Chapter Text
Toshinori wakes up with a sore throat.
Well, not exactly. He wakes up with a feeling-uncomfortable-but-definitely-not-sore-throat. The kind of inconvenience that would most definitely clear up after a couple of hours and a mug of hot tea. Nothing that could justify missing school. Especially if you're aiming to become the symbol of peace.
So Toshinori just gets on with his usual morning routine. He takes his shower, brushes his teeth, puts on his UA uniform and goes to the kitchen to eat breakfast.
He hoped that his master would be there, too, but she is not. This isn't unexpected, of course: she has her patrols, heroes' meetings, special interventions, and a whole lot of paperwork -that, Toshinori was horrified to learn, is a very important part of a hero’s life- to fill in for every job she does. All in all, their schedules rarely coincide these days… Not to mention the fact that she isn’t actually living here with him. She just crashes here from time to time when she’s working in the area. But he had heard her come in sometimes during the night, so he had thought that she might be there in the morning. He guesses she’s either already back on patrol, or she came here to catch up on her sleep, and if that’s the case, he’s not about to wake her up just because he misses her.
And he does miss her. When he was still in middle school they used to have regular training sessions together, but ever since he started high school he has classes for that, and a ton of homework, so they only have the occasional sparring session once in a while, and in the end they rarely spend more than half an hour together at a time.
Sometimes… sometimes he feels like she’s purposefully avoiding him. But whenever this happens, he quickly pushes the idea aside! That’s a stupid and frankly disrespectful thing to think of the person who’s training him, who’s helping him achieve his dream, and who’s paying for the flat he lives in.
It’s school and work keeping them apart. Only school and work, nothing else.
He eats breakfast alone and quickly washes the dishes (including a plate that had apparently contained reheated lasagnas, which had probably been Master Shimura’s late-night dinner) before leaving for school. And what if he still has that weird scratchy feeling whenever he swallows at that point? He can't afford to get behind on his hero training. His master wouldn't want that, and the last thing he wants is to disappoint her.
On the 20-minutes jog to UA, he thinks about this evening’s dinner and how it would be nice to share it with Master Shimura, if only school and work would let them.