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Pinpointing where things had started to go wrong was a rather difficult task.
Someone could say that it was right from the beginning, when Toshinori accidentally proposed to the waiter of the fancy restaurant where he and Inko were having a romantic date, but Inko had found the whole ordeal rather endearing, and, in any case, the waiter had politely declined.
Things might have started to develop in a rather undesirable way when, a few days after the proposal, a Quirkbook page titled All Might’s Wedding had started to post random made-up facts about the event, gaining something like a million followers in a very short time. But then again, that particular page and other similar activities had been completely shut down by Toshinori’s lawyers in a matter of days.
The turning point wasn’t even when the newly engaged couple had found out that they had a self-hired wedding planner – it had been a surprise, yes, both had questioned a bit how it was possible for someone to hire themselves, sure, but Toshinori and Inko had decided to simply ignore him, never replying to his mails and messages and had contentedly proceeded to plan their wedding on their own, cuddled on the couch.
No, Inko thought with a deep sigh, if there was a moment where the situation had really started to fall apart was when the officiant had pronounced the fateful words “you may now kiss the bride”.
To be honest, she wasn’t even sure they had actually kissed.
She had closed her eyes, trying as hard as she could not to burst into tears for the overwhelming emotions, while Toshinori had pulled her towards him. For a brief, fleeting instant she had felt something lightly brushing her lips and… And then half of her guests were screaming in panic, while the other half had already sprung into action. She had no idea of what had happened next, since Detective Tsukauchi, conveniently doubling up as Toshinori’s best man, had covered her head with a jacket as per safety protocol - they did have a safety protocol and she wasn’t aware of that - and escorted her back into the villa.
Her only relief was that Izuku was there with her, at least.
She pressed her face against the window and took a good look at the gardens where hundreds and hundreds of people were… cheerfully destroying everything.
“You stay here,” Detective Tsukauchi said, hanging up the phone for the upteenth time. “We are certain that it’s not a villain attack, but the situation is rather… chaotic. I’ll go find All Might.”
“Detective, can I-”
“You both stay here,” the detective specified, interrupting Izuku before he could suggest he could go look for Toshinori, too.
Inko went back observing the disaster in which her wedding reception had transformed.
For what she could understand from Tsukauchi’s phone calls and from what she could see, someone had leaked the location and time of the wedding and spread the information online to a myriad of fans who had literally assaulted the place. The press had duly followed.
Standing on her tiptoes and leaning against the cold glass, Inko tried to spot Toshinori in the crowd, but even if he usually stood out (quite literally), she couldn’t see him anywhere. There was a particularly huge cluster of people on one side of the gardens and for a second Inko thought they were gathering around him, but, apparently, the hero that was being harassed was someone else.
As she was trying to check another frantic group of people in the distance, Izuku pointed at something in the opposite direction.
“There he is!” he exclaimed, giving his mother a thumbs up and darting off outside the room before Inko could say anything.
“I’ll go get him!”
His voice echoed in the empty, fancy hallways of the villa.
Inko sighed and went looking for her purse. Luckily, she was in the same room she had used as a changing room a couple of hours before and all her things were still there. The chances that Toshinori had his phone with him and could hear it and pick it up were close to zero, but she tried to call it anyways.
No answer.
There was nothing else to do but wait in silence.
After what seemed like an eternity, Inko stood up again. Nor Izuku, nor Detective Tsukauchi had come back to at least let her know something and she was starting to feel all the stress and the emotions of the day welling up in her eyes.
“Only happy tears today,” she told herself, shaking her head and patting her cheeks.
She went back to the huge window to check the situation, but seeing something outside had become almost impossible. It was already dark and all she could see was her reflection in the glass.
She looked tired. She was tired. And she could feel that the little magic the hairdresser and the makeup artist had performed on her - nothing too fancy, just enough to make her feel confident and special for the day - were about to fade away. But well... this Cinderella wasn’t going to end the day running back home to be old plain Inko again, waiting for her prince to find her. How did the old saying go? If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.
