cat got your tongue?
Aizawa Shouta woke with a grunt, a single eye squinting open, and finds himself being stared at unsympathetically by a calico cat. They’re both on the hardwood floor, yet, while his cat sits perfectly loafed and unbothered, Shouta is lying on his front with an ungodly crick in his neck.
The cat yowls demandingly.
“Alright, alright, Mochi,” Shouta groaned, pulling himself up.
He remembers passing out on the couch after a long night, his patrol had lasted until dawn, chasing and taking down thugs after thugs as if that night was some sort of signal for every scum to terrorize the city. He must have been so tired he didn’t even feel himself roll out of the couch in his sleep.
To anyone else, the concerning amount of bones popping as he stood would have been expected from an elderly person, not some 27-year-old hero, a ‘man in his prime’ as his friends would say.
Mochi twines himself around Shouta’s legs, whether from genuine affection or just some ploy to trip him, he didn’t know.
He turns on the coffee machine while he rumages for some cat food, noting that he should probably stock up on that can of tuna that Mochi likes. The calico doesn’t even wait for him to finish putting the rest of the wet food in his bowl before he’s already chowing down.
“Slow down, will you,” Shouta sighed, throwing the can and grabbing a mug to pour some coffee in. Before he could even put the mug to his lips, he’s interrupted by a needy yowl. Mochi stares demandingly at him from his place next to the now empty cat bowl and Shouta’s brows raise.
“You can’t be hungry still,” mutters the underground hero, eyeing his cat’s rotound physique.
As if understanding his words, the calico stood with an offended meow. He’s pretty sure his cat just gave him the stink-eye as he walked past him with his tail and chin high. He began scratching at the front door, crying to be let out.
Shouta gave a world-weary sigh as he trudged to the front door. Mochi slipped past as soon as Shouta cracked the door open. It was bright outside, and with just a moment of thought, he decided to step out and drink his coffee outside.
He lived on the third floor of an apartment complex somewhere in the lower-middle class of Musutafu city. It was inconspicuous, and mainly housed elderly civilians and one retired hero according to the background check he made on the place before he moved in. At first, he stayed due to the convenience of the place having cheap rent back when he had just begun his underground hero career, now, it was because he started growing fond of the place.
Shouta was a practical man, and the place had all the necessities he deemed important. Food, water, and shelter for his cat. Not to mention the amount of strays roaming around the place that became dependent on Shouta for food. He could hardly leave the place now (not that he had any plan to, in the first place).
The underground hero took a long sip of his coffee, casting sleep-heavy eyes across the residential area, ears picking up the shrill bird songs, the noisy cars wheeling to work and the local gaggle of kindergarten kids being led by their teacher for their morning activities. The mid-morning rays were warm and were pulling him to sleep, if Hizashi were here he’d start that age old teasing of Shouta being all ‘cat-like’ he’s done since their UA days.
Before he could delve deep into his memories, he heard the door to his right squeak open before a woman’s voice joined the morning’s chorus.
“Ah, back again? You’re plumping up nicely, kitty, that’s good. Here, I got your favourite.” A familiar meow answered her.
Shouta’s head snapped to the voice and he stared at the scene with eyes wide in disbelief. There, in the apartment immediately to his right, was a woman crouched on the ground, with short inky curls held back by a yellow bandana and summer green eyes curved by the smile she sent down at the cat feeding on a plate full of fatty tuna. A very familiar cat.
She must have felt his stare because she whipped her head in his direction. He was hit with the full force of her impossibly green eyes narrowed in suspicion and turning its colour from a warm summer into deadly acid.
“Can I help you?”
Shouta was a bit surprised by the sudden hostility, but he was more caught up by the situation at hand. As far as he knew, the apartment next to him had been unoccupied since the middle of last year, when the last tenant had moved to a nursing home, yet, judging by the way Mochi seemed to be at ease with her presence and the greedy thing dug into the offered meal, she’s been living there for a while. All without Shouta knowing. So, what else could he have said in the face of all these revelations but:
“That’s my cat.”