….
Toya Todaroki.
Over the years of his childhood, he learned, his mother and father had what is called–
Quirk Marriage.
His mother, Rei, had an ice quirk, while his father, Endeavor, had fire.
Endeavor tried to 'engineer' the perfect successor by marrying Rei, hoping he would inherit firepower and resistance to heat.
But genetics don't follow ambition.
Toya indeed inherited his father's fire, and his mother's frail, cold-resistant body too.
That means:
His flames are immensely powerful.
But his body inversely can't handle heat at all.
A failed creation.
So every time Toya pushes his flames too far, his skin literally burns, causing excruciating pain and leaving him scarred.
Regardless of what others say, as Endeavor's eldest son, he worshipped his father as the number one Hero, and wanted nothing more than to make him proud.
But when his father realised that his body couldn't withstand his own quirk, [Blueflame], he abandoned his training and shifted focus on his little brother, Shoto - who unlike him was born with ice and fire quirk.
A perfect creation.
Nevertheless, Toya, desperate for acknowledgement from his father, kept training secretly - He even tried to attack baby brother with his flames out of jealousy when he was just an infant.
However, a year ago at Sekoto Peak, his flames grew out of control causing an inferno to erupt and burn the forest.
It was a huge accident, and he was presumed dead.
But, contrary to that, he survived, but was horribly burned.
And the most devastating was, by the time he resurfaced, Toya Todoroki was declared 'dead' and his family had moved on.
….
The room was dim except for the cold blue flicker of a TV left on mute.
Jin-Ho sat cross-legged near the low table, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, working with focused expression.
Multiple papers covered with intricate symbols surrounded him - geometric patterns layered with characters that seemed to shift and flow under the lamplight. The scent of ink mingled with something herbal, creating an atmosphere that felt almost ceremonial.
To any outside observer, it would look like he was just drawing elaborate designs on paper.
Traditional art, maybe. Calligraphy practice.
Meanwhile Toya sat on the worn couch opposite Jin-Ho, still as a statue except for the occasional twitch of his fingers.
The burns on his arms were visible even in the low light - fresh ones from yesterday, layered over older scars.
The cat Jin-Ho had healed the day before, curled up on a cushion near Toya's leg, purring weakly.
Its wounds were already closing, fur growing back over patches that had been raw and infected.
Toya had been sitting there for over an hour, watching Jin-Ho work in silence.
Not because he had nothing to say, but because he was still processing everything that had happened in the past few days.
His family thought he was dead.
He had burned half a mountain trying to prove himself.
And now he was living in a rundown apartment with a teenager… and a mad man.
Life had gotten complicated.
"Okay, done." Jin-Ho suddenly announced, setting down his brush and examining the talisman paper with critical eyes.
He picked it up carefully, the ink still slightly damp, and walked over to where Toya sat.
"Hold still. This one stings for a few seconds."
….
Jin-Ho had regular [Healing Talismans] stored in his inventory, dozens of them, stockpiled for emergencies.
But he preferred to save those for actual life-threatening situations.
Here, in the relative safety of the apartment with time to spare, it made more sense to craft fresh ones.
Besides, the practice was valuable.
Each talisman he made refined his understanding of the technique, and improved his familiarity with the symbols.
"I don't care if it stings." Toya said. "You think anything hurts more than getting your skin burned off?"
Jin-Ho paused, the talisman hovering inches from Toya's shoulder. For a moment, his expression was unreadable.
"No." he said quietly. "I don't suppose it does."
Toya didn't resist as Jin-Ho positioned the talisman against his bare shoulder, pressing it flat against the scarred skin.
There was no hesitation, or questions about the weird paper with strange drawings that Jin-Ho was literally pasting onto his body.
Because Toya understood by now. These papers, they worked - healed.
The prime example was purring on the cushion beside him. The cat that had been dying yesterday was almost fully recovered today, its wounds knitting together faster than should be physically possible.
If it worked on the cat, it would work on him.
"By the way." Jin-Ho said, his thumb pressing the center of the talisman to activate it. "That's what everyone says before they start screaming."
He pressed down firmly.
The reaction was immediate.
Toya hissed through clenched teeth, his hand shooting out to grip the couch arm with enough force that his knuckles went white.
The pain wasn't like burning - it was different, sharper, like his entire nervous system was being rewritten in real-time.
A ripple of pale light spread through the talisman, golden characters glowing briefly before fading. The light seemed to seep into his skin, spreading through muscle and tissue like water soaking into paper.
Then, as quickly as it started, the pain stopped.
"See? Told you it would sting."
Toya stared at his shoulder, watching in real-time as the charred skin slowly began to mend.
It wasn't instantly, like magic in fairy tales, but with visible progress. The blackened edges of burns lightened to red, then pink, then gradually closer to his natural skin tone. The texture smoothed out, though it left behind pale scars that marked where the damage had been worst.