She fixed her hair, fastened her veil and straightened her dress the best she could and then, taking a deep breath, she marched outside the villa, quite determined to find her groom (and son, possibly).
Inko’s self-assuredness lasted until she went down the stone stairway that led to the front garden, where the refreshments were supposed to be.
She hadn’t planned anything too extravagant, that wasn’t her style. Actually, they hadn’t planned anything too extravagant, since Toshinori had been just as involved in organizing everything as she had - and that had come as a pleasant surprise to Inko. Her first experience in organizing a wedding hadn’t been one based on teamwork, so to say.
This time, things had been different.
She had loved the countless hours she had spent with Toshinori trying to figure out all those big and little details that go together with organizing a wedding, from taking trips to check out the different possible locations to spending the evening checking all the best catering services’ delicacies and then pay them a visit to taste everything the next day. All in all, it had been a very different experience from stressfully choosing the best cheap service just to be bluntly told to choose something cheaper.
However, this time things had also been… destroyed.
Of all the dozens of different small, exquisite refreshments they had prepared, nothing remained. The huge, unrestrained crowd of fans had arrived before the guests could eat them and had devoured everything like a hungry swarm of locusts, to the point that Inko was rather surprised to see that the table itself hadn’t been eaten and was still standing.
She shook her head and looked around herself.
It seemed that there were less people than before, but she wasn’t sure if it was just because the uninvited guests had scattered around the place or if because the police force had finally begun to send them away. And yet, her husband was still nowhere to be found.
This one had disappeared even faster than the first, she thought with a bittersweet smile. She perfectly knew she couldn’t really compare the two things, but… She couldn't help but feel a little bit unlucky with weddings and marriages.
Passing through the front garden of the villa, Inko reached the huge patio where she and Toshinori were supposed to cut their wedding cake, have the first bite and their first dance as husband and wife on the notes of their favorite romantic songs. There were rumors that Present Mic, who had helped Inko and Toshinori find the right live band for the day and who had kindly offered to take care of the most technical aspects concerning the sound system, had prepared “something special” to surprise both the newlyweds and the guests, but… That probably wasn’t going to happen anymore, thought Inko, staring at the upside-down piano and the other instruments lying on the ground.
The big table where the wedding cake should have been standing, at least, hadn’t been flipped over, but that was a quite small consolation. As one could expect, there was no trace left of the cake itself, save for a layer of splattered crumbs across the white tablecloth. Even the cake topper, which was a gift designed and made by Izuku’s classmates, had disappeared.
She had been so excited for their cake!
It was probably the detail she and Toshinori had spent the most time on. She didn’t want one of those exaggerated sugary constructions that take days upon days to make and taste more or less like cardboard, which was something every confectioner they contacted would suggest at first – someone even proposed a 1:1 edible All Might replica, which they turned down as fast as they could. They wanted something simpler and, above all, delicious.
They had ended up finding the perfect cake when they weren’t looking for it, while on a trip near Nagasaki. They had come across a tiny traditional pastry shop where they stopped to have a warm cup of tea, since the day had been rather chilly, and the elderly lady who ran the store had been more than delighted to accept their request to turn her matcha castella cake into a wedding one. She had even made a beautiful decoration job, adding a few breathtaking edible sunflowers here and there.
Inko sighed.
Such a waste.
She felt that familiar warm sting at the corner of her eyes and she shook her head.
“Only happy tears today,” she whispered to herself.
She gave another look around, trying to find the cake topper. She really wanted to place it on display at home as a keepsake for the day, but, much to her disappointment, it was nowhere to be found. As she was checking under the table – maybe it had fallen there – she heard something.
“Psssssst.”
Inko turned on herself, looking for someone, but she was alone.
“Inko.”
