Chapter Text
Hitoshi woke up to his head resting on a wooden desk. He felt something hard pushing against his face, from the top of his cheek to the underside of his jaw. Hitoshi's body went cold all at once, and he started to tremble. Panic attacks weren't an uncommon occurrence for Hitoshi, even before the start of the war. The muzzle that's currently on his face has grown unfamiliar, though. It had been over a year since he had to wear a muzzle.
Hitoshi was muzzled, but not restrained in any other way. He would find that notable, if he wasn't muzzled, and thus distracted by the panic closing his throat. If this wasn't one of Hitoshi's biggest triggers, he'd notice that the this room was very familiar. Unfortunately, he very much was muzzled.
Hitoshi hyperventilated, but the metal and plastic restraining his mouth wasn't really conducive to getting good air flow. His vision dimmed and his hands were shaking so badly that when his fingers came up to claw at the edges of the muzzle, he immediately scratched his own face. He tried desperately to pry the muzzle off because he couldn't breathe. It was strapped on so tightly, he couldn't even fit his nails under the straps. Hitoshi takes a ragged breath in and attempts to hold it. Breathe in for four seconds, hold for seven, exhale for eight, and repeat. His vision cleared, slightly, once he repeated the breath a dozen times.
He looked around the room he had been put in. He was sat in a uncomfortable wooden chair that rocked every time he shifted in his seat. He ran his hand over the wood desk in front of him, calluses catching on the carvings of people's names and random shapes. He spun in his chair and examined the worn blanket that lay on the drooping twin size bed that would barely fit his tall frame, but it would've fit him perfectly before he had hit his growth spurt a month or two before starting U.A.. The walls were a dull blue and peeled near the ceiling.
He brushed his fingers over his clothes, the t-shirt and sweatpants he was wearing were well worn and threadbare in some spots. Hitoshi heard a car passing by outside. He heard a feminine voice speaking downstairs before hearing a younger voice answer and the sound of pots and pans banging together.
He smelled something metallic, probably the metal of the muzzle strapped to his face. He took another deep breath in and held it, before exhaling slowly, trying to calm the panic boiling at his core.
He focused on the tastes in his mouth, iron and bile. He swallowed hard, trying to get the flavor out of his mouth. That might be what he was smelling earlier.
The room he was in is identical to the last Family Home he lived in before getting accepted into U.A. and having to move to a Child Care Institution in Musutafu.
Hitoshi's memory of the past day or so is pretty fuzzy, so he doesn't really know how he got hit with an illusion quirk. He does trust that whoever he was sent out patrolling with will do their best to break him out of it, though. It would be a lot easier, if they still had someone around who could... cancel quirks.
Hitoshi visions gets blurry again, when tears fill his eyes and start to fall rapidly. He took a ragged breath in. Hitoshi wished he had Aizawa-sensei's quirk, so that he could cancel whatever illusion quirk he was stuck in. He wished Aizawa-sensei was still alive so he could cancel it for Hitoshi. He choked, as he felt the sobs he wanted to release getting stuck behind the muzzle.
Hitoshi felt slightly embarrassed, even though no one was here to witness this meltdown. He thought he had gotten past the worst of his grief. It wasn't like Aizawa-sensei was his family or anything.
Hiccuping sobs continued making their way out of his mouth, anyway. Thinking about Aizawa-sensei opened up the flood-gates, making Hitoshi think of everyone else he had lost.
Hitoshi's head swung to look at the door with blurry vision when he heard the knob turn. It opened to reveal the foster mother that he remembered being attached to this Family Home.
"Shinsou-kun, I have your letter from U.A. here," Hashiguchi-san started the sentence excitedly, before faltering, she examined Hitoshi's face, before her eyes widened with panic. "Shinsou, why are you sad? Please stop crying, you know it upsets Tsukasa!" Hashiguchi-san fretted, wringing her hands together and shifting on her feet. She looked behind herself uneasily before composing her face into something resembling calm.
"I'm gonna leave the letter here, OK," Hashiguchi-san sets the envelope gently on his desk, she paused hands half stretched towards him like she wanted to comfort him, she pulled them away abruptly before standing in the doorway. "Aiko-chan, Haruto-kun, and I are baking a cake, please come down if you want some." She trailed off, smiling weakly before gently closing the door behind her.
The attitude, the tone of her voice, and the appearance of Hashiguchi-san, it's exactly how Hitoshi remembers her, which tells Hitoshi that the illusion quirk pulls directly from his memory.
It dawned on Hitoshi, he was in a illusion of the past. He might be able to go see Aizawa-sensei and Deku and Hagakure again. Hitoshi wanted to, so badly. He wanted to hear Deku ramble and he wanted to watch more movies with Hagakure. He wanted to train with Aizawa-sensei again. He wanted so bad...but it doesn't matter.
It was an illusion quirk, and they always ended at some point, maybe when the caster had achieved whatever they had set out to do. Illusion quirks were very rare, this one might have a time limit, but time dilation could be weird in quirks like this. Hitoshi had no information on what quirk this was or how it functioned. He pushed aside any worry he had about what was happening outside the quirk. He needed a plan on how to break it.
His first idea for getting out of the quirk was simply to sleep, if the illusion quirk was focused specifically on this memory, sleeping will most likely bring him back to the beginning of this memory, or it will release him from the illusion. Sleeping is a inevitably, so it was better to get that option out of the way sooner rather than later.
Hitoshi's other idea is a bit... macabre. He was pretty sure that receiving a severe injury would jolt him from the illusion, it would need to be at least somewhat lethal to insure he broke the illusion. Hitoshi kept that idea in his back pocket, while continuing to brainstorm less extreme methods.
Hitoshi yawned deeply, he felt exhausted after that little panic attack. He raised his hands above his head, stretching briefly, then he twisted in his chair in order to crack his back. Hitoshi turned back to the desk and shifted the letter, picking it up and weighing it in his hand, before centering it on his desk, gently.
This had once been the worst day of Hitoshi's life. The pure disappointment and hopelessness he felt when he got rejected from the hero course was all encompassing, even getting a full scholarship for General Studies at U.A. wasn't enough to put a dent in his dejection. Aizawa-sensei, Midnight-sensei, and Deku all choosing to die on the same day really put things in perspective though, and it was only downhill from there.
Hitoshi had almost forgot about this day, just because he only had so much room in his brain for tragedy. This disappointment is just so small in comparison to everything else that had happened.
Hitoshi stood up with a sigh, turned on his heel and basically collapsed on the bed. He lays his arm over his eyes and fell asleep within a minute.