- 1 month later -
"WOWW!! GO Luffy! Beat that Arlong up!! Shishishishi." Nejire screamed and laughed through the Midoriya's house while waving around with her hand, hard, almost hitting Izuku sitting beside her.
'Did she just imitate Luffy's laugh?' Inko, who was sitting beside them with Nejire's mother, looked at Nejire with a weird but proud smile.
It was only a question of time before Izuku showed Nejire the One Piece anime he and his mother loved so much.
Nowadays, Nejire comes over to the Midoriya household every day, and considering that Izuku loves One Piece and watches it often, Inko wasn't surprised that Izuku started to watch the show with Nejire.
Over the last month, Izuku's situation in school has remained the same. He has a good relationship with all his classmates and has no problem doing some group projects with them, but he has yet to find a real friend.
Nejire is still his only friend, but Izuku doesn't care and is happy with his only friend.
Since Izuku is happy, Inko is also happy.
Better to have one real friend than a bunch of good weather friends.
Inko even suspected that Izuku didn't even try to get new friends since none of his classmates liked Nejire.
Nejire is certainly a handful, but completely worth it in Inko's view.
She is lively and can bring fresh air into every situation.
Having her certainly made the Midoriya's household livelier.
Inko thinks Nejire is a good girl, and she is happy to have her as Izuku's best friend.
Yes, they became best friends in only one month of knowing each other.
He even started rewatching One Piece from episode 1 so that he could watch every episode with the enthusiastic Nejire, who also started to love the show.
Nejire's mother, in contrast, who also started to come over to the Midoriyas' household often to talk to Inko, was a bit annoyed about her daughter sitting in front of the television with stars in her eyes.
Nejire's mother, Umiha Hado, is a beautiful woman with long red hair reaching to her waist.
Her shining blue eyes, combined with her cute-looking face, made her look even more charming.
Weirdly enough, she combined the two contrasting types of sexy and cute together in a weird mix that still didn't look out of place.
And at that moment, the woman in question, Umiha Hado, looks at her daughter in front of the television with a weird and annoyed look on her face.
"You have gone and done it, Inko… Should I congratulate you?" Umiha said slowly with some annoyance in her voice.
"Hehe. What are you talking about, Umiha? I don't know what you mean." Inko answered with a smirk of her own, with a somewhat proud look plastered all over her face.
Inko looks like a cat that successfully stole a fish in front of her owner.
Umiha had a hard time preventing herself from hitting Inko in her annoyingly smug-looking face.
Funnily enough, Umiha and Inko already knew each other from college back then.
Inko and Umiha could even have been considered good friends at that time in college.
Sadly, like in many cases of college and school friends, they lost contact after some years after college.
They still visited each other's Weddings, but after that, the contact was almost zero.
They were shocked when they saw each other for the first time after all these years of not contacting each other.
The circumstances were even more weird. Their kids are each other's only friends.
The world is so small sometimes!
"Don't play dumb with me, Inko!" Umiha said with some fake anger in her voice.
She wasn't really mad at Inko, she just thought it was funny that after all these years Inko somehow still 'won'.
"After so many years of failing to turn me into a nerd like you, you have actually gone after my little innocent daughter! You even succeeded in your evil endeavor!" she said with some fake anger in her voice.
Combined with her emotionless-looking face, Inko already knew she wasn't serious, so she talked a bit more with mirth showing in her voice.
"Buhhh, what are you talking about?! It wasn't me that enticed your daughter! Look! It was him!" Inko pouted while pointing her finger at the unsuspecting Izuku, completely stabbing her own son in the back.
Izuku, who is currently still excitedly watching One Piece with Nejire, suddenly felt a cold shudder go down his back.
He quickly turned his head only to see his mother and Nejire's mother talking to each other happily.
'Hmmm? Nothing?' Izuku thought to himself.
He could swear somebody just pointed at him.
After thinking about it for a minute, small Izuku suddenly solved the puzzle!
'I swear I felt someone pointing at me from behind, combined with the fact that there is nobody behind me who is pointing at me, which could only mean that the person or thing that is pointing or has pointed at me must be invisible! There is only one creature that I know of that is invisible.' Izuku thought to himself with logic that made sense to his seven-year-old self.
He solved the puzzle and discovered what created this cold feeling in him!
But it didn't make him feel any better.
He quickly stood up and stood in front of Nejire to protect her behind his small body, but everyone could see him trembling like a leaf in a storm.
The other three occupants in the room looked at the suddenly nervous and scared child in front of them with a worried look.
"Honey, are you okay?" Inko asked her son calmly, with some worry in her voice.
Before anyone else could ask anything else, Izuku suddenly started to scream after hearing his mother talking to him. He had forgotten to tell them of the danger!
"Be careful!!! There is a g--ghos--st in this room!!! I am sure he just pointed at me!" Izuku half-whispered and half-screamed, stutteringly, still standing in front of Nejire like a leaf in a storm, but still firmly protecting her behind his trembling body.