"What…
"What are you? Some kind of healing quirk? A doctor's kid?"
"Neither." Jin-Ho tapped his chest, settling back against the wall. "Just a guy who picked up a few useful skills along the way."
Toya's eyes narrowed. "You have got at least two quirks, right? This healing thing, and the telekinesis I saw you use yesterday."
"Something like that."
"That's not an answer."
"I suppose it's not."
The silence stretched between them, not quite comfortable but not hostile either.
Toya kept staring at his healing shoulder, occasionally flexing his arm to test the range of motion.
Each movement came easier than before, less pain, less stiffness.
Finally, Toya broke the silence with the question that had been eating at him since Jin-Ho first pulled him from that burning forest.
"What should I do now?"
It was the question of someone whose entire identity had been built around a single goal, making his father proud, becoming a hero, proving his worth - and had suddenly discovered that goal was impossible.
Dead people don't become heroes.
Dead people don't get to prove anything to anyone.
"I already told you, didn't I? Until you figure out what you want to do, you are staying here. I am calling dibs on you."
"Dibs." Toya repeated flatly. "Like I am a piece of furniture."
"Like you are a person who needs time to figure things out without being pressured into immediate decisions." Jin-Ho corrected. "But yeah, furniture works too if that's easier for your teenage brain to process."
Toya scoffed, but his lips twitched upward in something that almost resembled a smile. It was the first time Jin-Ho had seen anything close to humor from the kid since rescuing him.
Progress.
"Hey." Toya said, leaning forward slightly. "Can you tell me the real reason you are helping me?"
Jin-Ho was quiet for a long moment, his gaze distant. When he finally spoke, his voice was softer than Toya had heard it before.
"Let's just say I can't stand seeing people get tossed aside."
"That's still pretty vague."
"Yeah, well." Jin-Ho stood up, gathering the used talismans and materials into a neat pile. "Get used to it. I am not great at the whole 'opening up about feelings' thing."
Just then the healed cat lifted its head and meowed, a weak, raspy sound, but stronger than yesterday.
It blinked at Toya with eyes that were starting to clear from infection.
Toya blinked back at it, then looked away quickly, as if embarrassed to be caught showing concern for something as small as a stray cat.
Jin-Ho smirked. "She likes you."
"Yeah, well, she's got terrible taste in people."
"Guess that makes two of you."
That earned a faint snort - almost a laugh, but not quite.
The sound of someone who had forgotten how to find things funny but was slowly remembering.
Jin-Ho stood. "You can stay here for as long as you need. The couch is yours. There is a futon in the closet if you want something more comfortable. Just try not to set anything on fire while you are processing your existential crisis."
"I will try." this time it was Toya who was smirking. "But I can't promise anything. Sometimes I lose control of my quirk when I am stressed or—"
"Then I can't promise you won't get another chop." Jin-Ho interrupted, miming a knife-hand strike. "Not to your neck this time - straight to your head. Might knock some sense into you."
He yawned, jaw cracking, and headed toward his room. "Get some sleep. You look like death warmed over. Which, considering you are technically supposed to be dead, is pretty on-brand."
He disappeared into his room without waiting for a response, the door clicking shut behind him.
Toya sat alone in the living room.
He looked down at the cat again, this scraggly, half-dead thing that was now purring and healthy because someone had decided it was worth saving.
His hand moved almost unconsciously, fingers gently scratching behind the cat's ears. It leaned into the touch, purring louder.
"Terrible taste…."
Toya repeated quietly to himself. But this time, there might have been the ghost of a smile on his scarred face.
….
For Toya, the next two days had been... strange.
Not bad. Not worse.
Just strange in a way that left him constantly off-balance.
He had lived in a large house before - the Todoroki estate with its traditional architecture, perfectly maintained gardens, and the kind of space that came with being the family of a top hero.
Everything had been clean, organized, structured. Oppressively so.
This apartment was the complete opposite.
Run-down didn't even begin to cover it.
The walls had cracks spider-webbing through the plaster.
The kitchen faucet dripped with metronomic persistence no matter how tightly you turned it off. The heater worked when it felt like it, which meant some nights were freezing and others were inexplicably tropical.
And the people he was living with?
One sociopathically calm teenager who seemed to find near-death experiences mildly inconvenient at worst.
One overly friendly man with what appeared to be severe schizophrenia who treated contradicting himself as a form of punctuation.
And one small black thing that emerged from shadows at random intervals, walking silently through the apartment with a deadpan expression that suggested it had seen God and come back thoroughly unimpressed.
Which Jin-Ho intraduced as "Blacky"
Jin-Ho had given Toya a spare futon, positioning it on the floor right next to the window–
"You look like someone who's going to wake up screaming. The fresh air will help. Also, if you accidentally set something on fire, the window's right there."
