Chapter 2: Twilight Submission Lessons
The patio welcomed them into its quiet embrace, a stage of worn floorboards under a high, clear evening sky. Hizashi moved between cushions and the low black lacquer table as if attending a sacred rite, lighting slender coils of sandalwood incense until their thin white threads drew wandering lines upon the cooling air. The scent of powdered green tea, just scooped from an amber-glazed chaire, was clean and bittersweet beneath the spice.
Katsuki was freshly showered, his damp blond hair darker, spikier, his scent now laced with the sharp citrus of his soap. He lifted a heavy granite weight, idly curling it, the slow flex and release of his bicep and tricep casting rippling shadows across his tank top.
Izuku knelt on the far side of the low table, plaiting his long black hair over one shoulder with patient focus. His emerald tunic pooled around his hips. He felt cradled in this ritual: the soft breeze, the rustle of his mama’s silk kimono, his daddy’s watch still ticking gently.
The calm was a vessel. He filled it.
“You’ll never believe,” Izuku began, his voice a soft breeze through the bamboo. He looked up, first at his mama pouring water into the warming bowl, then sideways at Katsuki. “What happened with Yua Tanaka.”
Shouta, settling a ledger onto his lap beside his cold tea, made a low noise of acknowledgement. Hizashi’s elegant hands paused. “The omega from your botany class?”
Izuku nodded, his expression a fascinating mixture of delicacy and keen interest. “She’s left school. For good. Her family’s sending her to some distant aunt’s. A retreat, the office said.”
Katsuki’s weight clunked onto the wooden decking. He reached inside, body still tense. “She the petite girl you mentioned who always smelled like strawberry cream sodacut with rainwater?"
“Yes,” Izuku said, his tone dropping to an intimate murmur, thick with scandalized awe. “She, well, you remember how she was. With alphas. A different one to escort her every week. Sometimes…” He swallowed, color blooming high on his cheeks. He spoke faster, drawing them all into the shared secret. “It wasn’t just escorts. She was… loose.”
Shouta’s ledger finally tilted to one side, forgotten. His black eyes settled on his omega son, calm and assessing. He wasn’t a man to engage in casual gossip, but the education of his children required discussion of society’s shortcomings.
“Define ‘loose’, Izuku,” Shouta rumbled. He already knew, but he wanted to hear how his boy framed it, what lessons were present in the telling. He reached out and accepted the bowl of matcha Hizashi prepared for him, fingertips brushing. A silent communion of leadership and support.
“Impromptu. She lacked…” Hizashi supplied gently, sweeping fine bubbles into a froth. He never sat down before everyone else was served.
“Courtship,” Izuku finished decisively, emboldened by their focus. His scent, usually a sweet honeysuckle, now took on a sharper, tangier note, hot metal and green tea left to steep too long. A scent of judgment in alignment with his elders. A sign he understood his duty to disapprove. “It was always obvious. That scent… she wasn’t controlling it properly. Especially during heats, or the times just before. But Mama, Daddy…” He leaned forward, his large eyes wide. “It wasn’t obvious to me until this. Her intimate images. Leaked. Across the whole upper year network. And apparently… it’s worse. She’d been sending them directly. Pictures to all the alphas she’d let…”
The word hung there, tasting of filth on Izuku's clean tongue. He couldn’t bring himself to say it when discussing someone so depraved.
“Let claim her,” Katsuki spat, finishing it with the clinical cruelty of a surgeon naming a malignancy. He cracked his wide knuckles, the sharp sound echoing through the silent space.
He didn’t bother feigning innocence. He’d seen some of the images flashed across group chats he'd long since muted.The world outside his family was a circus of inadequacy.
He was aware in the clinical way an archivist is aware of rotting scrolls in another building, artifacts that needed no preservation. Shouta watched him, his piercing black eyes cataloging Katsuki’s disgust. Katsuki held his father’s gaze, unflinching, confirming everything without a word. He saw no pride in possession, only a deep, personal loathing for the act of devaluation itself.
The quiet stretched, full of unspoken verdicts drawn swiftly by all of them.The tea's subtle click of ceramic on wood was punctuated.
“What was she thinking?” Hizashi breathed, his soft face a study in a mother’s greatest fears. He had seen this type, a specter in society. The ruin of a family’s good name. “Sweetheart, you are sure she sent them willingly?”
