There was an entire week until Mina started high school. One single week and she would start learning how to become a hero. She had never been so excited in her life, and she was constantly texting Eijiro back and forth. Eijiro had worked extremely hard to get where he was now, and she was impossibly proud of him. She’d make sure he still kept his mental health in check though, not wanting him to neglect himself in favour of his new image. But he was still sweet, kind and the best friend a girl could ask for, so she hoped he’d be mostly fine. She could only wish that they’d end up in the same class, too. If they didn’t, she would still make him work out with her though.

She heard her foster mum call out for everyone to come to the living room, and she pocketed her phone into her jeans before sliding down the staircase railing. Her bare feet padded over the rag rug to the mentioned living room, stopping one of the younger kids from licking an electric socket and picking the three year old up snake child into her arms. The kid did not have a quirk that was suited for that so that was a bad idea.

With the now grumpy girl in her arms, she spotted a stranger standing next to their foster mother by the seat where their foster father was sitting, ever the master of the house. It was a guy her own age, with light blond hair and grey blue eyes. He was on the thin side, as most kids seemed to be when they came to the home, but she couldn’t be sure how far it went without seeing him in less clothes.

“Kids, this is Monoma Neito. He’ll be joining us starting today. It was a bit rushed which is why we didn’t get the chance to notify you sooner. Mina, Neito, you’ll both be starting UA’s hero course next week, I’m excited to see you grow together.” Mina stopped herself from making a face. Now she knew why it was rushed. The woman they called mama had been very interested when Mina had gotten accepted, and was planning on using Mina’s status as a future hero to prop her and her husband up, in an attempt to get ahead. It had dampened the joy of her acceptance a tiny bit, but not enough for her to tell Eijiro. She knew she had to warn this guy though, so he knew how the woman could get about their academia.

The boy seemed extremely uncomfortable about the whole situation, but that wasn’t too strange. Unless you had home hopped the way she did when she was younger, it wasn’t a fun experience. It wasn’t when you did it often either, but you got kind of numb to it after a while.

There was something about the look in his eyes that she recognised from a lot of the other kids she had met during the time in the foster system. It was guarded, hiding something darker than the easy smile he plastered on his face when he was introduced. She knew there was something that had traumatised him in the past that he wanted to keep close to his heart. Knowing what kind of man ‘papa’ was, he’d exploit that trauma if it suited his goals. How a couple so hungry for power went into the foster care business was beyond her understanding.

The younger kids were allowed to leave after being introduced, leaving only mama, papa, Neito, her and the two other teens of the house; Monika who was 13 years old, and Issei, 17, who had taken the little 3 year old girl named Noi in his arms when Mina was instructed to show Neito around later. Noi clung to Issei like a tiny boa constrictor, making Mina grin and give her a little boop on the nose before she urged Neito out of the room to show him the premises.

There were three floors to the building. The bottom floor held all the rooms like kitchen, living room, showers and laundry room. There were two bathrooms on each floor, and two bedrooms on the bottom floor with a playroom in between where all manners of toys were housed. The rest of the kids slept on the second floor, while the third floor was forbidden grounds for children. That’s where mama and papa lived. She’d only been up there once, when she’d been nosy and new to the home at age 12. It looked completely normal. She’d been caught, and mama had locked her inside the closet the rest of the day and night until she had to go to school. She’d never gone back up there again.

She showed him all the rooms and told him all the rules, showing him the whiteboard with the list of rules you could look at in case you forgot them. The whiteboard also had a list of chores and names by them where she told him to look out for his name too tomorrow. The first day was chore free.

Finally, they ended up in front of the door to where Neito would be sleeping. It was pretty bare for now, and Neito didn’t seem to come with a lot of stuff, but there was a big communal closet with the basic necessities and clothing where he could get anything he didn’t have. They got an allowance they could use however they wanted, which is how Mina had managed to scour the thrift shops for all manners of colours. She’d make sure to show Neito where you could find the best bargains, since the clothing in the closet was anything but fun.

“This is your room. The doors don’t lock, but mama and papa don’t come down from their floor after 8pm unless it’s something important. My room’s opposite yours, and the bathroom is the door to the left of mine.”

“Excuse me, who?”