Toya still hadn't decided if that was genuine empathy or just Jin-Ho's particular brand of deadpan mockery.
Probably both.
But the most confusing part of this bizarre living situation was Jin Bubaigawara.
If chaos had a human form, Toya was convinced it would wear that stupid blue and gray bodysuit and sport a perpetually cracked grin that suggested the wearer found everything simultaneously hilarious and tragic.
Twice, as he insisted on being called - talked like three different people lived in his head and only one of them was sober at any given time.
He would cook breakfast while humming happily, burn half of it, then apologize profusely to himself for ruining it.
Sometimes he would ask Toya's opinion on something, then respond to his own question before Toya could even open his mouth.
"Hey kid, you like eggs scrambled or fried? Never mind, scrambled is the only correct answer! Wait, no, I'm thinking of omelets! Omelets are for fancy people and we're not fancy!"
It was exhausting just listening to him.
But there was also something oddly... comforting about it.
Twice's energy was manic and unpredictable, but it was never cruel. He was just genuinely, enthusiastically himself, whichever version of himself happened to be in control at that particular moment.
Toya found he couldn't hate it.
And then there was Jin-Ho.
The kid, because despite everything, Toya found Jin-Ho was only eighteen - was somehow even worse in his own way.
Calm. Terrifyingly calm.
Toya learned three things about him in two days:
-> He barely slept.
-> He was rich enough to afford food but cheap enough to buy the worst instant noodles.
-> He had no sense of self-preservation whatsoever.
Like this morning, for instance.
Toya was sitting by the window, playing absently with the cat.
They had named it 'Tom' after Twice insisted it needed 'a proper name for a proper recovery' and then immediately forgot what name he had suggested.
The cat, Tom, was doing remarkably well. Its fur was growing back thick and healthy, the wounds completely healed except for some slight scarring hidden beneath the coat.
It spent most of its time near Toya, as if recognizing him as a fellow survivor of near-death experiences.
"Hey…"
Right then, Jin-Ho emerged from his room.
He was dressed casually, jeans, a plain t-shirt, a light jacket - but there was something purposeful about his movements.
"You are going out?" Toya asked, watching him pack a few things into a small bag.
Water bottle, some kind of protein bar. A notebook.
"Yeah." Jin-Ho grabbed a can of Coke from the mini-fridge, cracking it open and taking a long drink. "Got an exam today."
"What kind?" Toya frowned. "You look way too relaxed for someone who is about to take a test. What is it, driving license?"
"Hero license exam."
The Coke can nearly slipped from Toya's hand. He caught it, but his expression had frozen in something between disbelief and incredulity.
"You?" His voice came out flat with skepticism. "A hero?"
"Right, a hero." Jin-Ho wasn't bothered by the expression, explained. "But honestly, I just want the license."
Toya's frown deepened. "Why?"
"So I can use my quirk in public when people piss me off and not get arrested for it. Simple."
For a full five seconds, Toya just stared at him, trying to process whether that was a joke or a genuinely held belief.
Then he huffed. "You are an idiot."
Jin-Ho countered. "Learn to respect your elders, brat."
From behind them, Twice popped his head out with a spatula in one hand and what looked like a completely burned piece of toast in the other.
"I like this kid's logic!" he announced enthusiastically. "Legalized violence for everyone! Wait, no, that's a terrible idea! Society would collapse! Although maybe it deserves to collapse? No, that's too cynical!"
"Not helping, Jin."
Toya muttered, though there was no real annoyance in his voice, as he was getting used to Twice's running commentary on everything.
"Hey, I am all about moral support!" Twice replied, then turned his attention fully to Jin-Ho, giving him an enthusiastic double thumbs up. "Break some bones, pass that test, and don't die! Oh, and if they offer snacks during breaks, take them! Free food is the foundation of a strong society! Unless they're stale, then it's just sad!"
Jin-Ho gave a casual two-finger salute as he headed for the door. "Got it. Bones broken, test passed, snacks acquired."
Then he was gone, the door clicking shut behind him, leaving Toya alone with Twice.
Toya sat there in the quiet, absently petting Tom, and found himself thinking about something Jin-Ho had said earlier.
I can't stand seeing people get tossed aside.
It was a strange sentiment from someone who seemed so detached from everything.
But maybe that was the point. Maybe Jin-Ho's calm wasn't because he didn't care, it was because he cared too much and had learned to bury it under layers of practical efficiency.
"Terrible taste."
The cat meowed in agreement, then went back to purring.
And for the first time in over a year, Toya Todoroki felt something that almost resembled peace.
Strange, uncomfortable peace in a run-down apartment with the weirdest roommates imaginable.
But peace nonetheless.
….
.
[To be continued…]
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