"Hitoshi?" Shinso's mother knocked lightly on her son's door.

Shinso didn't respond, he just kept typing into his laptop's search bar, the same few words, desperately searching for sourced denial of a recent headline.

"Shinso!" His mother cried, trying to turn the locked door's knob.

Shinso's pale fingers stopped tapping letters on the keyboard for an instant when he decided what to say to her.
"What do you want?"

Things were quiet for a while and Shinso placed his fingers back on the keys, until his mother finally asked
"...Are you okay?"

"Somewhere in between average and horrible." He expressed, pulling up his grim search history and sighing.

Shinso's mother didn't reply, but the shadow under his door proved she was still there, so Shinso got up, and moved sluggishly to his bedroom door.

He pushed it open and made eye contact with his mother, despite the bright light flooding in from the windows behind her.
"Can I stay home today? I'm working on a paper for school."

His mom seemed almost taken a back at the sight of her son.
"Goodness, Hitoshi, you look exhausted! Why don't you stay home for some shut eye instead?"

Shinso rubbed his eyes and glanced towards a mirror in the corner of his room.
She was right, he had only pulled one all nighter (and two more close calls) but somehow he already looked absolutely pummelled.
"Yeah...okay."

"I have to go to work so I'll be back around five, do you need me to stay?" Hanako Shinso explained, putting a hand on her son's shoulder.

"I'll be fine." He assured.

Shinso knew the rules, he wasn't allowed to leave the apartment unless he was scheduled to meet with at least one other person, no more than four blocks away.

Unfortunately Shinso wasn't a sucker for rules, and where he was going was more than a few blocks away.

As soon as his mother was gone he grabbed a few bills off the table and started towards the stairs to the street.
Shinso pulled his coat over his shoulders and stuffed the money into his pocket.

He hurried down the rainy streets until eventually he got to a small shop with grey stones and crosses in the window.
He pushed open the door, causing a small bell above it to ring.

A man at the counter turned around and waved hello.

"Hi..." Shinso said slowly, taking steps towards him.

Shinso inhaled slowly and got straight to the point.
"C-Can I see your commission book?"

At first the man looked confused, Shinso supposed not a lot of people asked to see it.
But after looking him up and down, taking note of his black infinity scarf and dark coat the shopkeeper nodded.
"Of course."

He pulled a thick binder from behind his counter and slid it to Shinso, opening it to a later page.

Shinso moved his fingers across the worn pages. Just a bunch of names he doesn't recognize. Ippan Mei, Sumatona Otoko, Shota Aizawa...

Until eventually scrawled in loopy, oversized handwriting
'Eraserhead'

Shinso's breath caught in his throat and he tried to seem and nonchalant as he could as he asked
"Who wrote this?"

The shopkeeper learned over his counter.
"Ah, that was The Smile Hero, Ms Joke kind of cool to see such a big time hero in my shop."
He paused before adding.
"Really is sad, though. Under these circumstances."

Shinso nodded slowly.
"How much money do you need?"

The shopkeeper turned the book to his direction.
"No one claiming to be family has pitched in. Just a few pros. They asked for a cross stone, so it won't cost anything crazy. 1500000 yen, but it's down to 80000 now."

"Eighty thousand yen!?
What's with the no family thing?!" Mumbled Shinso as he dug through his coat pockets.
He pulled out all the contents, just 10000.
"Take my donation, but if he isn't dead I get half the total yen back- like a bet."

The shopkeeper leaned forward.
"I don't play around with griever's funds, if Eraserhead is alive don't you think the money should be given back to its donaters?"

Shinso hadn't thought about this but he played it off as if he had a million times.
"You seen these heroes net worths? They don't need it- but I do! High school costs y'know! Never mind U.A.~" he drawled.

The man tried to say something but found himself speechless. Shinso took this opportunity to further his 'white' lie.
"I really need that cash and I'm sure that Eraserhead will totally understand. Especially since I'm his only family member to actually donate."

"Family member?"

Shinso nodded and ran a hand through his hair, quite on purpose, he made sure a lock fell down between his eyes, which he rubbed with his hand a little bit too aggressively.
"It's taken a real toll on me to be honest."

The shopkeeper still looked skeptical so Shinso stepped up his act even more.
"He said to me...that I could get into U.A. easy. But for my safety I had to move in with my aunt instead and...we're doing really bad..."

Shinso looked down and lifted his black scarf, he pretended to wipe his tears with it and purposely pressed it into his eyes, hoping they would go red from irritation.

"Please! And if he's dead- it won't even matter!" He pleaded, and as he looked up he realized his eyes were not only red from his scarf, but he had begun to actually cry.

The shopkeeper looked him up and down over and over and finally sighed.
"Alright."

Eraserhead's death hurt Shinso. And it wasn't acting.

It hurt him because, this man was a hero he could actually see himself in, this man was the only person to prove being a hero could be achieved by anyone with dedication.

But now he was dead.

He was dead and that meant that Shinso could not be a hero. Or the same would happen to him.

So alongside his hero, Shinso's hope died as well.