he'd dared to move lower: past her scapula; relaxing both of her gargoyle wings to also massage their membrane, past her rib cage, and towards her waist. He spoke again, this time smoother and free from all the heartiness and vitality of his usual timbre.
"Hey, baby, what's wrong?"
"..."
"I'm not going to go away until you tell me what's going on. This is too much—even for you."
"..."
"Does it have something to do with one of your students?"
She fully aligned herself towards the window, shifting from his palm.
"So it is one of your students!" The man had finally procured; he then laid upright to stare at the ceiling. "I can't imagine the responsibility of having a part in so many young people's lives—I mean it's not a thankless job, but it's definitely not as valued as it should be! right?"
He glanced at the woman for a sign of affirmation; she laid still.
He returned to gazing at the ceiling.
"Maybe it isn't," the man continued. "Though respect aside, teaching, done right of course, has got to be pretty soul-lifting; it takes a village after all... I don't know, I get a lot of crazies at my job, as a convenience store manager, and it has to be pretty bad when you teach someone, and they end up like one of those guys, right? As you failed them, that has to be a pretty heavy burden on you, right?"
He turned to her again, allowing dead space for a response.
"... Isn't the brute awfully articulate today?" she grossly sneered. Him victorious in the mere fact that he had gotten a response.
"—Like, imagine if a student you taught ends up as some mass murderer, Somethin' in you has to be like 'I failed him' or 'I could've saved him'... So is that kind of like something you're feeling right now?"
She did not respond.
"Hey baby...." he lulled in such a soft tone, "how can your local twenty-four-hour convenience store manager be of service today?"
He then wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed his mouth against her lower back.
"I won't leave you alone until you tell me."
"Go... you fool!"
She hastily raised herself and flexed her wings to combat him away, and also to hide the face of stifled laughter to which he caught only a glimpse of.
After she reoriented her demeanor: "Fine! Since the simpleton cannot even manage the request of leaving me alone, the least he can do is be as inanimate as possible while I gather my thoughts!"
"Roger, Roger!"
The woman rolled her eyes, then breathed a heavy sigh. "Oh...! Where do I even begin!? What a week it has been; I have never been so thoroughly exhausted in all my career, I dare say!"
She took quite the deposing tone, as if she was speaking to a hall of 25.
"Only a mere fool might claim comprehension of the weight of the responsibility placed on the modern-day classroom teacher: to be a lecturer, a sophist, to be guide and source of wisdom, to be both physically and mentally, expected as a friend and rock to all!"
The man smiled.
"Of all the humble professions one could choose to devote themselves to... No matter! Oh, where was I... Yes, the drama started all last week! Last week, I was told tomorrow a student would be transferring in as a third year, and into my Anglo-Saxon literature course—quite strange already as this particular junior high school doesn't do entrance exams and is invitation-only, only about 300 students. You couldn't simply wouldn't 'transfer' in like some public school; Seldom would any transitioning happen. If at all, past orientation week, if at all!
And no measures were taken to rest my anxieties when I went to the Head of Student Affairs.
Basic questions such as: "Where did he come from, why did he transfer so late, "what can I expect from him?" All vaguely unanswered; Preposterous, you would rather think they fell on deaf ears!
All I was told was to 'treat him more leniently than I would with others' and to personally report any further grievances about this particular student straight to the Head of Admissions, and all I was given was his name, Midoriya Izuku.
How strange! How strange! Since when do we expect trouble from students..."
"How strange indeed!" the man interposed.
"Didn't I tell you to be quiet, fool!?"
He nodded in agreement, gesticulating a zipped mouth.
She stared at him for a few moments before continuing: "But out of all discoveries of this situation so far... "That name, Izuku Midoriya... Usually, I can never forget a student's name, but that one... I could feel it aching in the back of my mind, desperate to bring forth some great and awful context I'd long forgotten, yet just barely shying away; I paced through the rest of the day in a sort of delirium...
The first thing I did when I got home was to look him up on the internet, to see if he was just some popular school athlete in this or that scandal, but strangely, not a thing!
Then I posited him on a regional database I still had access to from my years as a public school teacher, and yet again, not a thing came up. (How was that even possible?) I told myself that I should give up, and that "I would meet him the next day anyway, all would be rested."
And even though that was invariably true, my mind still could not rest the subject! As I was preparing to go to bed, still in complete vexation on where I knew this boy, I had the random thought: "Maybe he was in a newspaper I read."
After some deliberation, I went to the local library, nearly at the dead of night, and scoured for his name in the 'Young stars from our humble town section,' then the general newspaper archive; I searched, and I searched, and searched! And finally, 'MUSUTAFU NEWS:' in the ongoing stories column of the crime section dated three years ago, I'd found exactly what I was looking for...!
'Recently, A young boy by the name of Midoriya Izuku has gone missing, and has possibly been kidnapped. If you or anyone youknow has any information, please step forth and call our local police department.'
And under a short preamble: the picture was shown; and as my eyes met with him, I audibly gasped...!
There he was, with a fluffy bush of green hair, brimming with excitement, he and his family at the Santo carnival fair. That same young man who was bullied and beaten almost every day, that I dismissed as mere child roughhousing, much to my own incompetence...