“Ugh, I know right? We gotta call them mama and papa, it’s one of the rules that they don’t keep on the board. But don’t call them anything else, papa goes ballistic if you do.” He looked so uncomfortable at getting that information she wanted to give him a hug or a pat on the arm, but she wasn’t going to break any boundary issues he might or might not have. Being new was hard enough without that.

“Does the, uh, bathroom door lock, at least?” Mina grimaced, as Neito sat down on his bed, all the greys in the room clearly not doing anything to comfort him. She closed the door and sat down on the desk chair, resting her chest against the backrest.

“Kinda. They got a key to unlock it from the outside, but they generally don’t bother you in there unless you take too long. warm water supply limits and all that. And since we had a kid try to… you know… they’ve put up some sort of timer so you can’t be in there more than 20 minutes without them knowing about it.”

“Oh.”

They stayed silent for a few moments, Mina adjusting the cuffs of her jeans and Neito staring out the window.

She was the one to finally break the silence, bringing up their future school. “So you got into the hero course too? That’s pretty cool, we could become classmates.”

“Don’t tell them we’re in the same foster home.”

The confusion she felt at that sentence was enormous. “Why not? One of my middle school classmates is gonna go to the hero course too, can I at least tell him?” She didn’t like keeping secrets from Eijiro.

“I’ve had shitty reactions to people finding out I’m a foster kid before, I’d rather avoid it this time.”

She hummed in thought. “I did when I was younger, now I don’t really care anymore. But if you don’t want me to, I won’t tell anyone. Lemme know if you want me to beat someone up for bullying you over it though, I’m really kick-ass.”

“They won’t bully me for something they don’t know,” Neito said, but there was a tiny smile on his face.

“Still!”

“I’ll think about it.”

It was hard keeping her knowledge of another hero student in her house from Eijiro. She’d at least told him she’d gotten another brother, but kept it sort of vague. When Eijiro asked about it she’d told him the new kid was very private. Which, honestly, wasn’t a lie. She didn’t know much about his life prior to coming to this specific foster home, other than he’d moved from pretty far away from Musutafu. She didn’t even know what his quirk was.

She’d given Neito as much information as she could think of, that would help make his stay in the home easier. He didn’t seem surprised at how things could be, only uncomfortable. He must’ve stayed in homes that weren’t that great either. But she knew that ultimately, it could be hard for some kids to find a home that wouldn’t be hard, depending on their quirk. And since he ended up here, she was sure he must have a quirk a lot of homes didn’t want to deal with. This was Musutafu’s (along with the areas surrounding the city) last stop for ‘problem quirks’. Seeing how he wore gloves almost all the time, it had to have something to do with that. That or he got cold hands really easily. It was one of the two.

They got along pretty well, though the one who had captured his heart was Noi. The little snake girl had the tendency to do that, and they could often find the two of them together. The girl had anger issues and violent tendencies, which was how she had ended up here, as it combined poorly with someone who could turn their body long and squeeze someone so they couldn’t breathe. But it seemed like he had some experience with it, and didn’t blame her for her tantrums the way the younger people in the home did.

She had tried to get him to work out with her, but he’d been sceptical at first. If Eijiro was joining he wasn’t going to show, but on the one day before school started that Eijiro couldn’t join, he did show up, after a promise of her treating him to a café and them looking at clothing in the thrift shops after. He wasn’t quite as bony as he had initially seemed, but it was still enough for her to want to sneak him extra food at dinner. It had him flustered, though she could tell he tried to ignore it.

Their shopping trip went well. He had gotten his first allowance and she was set on helping him make the most of it. Neito only bought a cardigan in a light blue shade with two bubblegum pink stripes going around each sleeve, but he seemed very pleased with it. It was the first time he’d seen him properly smile outside of when he was playing with Noi. It awakened some big sister instinct inside her, that she also held toward Eijiro. One day, she would introduce them to each other with all the context of their foster home.

Mina found herself as classmates with Eijiro, but not with Neito. In fact, she barely saw him at all at school with how busy they both were. They did talk about their day when they got home after their first day, both an awkward one with mama as well as on their own. The latter was definitely more relaxed. They’d lied on Mina’s fluffy black and pink rug. She’d asked Neito if he thought her room was cute, and when he saw his expression combined with the hesitant response, she cracked up. She knew it wasn’t for everyone, but at least her bff Eijirou had called it manly.