She moved towards one of the huge vases with bright green plants that stood next to the cake table, following that very familiar voice she really needed to hear.
“…Toshinori?”
“Down here.”
She moved away the huge green leaves and looked between the vase and the wall.
Toshinori smiled at her.
“There you are,” he said. “I was looking for you.”
“Look who’s talking. Where did you-”
“They’re going to spot us if we don’t hurry. Come,” he said, getting up from his hiding spot and taking off a leaf from his hair. He offered Inko his hand and dragged her towards the back of the villa.
There was something odd in Toshinori’s suit pants, Inko noticed as they hurried away. It took her awhile to realize that they weren’t the ones he was wearing before. They were of the wrong color and barely covered his calves, but were somehow strangely familiar.
“Are those Izuku’s pants…?” she asked.
Toshinori nodded.
“We had an emergency.”
He lead Inko towards a tiny gate in the back wall and he opened it.
“After you,” he said.
They stepped outside the villa, on a small, unpaved street.
“What happened to yours?”
“They caught fire,” he said, closing the gate behind him and taking her hand again. “Just a little bit further. Watch out, the road’s rutty.”
“Are… Are you ok?” she asked, as she tried to check him out as best as she could in the dim light.
“Yes. I didn’t have them on when they caught fire.”
“Do I really want to know…?”
“Fans,” he said with a smile.
They kept walking along the way for a few minutes more, until they reached a few stone steps leading from the side of the road to a small field. Spread on the ground under a tall tree there was one of the tablecloths from the villa, on which laid a few plastic bags.
“Here,” Toshinori said, inviting Inko to sit down and doing the same.
He took his phone from his pockets and started looking for something on it, then placed it down on the ground, next to the tablecloth.
“Top 35 Love Themes from Movies, Romantic Soundtracks Piano Solo,” he whispered, as if that could make any sense.
“The only thing worse than fighting villains is fighting constipation! Save the day with Lax & Tive, the number one pro-remedy against those hard times! Consult your doctor before extensive use, may cause unwanted quirk reactions.”
“I’m sorry,” Toshinori said. “Unskippable ads.”
Inko giggled, as the soft music finally began to play.
“You didn’t have to do this,” she said, leaning close to his side.
“Oh, but you see, I wanted to do this.” He gently pushed her back and grabbed the plastic bags that were lying around. “Granted, I’d rather have had the wedding reception we had originally planned, but a little inconvenience isn’t going to stop me.”
Inko smiled as she watched Toshinori struggling to loosen the knot that kept one of the bags closed. She knew he wasn’t just referring to the fans’ invasion of that day, but to something bigger and scarier. It was the only thing that made him doubt about proposing, or at least that was what he had told her later on the night he had asked her (and the waiter) to marry him.
His health.
His condition.
That little inconvenience . The unnerving possibility that he could fall apart one moment or the other. But then, just before falling asleep, he had turned towards her, smiling, and he had told her that he had decided that such a little inconvenience wasn’t going to stop him any time soon, and that it was a promise. And Inko didn’t know if it was because the soft light of the moon was the only light they had, or if it was because she had been sleepy, but in that moment he had looked just like he used to, in those old posters that Izuku still had on his room’s walls, and she had known she could trust him on that matter.
Having managed to untie the handles of the bag, Toshinori rummaged a bit in it and finally pulled out a slice of castella cake packaged in a plastic wrap, followed by a disposable knife and two forks and a paper plate with a very badly drawn Endeavor and the writing Happy Heroic Birthday on it.
With the utmost care, Toshinori took the cake out of the wrapping and put it on the plate. Then went looking again in another bag, this time retrieving a box labeled Funny Animal Pencil Erasers . He took one that looked like a tiny parakeet and placed it on the cake.
“That’s you,” he said, putting the rest of the box back in the bag.
“And this,” he continued, looking for something in the pocket of his jacket, “this is me.”
He placed an All Might figure on the cake, next to the parakeet.