It looked really funny in Inko and Umiha's eyes, but they were still happy and proud of Izuku for standing up and protecting his friend in a 'dangerous' situation.
Nejire just looked at him funnily from behind.
She is two years older than Izuku and a head taller when she slowly stood up behind the trembling boy.
"Alright, Alright. Don't be scared, Izu. Even if there is a ghost, I am sure your super luck will drive him or her away. Now that I think about it. Do Ghosts even have a gender? How does a ghost even look? Can you maybe summon him back with your luck so I can see him?! Wow!! So exciting! There are so many things to confirm, but it seems like he vanished after you said something. Is that maybe something your quirk does? Did you actually know that the myth of ghosts and co. already existed thousands of years ago, and even across different cultures that didn't have any contact with each other, like in Ancient Egypt or even China! Isn't that interesting? Can this fact alone not prove the existence of ghosts?! Of course, there are still some differences in the ghost mythology of different continents, but still... When I go home later, I can search for some on the internet and can show you tomorrow!" Nejire said, bringing her hand to Izuku's shoulder and patting it rapidly without stopping her chattering about facts she knew about ghosts.
Her words that slowly turned off-topic relaxed Izuku almost completely, and his shaking stopped abruptly.
"Yeah, I forgot that I was so awesome, hahaha," Izuku said, still with some small nervous energy around him.
"Okay! That's that. Let's go back to One Piece! Say, wouldn't it be nice to have something like a Devil Fruit in our world? Just think about all the awesome things we could do with them! Would the water curse of the sea work in our world? I still love to swim and bathe, and never doing that again would be a shame. It is said that the god of the sea curses the eater of the fruit, so they are repelled by the sea. But do we have the same god of the sea in our world or is it another one? Does our god also hate devil fruits? Does a god exist in the first place? Never mind that! We have to watch Luffy beating Arlong for Nami's sake! This Arlong is so bad!!" Nejire said excitedly, quickly dragging Izuku to the floor so they could continue the show.
"Your daughter certainly doesn't come after you in that way, does she?" Inko asked her friend with a smile without any bothersome thoughts in her mind.
Inko liked the energetic Nejire very much. She was a joy to be around and she brought Izuku a bit out of his introverted shell.
"The main reason she is like that is because of her quirk, which gives her a lot of energy. Haaaaa. I am actually delighted that Nejire found Izuku last month. I am sure that without him, she would probably soon hide her personality from others to be accepted. I read online that there are many cases like that, but the kids who hide their personality always end up depressed and sad after some time. Nejire didn't have it that good and easy in the past. Not as bad as your son, but not good either." Umiha said with a sad sigh.
It's painful to see your children getting hurt while you couldn't do anything to help them.
They could talk to them and try to help them in that way, but in the end, the world still doesn't care about anyone the same.
If you just be like every other person in this world, you will get accepted easily, but the moment you are an outlier, you will find many different problems in life.
Inko already told Umiha about Izuku's backstory, so she knew her daughter could be considered a relatively good case of quirk discrimination. However, she still saw the sadness on her daughter's face every day when she chatted with her, and of course, Umiha blamed herself for it.
"I am also happy that Izuku found Nejire as a friend. Truthfully speaking, I was a bit scared that Izuku would only find fake friends who used him for his quirk. Thankfully, your daughter found him first, and everyone else doesn't take
his quirk seriously. Probably only the teachers know how good of a thing luck is. The small children still don't understand it. Now that I think about it, maybe his luck brought Nejire to him, it would be like fate, hehe." Inko said with some exhaustion in her voice.
Nobody knew how hard it was for her to see her son coming home with wounds all over his body every day.
There were so many worrisome situations you have to consider when you are a parent, but your son being bullied is still a hard thing to guard against. You can't exactly go to their school and hit the other children who bully your son into their faces. Even if Inko had almost done that with Katsuki, she would have done it if it weren't for her being scared of what Izuku would do when she was in prison.
She knew an orphanage wasn't a pretty place for children.
Umiha also smiled at Inko, already knowing about Inko's troubles over the last few years.
She quickly changed the topic of their talk so Inko doesn't need to think about their past again.
"It seems tonight is a seeable aurora borealis over our city. Do you two want to watch it with us? It's really rare for Japan to see auroras. Did you know that space storms actually cause Auroras? Specifically, disturbances in the solar wind and Earth's magnetosphere are the cause of them. Did you know that?" Umiha said with some excitement in her voice.
"Wow. The space nerd on a roll, huh? 'Did you know' that I have to correct myself from before, you are actually kind of similar to Nejire?! But don't despair! It's really cute." Inko said teasingly to the now angry and blushing Umiha.
"Of course, we will go with you to watch the Lights in the sky," Inko confirmed, already anticipating the sight.