In an effort to bond she showed him the old perfume bottle in light yellow and pink she kept by her vanity. It was made in delicate porcelain, swirling and round. It was missing the little balloon that you used to spray the perfume, but it was still her most valued possession, chipped surface and all. “It belonged to a woman who came to one of my old foster homes. She gave it to me when I turned 6, before she disappeared. I’ve got no idea where she went, but I promised to take care of this, so I’ve done my best. She was the closest to a mum I’ve had.”

Neito looked thoughtful as he watched the perfume bottle, putting it back carefully on the vanity. “It’s beautiful,” he admitted, which made her feel warm inside.

She nodded. “Yeah. Maybe I’ll meet her again some day, and I can show her that I kept it.”

“I hope you get to do that.”

After the attack at USJ Neito told her that he’d almost broken his own promise to keep their affiliation hidden from everyone else. He’d freaked out when he heard, but they’d been locked inside their classroom and been forbidden from going anywhere, and he’d felt so helpless. She hadn’t been hurt, luckily, but they’d fallen asleep holding hands on her bed until Issei gently shook them awake so they could actually brush their teeth and tuck themselves in. And when Noi saw that they’d been ‘cuddling without her’ she demanded to sleep in Neito’s bed for the rest of the night. How a girl who didn’t say a word could be so vocal was astounding. Her and Issei left Neito reading The Princess and the Pea to the little girl, who was already falling asleep in his arms. There was something in Neito’s eyes when his gaze flicked between her and Noi for a moment, before the pink girl mouthed a good night and left for her own room.

Mina was up late that night, thinking about that look in his eyes.

During the sports festival, her relationship with Neito got weird. It wasn’t until then that she’d met Neito at school, and it became obvious to her right away that he had created a persona for himself.

From what she’d known from living with him, he did have some mental issues that no one had taken the time to help him with, and those issues were made even more obvious to her once the festival started. It made her feel sick to her stomach, and when she got back home she went straight up to his room before even dumping her bag in her own.

Neito wasn’t there yet, and she took up the spot on one side of the bed to wait. She realised now that unlike her he might not have headed straight back home, and while she had managed to not get caught by mama on the way up, he might not be so lucky.

It seemed like he was lucky enough though, as 15 minutes later he stepped into the room, stopping right when he saw her. Her face must have shown what she was feeling, as he stood stock still like a deer in headlights, the confident smirk he’d worn while taunting Bakugo nowhere in sight. “Neito, what’s the big deal with antagonising our class? I get that Bakugo made an ass of himself at the opening ceremony but come on. We both know there’s more than just him.”

Neito made a face that made him look partially constipated and partially in pain, then he moved to sit on the other end of the bed, as far from her as possible while still sitting on the same piece of furniture. He wasn’t subtle in his wish to be anywhere but here.

“Your class has been the only ones getting attention, haven’t you noticed that at all? No one cares about anyone else, my class doesn’t even exist to most people. It’s just 1A this, 1A that, just cus you’ve fought real villains.”

Looking over at her sort-of brother, she could tell there was more that he wasn’t saying. But it made sense. A foster kid with an inferiority complex? She wasn’t surprised in the slightest. “You were like a completely different person out there. You could’ve at least given me a heads up about your school personality or whatever that was.”

“Mina, you’re not that great at acting, there’s no way I could’ve told you ahead of time.”

“Ruuuude!” She scooted over and poked him in the side, making him squeak. “At least warn me if you’re gonna pull something drastic next time!”

“Only if it’s extremely drastic.”

“Deal!” She spat in her palm and stuck her hand for him to take.

“Ew, gross, I’m not shaking that!”

“Spit on it or I’m gonna tickle you til you pee yourself.” The look on her face was dead serious, although she was messing with him.

“Geez, fine, god, I can tell you hang out a lot with those hooligan boys in your class.” He spat in his own hand, but the face he made while they shook hands was one of utter disgust. He left to go wash his hands right after, forcing her to come with so he could make sure she did as well, all the while Mina was laughing her ass off.

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