“Seems appropriate,” Inko said, giggling. “Where did you get all of this?”
“In a convenience store.”
“We’re in the middle of nowhere! The closest store must be at least ten kilometers away… How did you…?”
“Izuku and Gran Torino went out for a stroll,” Toshinori said with a smirk.
Inko nodded with little certainty. She knew that Izuku could now do things that were impossible not only for his former self, but for most people, too, like... taking a quick ten kilometers stroll, for example. But, for some reason, she kept forgetting it.
“Wait,” she said, after a few seconds, “isn’t Gran Torino a bit too old to run around like that?”
“Well,” Toshinori said, lowering his voice and looking furtively around him, “I fear he’s going to jump out from nowhere and punch me in the face if I say you’re right, but you probably are. But, in any case, he didn’t actually run.”
“But if they went together…?”
“Let’s say that his training methods, unlike his weight, haven’t changed in the last thirty years or so.”
He took a long, deep sigh while staring into the distance, then turned again towards Inko.
“So, what do you say, should we cut our cake?” he asked, pointing at the plate in front of them.
“I think we should, yes,” Inko answered.
They moved slowly and carefully, because of the solemnity of the moment and because the All Might figurine was barely balanced on the cake and neither wanted it to fall and ruin the atmosphere. Inko took the plastic knife in her hand and Toshinori took her hand in his, and then they gently cut two tiny squares of cake. They kept moving in silence, letting the soft music coming from Toshinori’s phone fill the air, as they each picked up one square with a fork and offered it to the other.
The cake was almost stale and tasted like dry flour and sweeteners, but neither of them really noticed.
After a few more moments of silence, Toshinori finally spoke.
“Inko,” he said, gently brushing away a crumb from her lips. “I’m sorry today was ruined.”
She shook her head and smiled.
“We’ve spent so much time planning everything and I know this is not what you wanted.”
Even though he was still smiling, Inko couldn’t help but feel a lingering sadness in Toshinori’s voice. As if somehow it was his fault, and he had failed her, while she knew perfectly well that it wasn’t the case and, deep down, couldn’t care less for how the day went, as long as Toshinori and Izuku were safe and sound. But she knew the man in front of her quite well by now, and how deep a certain flavor of insecurities ran inside of him, and how he needed to be reassured that it wasn’t a problem, that it didn’t matter -
The words were already on the tip of her tongue, when she stopped.
She let her eyes wander from Toshinori to what remained of the castella cake, with the action figure and the little bird still on its top. She took a good look all around herself - there were no flowers, but they had a stretch of the greenest grass, scattered with daisies and dandelions. And there were no fancy decorations, but they had a sky full of stars above their heads. The sweet notes of an old song and the chirping of some faraway crickets were the only sounds they could hear.
It wasn’t that it didn’t matter.
She had been so focused on herself and keeping away the bad thoughts that somehow she had missed all the good ones, too. Toshinori was just as tired as she was, if not more. All the feelings and emotions and the stress of the day must have weighed on him, too, and yet… Yet he was still standing smiling in front of her, and, once again, he was going beyond just to be sure she could smile, too, and feel special and loved.
And that mattered.
It mattered so much.
“What do you mean?” she asked in a teasing tone. It was plain to see on Toshinori’s face how much her question had taken him aback and she couldn’t hide a giggle as she took his hand in hers. “This is exactly what I wanted.”
She moved a bit closer to him and, even if they had been together for quite some time now - they were actually married , she suddenly realized - she felt her heart flutter, just as if they had never kissed before. The soft blush on Toshinori’s cheeks and the way he was looking at her told Inko that he felt the same.
“Well,” he whispered, squeezing her hand a bit tighter and intertwining his fingers with hers. “May I finally kiss my bride, now?”
“Of course,” she said, leaning in towards him, but stopping just before their lips could touch.
“Of course, Mr. Midoriya.”
