Chapter 1: Patrol Car Confessions
The fluorescent light buzzed like a trapped hornet, a relentless white noise that seeped into the bones. It bleached everything in the small room: the gray concrete walls, the scarred metal table bolted to the floor, even the faint hope in a person’s eyes. Shouta Aizawa leaned against the wall by the one-way mirror, his arms crossed over his broad chest. The familiar weight of his service weapon pressed against his rib cage, a cold comfort. He watched his partner, Dean, set down a manila folder with a soft thud.
Dean was a decade younger, with the kind of earnest face that still believed in clear lines between good and bad. He hadn’t yet learned how those lines bled and smudged. “Interview commencing with David Smith, October 23rd, 3:14 PM. Present are Detectives Shouta Aizawa and Dean Miller.”
David Smith sat across the table, his chair scraping loudly on the linoleum. He was a big man, gone soft in the middle, with thick forearms covered in blurry, jailhouse tattoos. He didn’t look worried. He looked bored. His fingers drummed a tuneless rhythm on the tabletop. “Can we speed this up? I got stuff to do.”
“Your stuff is on hold,” Shouta said, his voice a low gravel that didn’t ask for permission to fill the space. He didn’t move from the wall. His presence was a tool, a shadow in the corner of the suspect’s vision. “We hear you’re a real hands-on family man, David.”
David smirked, a flash of yellowed teeth. “I discipline my household. That’s a father’s right. A husband’s duty. Bible says so.”
“The Bible say anything about a fractured orbital bone?” Dean asked, his tone tighter than Shouta’s. He opened the folder, sliding an 8x10 color photograph across the table. It landed face-up under the cruel light.
The picture showed a woman, mid-thirties, her face a grotesque watercolor of purples, yellows, and swollen red. One eye was shut completely, a puffy slit lost in the bruising. The other held a camera’s flash, a dull void of shock.
David glanced at it, his smirk not fading. He leaned forward, squinting. “She walked into a door. Clumsy bitch. Always has been.”
“That’s your statement? She walked into a door.” Dean’s pen hovered over his notepad.
“Repeatedly,” David chuckled, sitting back. “Must’ve been a real magnet for that doorframe.”
A cold knot, familiar and dense, began to form in Shouta’s gut. It wasn’t sympathy. It was a recognition, an ugly mirror held up at a distorting angle. He watched the man’s eyes—there was no guilt there, only a profound, unshakeable entitlement. A righteousness. Shouta knew the shape of that. He saw it every morning, shaving in his own bathroom mirror.
“How about your son, Ricky?” Dean’s voice cut through Shouta’s thoughts. He slid another photo next to the first.
This one was worse.
The boy was small for ten, swimming in a hospital gown. His arm was in a cast, fingers peeking out like pale little twigs. A line of neat, black stitches marched across his eyebrow. But it was the expression, the hollowed-out look in his eyes that stared past the camera, past the room, into some private nothingness. It was a look that spoke of silence, of lessons learned in pain.
Something tightened behind Shouta’s sternum, a physical cinch. He thought of Izuku’s eyes, black like his own, flashing with a heat that was all anger now, all defiance. He thought of the boy stumbling back last night, the coppery tang of blood in the air, the way his own knuckle had throbbed with a satisfying ache. The memory was clean, sharp. This picture was muddy, wrong.
But the boy’s posture… the slight cringe of the shoulders, as if expecting a blow from the photographer. That, he knew.
David’s amusement faded, replaced by a flicker of irritation. “Kid fell down the stairs. Didn’t I already say this to the uniforms?”
“You said a lot of things,” Shouta finally pushed himself off the wall. His boots were silent on the floor as he approached the table. He loomed, using his height, the breadth of his shoulders, the silent story of the tattoos snaking up his own neck. He didn’t sit. He placed his palms flat on the cold metal, leaning into David’s space. The smell of stale sweat and cheap deodorant wafted from the man. “But your stories have holes. Big ones. Like why your wife’s ‘doorframe’ injuries match the knurled pattern of your favorite wrench we found in the trunk of your car. Or why your son’s ‘fall’ down the stairs left bruises in the shape of a belt buckle on his back.”
David’s eyes narrowed, meeting Shouta’s black gaze. A predator recognizing another, but of a different breed. David was a cornered animal, snarling. Shouta was the quiet pressure of the hunt. “You calling me a liar, Officer?”
“Detective,” Shouta corrected, his voice barely above a whisper. “And I’m not calling you anything. I’m looking at the facts. And the facts are painting a picture of a pathetic little man who can only feel big by hurting the people who can’t hit back.”
The color rose in David’s neck. “You don’t know a goddamn thing about my family.”