“The alphas who got them confirmed it. All… thirteen of them so far. They were boasting, before the teachers shut it down. Showing the messages along with the pictures. ‘Look what Tanaka sent me last night.’ Like trophies. It's sickening."
Izuku shook his head. His black hair brushed the wood below. He knew his worth lay in scarcity, in selective presentation, in the mystery of his skin revealed only for his future mate’s eyes. He was appalled not on Yua Tanaka's behalf, not for her violation, but on behalf of the order she had so casually, so flagrantly, kicked apart.
Shouta set his tea down. “The family’s shame is now absolute. There is no recovering from so public a stain. Her future is gone.” His verdict offered no room for pity; it was a fact, sharp as a mountain cliff.
Hizashi let out a long breath. The scent of fresh jasmine seemed to weep. A good omega house fell to ruin not with a crash, but with a series of such private, terrible choices. “We thank the Spirits every day for your understanding, my loves,” he said, his gaze lovingly scanning his own two, his heart’s treasures. He reached across to stroke Izuku’s cheek with the back of his fingers.
“If she were ours,” Shouta said the words slowly, for they were the ultimate condemnation. If she were their daughter.
The horror of the idea hung in the air, the greatest humiliation imaginable. Katsuki’s chin jutted forward. His eyes blazed, reflecting the flame of a lantern. He couldn't imagine the scenario involving anyone from his own home. The impossibility of the thought was a relief, but he spoke for them all.
“I’d rather die old. Die bitter. Die with no goddamn pups of my own,” he declared, voice a coarse scrape. “Than ever be mate-locked to a creature like that. She doesn’t know her own value, so how the hell could anyone else know it? She’s an embarrassment to the secondary biology she never learned to honor. Her entire existence is pointless. She serves nothing. She builds nothing. She’s just... refuse.”
The vehemence, a mix of pride and revulsion, hung thick.
Izuku nodded, the motion quick, vigorous agreement. Then his face scrunched up unexpectedly. He spoke with a detail that caught them off guard.
“And her presentation. Honestly? The pictures were… pitiful.” He was speaking technically now, with the unfeeling scrutiny of a judge examining flawed goods on a market shelf. "I don't know where she got the confidence from? What she thought was attractive enough to record... They're small. And kind of…” He held his hands out briefly, then cupped his palms in a slight, uneven tilt. “Wrong.”
A rough, startled chuff of breath broke the tension.
It came from Shouta. It wasn’t a full laugh, but a low exhalation of pure, sudden surprise that morphed into a gruff, amused sound. He hadn't missed Yua Tanaka's lack of form, a technical oversight beneath his own notice. But his son noticing these details, the meticulousness of his son's critique… It was brutally discerning, and it spoke of standards he instinctively approved of and understood. Katsuki stared at Izuku's cupped palms, his brow lifting in surprised agreement. He grinned, a sharp, approving flash of teeth.
“An uneven stance is a sign of weak foundation,” he announced, translating physical imperfections into a principle he understood intimately.
Izuku, encouraged by that chuckle, smiled, though his cheeks flushed pink as jade. In their world, it was praise. He was learning his role was not to judge, not cruelly, but to expertly and instinctively discern value—in others and, by rigid extension, himself.
The story was passed around until the air felt cleared.
They sipped their matcha.
Izuku nibbled a pressed sugar treat carved into a lily.
Hizashi’s careful smile gradually relaxed.The terror the story had summoned was receding, banished by the clear, bright lines of their own superiority. Yua Tanaka was a lesson learned, not a person grieved.
Later, as darkness settled and the first stars appeared, Katsuki pushed to his feet. “Gym,” he grunted. But then he stopped and looked at Izuku, his crimson eyes intent. He jerked a thumb towards himself. “Don’t forget what you carry, ‘Zuku. Not like her.”
“I won’t, Kacchan,” Izuku said, his voice absolutely certain.
Katsuki grabbed the granite weight and his towel, the cords in his forearms tight as ropes.The gym was the forge. He’d hone himself precisely, to become the future capable of receiving a gift as delicate, valuable, and well-defined as Izuku. The lesson of Yua Tanaka was the lesson of ruin, and ruin served as a fine blueprint for its own avoidance.
The patio slid into deeper quiet.
In the wash of moonlight and the soft hiss of burning incense, the Aizawas were left alone with the warm reassurance of their principles and the sweet serenity of their impeccable virtue. It settled into them as comfortable as their own sacred bones. This had been another day spent upholding their beautiful form of order for a world beyond this bamboo oasis and its paper lanterns.