Time passed with quiet consistency.
Each day bled into the next, measured not by the hour, but by the rhythm of routine. Wake up. Eat. Train.
Aizawa was always there.
They didn't speak much at first—just short, direct instructions. Adjust your stance. Focus your breathing. Hold the grip longer. But the silence between them shifted slowly, the way sunlight gradually softens a shadow. Small things added up—casual questions between drills, moments of rest with no rush to fill the quiet. It wasn't friendship, not exactly. But it was trust. The beginnings of it.
And Rei… he learned.
Not just about his quirk, though he had grown better—faster, more controlled, more aware of what his ghost hands could really do. He also learned what it meant to move with purpose. To think for himself. To choose things. It was still unfamiliar… but it wasn't frightening anymore.
After another long day in the training chamber, the room felt heavier with the calm that followed exhaustion. Rei sat on the floor, arms resting on his knees, faint sweat clinging to his neck. Aizawa stood nearby, pulling a cloth from his sleeve to wipe his hands.
"Great news, Rei," Aizawa said at last, his voice quiet but steady.
Rei lifted his head slightly, attention sharpening. "Yeah?"
"You'll have served your sentence by next week."
The words took a moment to register. When they did, Rei blinked and sat up straighter.
"Really?" he asked, the smallest flicker of light behind his eyes. "Then… I can go home?"
Aizawa didn't answer immediately.
His face didn't change, but the silence that filled the space said more than words.
Rei tilted his head a little. "...Right?"
The pause stretched thin before Aizawa spoke again.
"Rei…" he began, his tone softer now. "The man you were with in the forest—that was your father."
He gave a quiet sigh, almost like he'd hoped to delay this longer.
"He didn't make it out alive."
Rei's gaze didn't move. It stayed fixed on a spot on the floor.
For a second, his face was unreadable.
Then he blinked once. Just once.
"...Then what about Mom?"
The question came out even smaller. Like a whisper that didn't want to be heard.
Aizawa's expression didn't shift, but his answer did. Slower. Heavier.
"She wen't missing around the same time you were taken."
Rei didn't speak.
Didn't breathe.
Didn't blink.
It was like watching a system shut down—one subtle flicker at a time. He didn't scream. Didn't cry. Just… stopped. Not with loud grief, but something quieter. Sharper. Colder.
A pause. A flat line on a screen.
Then—
"Oh."
That was all.
The room was completely still.
No questions. No protests. Just that one, hollow sound.
Aizawa watched him closely, saying nothing more for the moment. Because he understood: this wasn't the kind of hurt that needed fixing.
It was the kind that needed space to exist.
"I'm sorry I had to tell you this now..." Aizawa said, his voice quieter than usual.
He stepped forward, boots scuffing lightly against the floor, and crouched down to meet Rei's eye level. One hand reached out and rested on the boy's shoulder—not forcefully, but with quiet certainty. Something steady. Something real.
Rei didn't flinch.
He didn't pull away either.
He just sat there, stiff and still, as though any movement might cause the entire moment to crack apart.
His expression hadn't changed much since the words had left Aizawa's mouth. Not outwardly, anyway. But his eyes had dulled. Not in a vacant way—more like something deep inside him had been switched off before it could overheat.
Everything about him seemed to slow down.
His breaths. His posture. His blinking.
And then, after several long, quiet seconds…
"Then…" Rei's voice emerged, dry and quiet. "…where do I go?"
It was a question asked with such raw, stripped-down innocence that it cut deeper than any tearful outburst could have.
Aizawa blinked, caught slightly off guard.
Not by the words themselves, but by the timing. The calmness.
Most kids—most people—would have asked "why," or demanded answers, or fallen apart under the weight of the news. But Rei didn't do any of that. He just looked up at him like a broken little machine trying to follow its last line of code.
And somehow, that made it worse.
Aizawa had dealt with trauma before. He'd worked with students who lost family, friends, entire homes. But this… this wasn't just grief. This was a hollowed-out boy trying to figure out if he still had a place in the world now that everything familiar had been stripped away.
He took a slow breath.
"You can stay with me," he said, his tone as calm and matter-of-fact as he could manage. "For the time being."
Rei's gaze stayed locked on him. Searching, almost. Like he was trying to figure out if the offer was real—or if it would disappear like everything else.
After a few seconds, he gave a single small nod.
"…Okay," he said softly.
The word didn't carry much weight on its own.
But behind it was something else. Something fragile, but still standing. A piece of him that hadn't completely crumbled. Maybe it wouldn't heal overnight—or even in the weeks to come—but it was still there. Still holding on.
Aizawa gave Rei's shoulder a light squeeze, then stood up again.
"I know this is a lot to handle," he said after a pause, his voice steady but not cold. "But I have something else to say."
Rei slowly tilted his head up, his eyes dull but alert—like he was bracing for another hit. For a second, Aizawa saw that tension in his face. Like he was expecting to hear the rest of his family tree had been wiped out. Like he wouldn't even be surprised.
But instead, Aizawa asked something else.
"Have you ever considered applying to U.A.?" Aizawa asked, folding his arms.
Rei blinked. For a second, he didn't answer. His mouth parted slightly, like the words got caught somewhere before they could form.
Then, slowly, he nodded.
"I figured," Aizawa said with a slight nod of his own. "You've got the instinct for it."
Rei didn't know what to say to that, but something in his chest flickered. A small warmth. Distant, but real.
Aizawa stepped back a little, arms still folded.
"The Entrance Exam is in a couple of months," he added, like he already had the calendar memorized. "Which means we don't have time to waste."
Rei glanced down at his hands, turning them over slowly in his lap. He didn't say anything at first—but then he looked back up, eyes faintly focused.
"Can I really do that? Apply?"
"You can," Aizawa confirmed. "Once your sentence is up, you'll be free to pursue what comes next. If that's U.A., I'll support that."
Rei's gaze dropped again, and for a second, he looked almost unsure.
"But… even after everything? Everything I did?"
"You're not the only one with a past," Aizawa said. "And you're not the same person you were weeks ago. You've been working, listening, improving. That counts for something."
Rei absorbed that in silence.
Aizawa continued, more practically now, "Next week, as you know, you'll be officially discharged from Tartarus. Then you'll come with me after that. We'll finish training elsewhere—someplace less… bleak."
Rei tilted his head. "So, like… your house?"
"Yes. You'll stay with me for a while," Aizawa said, as if he'd already decided that weeks ago. "You'll have structure. Support. And we'll train with the exam in mind. I'll make sure you're ready, if that's what you want."
"I think it is," Rei said softly. "I want to try."
Aizawa gave a small nod, serious but approving. "Then we'll make sure you can."
They didn't say much more after that.
The weight of the day hung between them—not unbearable, but heavy enough to press down in the silence. But it wasn't the kind of silence Rei feared anymore. Not hollow, not cold.
It was the kind that meant something was beginning.
And for the first time, that didn't feel scary.
It felt… good.