Tear Jerker / An ordinary life

• The entire premise of the fic. No long after the start of their third year, Class 3-A and B got involved in an incident called the Class 3 Fiasco, where a villain called Hijack took control of Izuku's body and unleashed him on his classmates, injuring most of them. Nezu decided to expel Izuku for the failure… and Izuku, who was already blaming himself for being overconfident, saw this as the last straw. One Week after being expelled, he and his mother vanished. Four years later, he has become a humble Quirk teacher and councelor who abandonned any dream of becoming a Hero.
  • In those four years, U.A. has become Izuku's Trauma Button. Any mention of it will send him into a Heroic BSoD, usually preceded by I Need a Freaking Drink. Aizawa, All Might, Mirio and Nezu are equally shocked and pained to realize it.
  • Not only that, we learn that Izuku was The Heart of Class 3-A and, once he was gone, everyone blamed everyone else for the Fiasco, with the whole class ending at each other's throats. Ochako and Tsuyu managed to remain close, but everyone else went their separate way. When you know how close Class 1-A is in the series, this is simply heart-breaking.
• Izuku isn't the only one with a Dark and Troubled Past. Noraneko Foyer doubles as a Runaway Hideaway, so any permanent resident isn't exactly there by choice.
  • Himai lost his parents after they were caught in the crossfire of a Hero fight. He spent the next years on the street as a fire performer, earning what little he could and surviving by scavenging in dumps in the worse of times. After arriving at Nishimeya, he decided to settle there, but living in the streets gave him a fragile health… Fortunately, Izuku found him as he was suffering from a cold and nursed him back to health. He stays at the Foyer because it's still a better home than the street, but he hadn't given up being a street performer.
  • Eiko, meanwhile, saw her parents being murdered by the Front, and notably Toga. She spent the following weeks in the street but, unlike Himai, didn't make it as a street performer and instead survived through begging and petty pickpocket. During those weeks, she went actively looking for a haven and found it in the Foyer. She considers the weeks she spent in the streets as the worst of her life.
  • Akari was kidnapped by a cult at a young age for her powerful light-based Quirk. However, she came to realize overtime that the cult was bad news and, with Izuku's help, managed to escape. She has no idea what her parents are up to and is actively looking for them.
  • Sami saw his father being shot right before him. In a fit of rage, he used his Quirk to lacerate the culprit with thorns. The event, however, proved traumatic on two levels. First, the messy death gave him a fear of blood he spent several years trying to overcome. Second, afraid that he may be charged with manslaughter and illegal Quirk use, he saw no choice but to run away and hide from the police. Izuku helped him cover his tracks and welcomed him in the Foyer.
  • Jiyu is homosexual. However, his parents are homophobic. His home life is implied to have been fairly nasty, to the point he ended running away to the Foyer and one gets the sense he is only half-joking when he says his parents will kill him if he comes back…
  • Akira's parents were drug addicts. During one very bad trip, their Quirks went haywire and permanently damaged Akira's eyes, rendering him blind. Akira was sent to the Foyer while his parents were in rehab, and he spent some time genuinely blind until Izuku taught him to use the sensory aspect of his Quirk to move around.
  • Hayate and his parents were on a cruise when it was caught in a storm. His parents fell overboard. In his distress, Hayate used his Quirk to make the storm go away, only for the captain to chain him to the brick as a human weather-control machine. After one week of being treated as a slave, Hayate had enough and summoned a storm that sank the cruise, not expecting to survive either. He did after Izuku found him on a beach and nursed him back to health.
• As part of their attempt to assassinate Mirio, the Front pulls a Kill and Replace on Snipe and Power Loader. When Mei hears her favorite teacher died, she spends half an hour crying in Izuku's arms.
• During Mirio and Tamaki's wedding, Nezu finally reveals a crucial fact regarding Izuku's expulsion: it was temporary. Nezu was going to reenroll Izuku after two months. However, Izuku was so distraught by the punishment he disappeared before Nezu could reenroll him or otherwise inform him. Learning this fact throws Izuku in such a loop he goes to his apartment in Heights Union to drink away the pain.
• Hitoshi mentions, during his reunion with Izuku, how Bakugo and his friends fell apart. The fact saddens Izuku, who remembers how close they were despite being Vitriolic Best Buds.
• Akari was kidnapped at such a young age and spent so much time among the cult that she barely even remembers her family, and outright tells Nezu her lack of memory is more painful than the memories themselves. She cannot recall her parents' names, and even though she remembers both were blonde, she cannot recall which had blue eyes and which had a light-based Quirk - if they even had one in the first place. Nezu decides to help her look for them.
• We already know that Eiko's family was murdered by the Front and she was forced to spend several weeks in the streets. Chapter 16 opens with Eiko having a flashback-nightmare of the whole event. It starts with her parents pulling a You Shall Not Pass! to buy her time to run and her last memory of her father being Toga sipping his blood. Then her time as a Street Urchin follow, how she had to beg and steal to survive while suffering from constant starvation, all the while evading the Front. It was sheer luck that let her hear about Noraneko Foyer, and she was desperate enough she journeyed to Nishimeya all the way from Kyoto. The scene ends with her snuggling between Izuku and Ochako out of a need for comfort.
• Yuga finally provides information concerning Akari's parents: they died during the Battle of Coruscant Ward. Though the girl still has some family left, her mother and father are dead and gone and she will never reunite with them.
• Eijiro still hasn't reconciled with Mina, and he scoots closer to Shoto and Tenya when she shows up.
• When someone slips Trigger to Akira's father, the man's Adaptive Ability becomes so strong he becomes unstoppable. Only Akira is able to stop his rampage... by draining his body of moisture. Awesome as it is, it doesn't change the fact a thirteen-something kid had to kill his own father.
  • Indeed, next chapter, Akira is having a Freak Out in Izuku's arms while Kishun muses how unpleasant it is to take a life for the first time.
• Izayoi is revealed to be the twin sister of the Pro Hero Manual. Unfortunately, their parents disowned her somewhere along the line because she was not as strong as Manual, severing all bonds between them. Manual tried keeping tabs on her, but it wasn't perfect and he missed her having a son. When he finds out about the fact - at the same time he learns the boy had to kill his own father, He is suitably distraught and decides to get him back, regardless of the fact he and his sister are technically no longer family - only for Izayoi to throw that fact to his face and ask Izuku to adopt Akira. Worse, he realizes his parents are only interested in having Akira in the family because of his powerful Quirk.
• "I don't think I can become the Symbol of Hope everyone wishes for."
• Pop*Step died at some point in the meantime. Koichi (The Crawler), who had been friends with her, is described as still suffering from the aftermath.
• Changeling, with Mei's help, reveals that Eiko, Jiyu, Sami and Hayate see Izuku as a surrogate father despite him "just" being their legal guardian. Izuku is saddened, because it means the kids' true fathers are no longer around to fulfil that role.