“I know they’re in the hospital and you’re in here,” Shouta said, straightening up. The detachment he usually felt during interrogations was thin, porous. He could feel the ghost of Izuku’s hair whipping under his own hand, see the parallel between the boy in the photo and the boy in his living room. It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t. Izuku needed discipline. He was rebellious, disrespectful. This… this was weakness. Preying on the truly weak.
“They needed it,” David hissed, his composure cracking. “She’s mouthy. The kid’s a sniveling little coward. I was making them stronger. You, of all people, you get it. You got kids?”
The question hung in the air, acrid. Dean glanced at Shouta, a quick, professional flick of the eyes.
Shouta’s face was a mask of granite. “This isn’t about me.”
“Sure it is,” David pushed, a new light in his eyes. He saw a crack, or thought he did. “You know how it is. You let ’em get away with shit, they walk all over you. They gotta respect you. Fear is respect. It’s the same damn thing.”
The knot in Shouta’s gut turned to ice. The words were too familiar, echoes of his own internal monologue after a long shift, after Izuku’s latest transgression. He needs to learn. He needs to respect. But hearing them from this bloated, smug animal in a stained t-shirt made them feel filthy.
“Fear isn’t respect,” Dean said, his voice firm with a conviction Shouta found naive. “It’s just fear.”
“What the hell do you know, kid?” David spat, turning his rage on the easier target. “You got some suburban fantasy where everyone holds hands and talks about their feelings? The world ain’t like that. I’m preparing them for the real world. A world that’ll chew ‘em up and spit ‘em out if they’re soft.”
“By breaking your wife’s face?” Dean shot back. “By putting your son’s head through drywall?”
“Yeah!” David slammed a fist on the table, the sudden bang echoing in the small room. “Maybe now he’ll think twice before he talks back! Maybe now she’ll think twice before she burns my fucking dinner!”
Silence descended, heavy and suffocating, broken only by the persistent buzz of the light. David was breathing heavily, his justification laid bare, ugly and raw. It wasn’t about strength. It was about control. It was about rage.
Shouta looked at the pictures again. The woman’s shattered eye. The boy’s distant stare. The tightness in his stomach wasn’t nausea. It was a cold, clarion recognition. He saw the methodology, the escalation, the pathetic excuses. He saw, with terrifying clarity, the road David had walked. And for a single, vertigo-inducing second, he saw a signpost on his own.
He blinked it away.
“You’re done,” Shouta said, his voice returning to its usual detached rumble. He gathered the photos, sliding them back into the folder as if they were toxic. He couldn’t look at the boy’s face anymore. “Interview terminated, 3:31 PM.”
“What? That’s it?” David sneered, confusion and bravado battling on his face.
“That’s it,” Shouta said, heading for the door. “We have everything we need.”
Dean followed, casting one last disgusted look at David. In the observation room, the cooler air did nothing to dispel the tension clinging to Shouta’s skin.
“Guy’s a monster,” Dean muttered, running a hand through his hair. “Just… proudly a monster. You okay? You got quiet in there.”
“I’m fine,” Shouta said, his back to Dean, staring at the now-empty interrogation room through the glass. David was being led out by a uniformed officer, still muttering. “Just another piece of shit. Paperwork’s the same.”
“It’s not, though, is it?” Dean ventured. “The kid… he was just a little kid.”
“The world’s full of little kids getting hurt,” Shouta said, the words coming out harsher than he intended. He turned, his expression closed. “You finish the report. I’m going to get a coffee.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He walked down the sterile hallway, the echo of his footsteps solitary and sharp. In the bathroom, he splashed cold water on his face, gripping the sides of the sink. He looked up into the mirror. His own black eyes stared back, stern, unyielding. The tattoos on his neck seemed darker. He thought of David’s words. You get it.
“I am not him,” he said to his reflection, the sound swallowed by the hum of the vents. The conviction was solid, an iron rod in his spine. His actions had purpose. His discipline had cause. Izuku was not a sniveling coward; he was a problem that needed correcting. The comparison was an insult.
But the image of the boy, Ricky, wouldn’t leave. That hollow stare. It was the silence that got to him, the absolute extinguishing of light. Izuku still had fire. Izuku still fought back, cursed, slammed doors. That was proof, wasn’t it? Proof that Shouta’s method was different. He hadn’t broken the spirit, just the will. There was a difference. A crucial one.
He left the precinct without getting coffee. The afternoon sun was a lie, too bright and cheerful. He drove without the radio, the silence in the car a physical thing. He passed a park, saw a father pushing a little boy on a swing, both laughing. He looked away, his jaw tight.