All Who Wander [Chapter 10 - CHEESE]

[Chapter 9]

By the time the sun rose all the way above the treetops, Izuku had already planted what felt like a thousand seeds. He’d started out by Kouji’s house, planting neat rows of lettuce all around the areas the animals tended to visit, then he’d worked his way down through the forest with the cherry trees, scattering grass seeds along his way. Finally he’d finished up at the farm, turning over a new row of soil and planting another line of lettuce to get started on its growth.

Eri met him there as he was finishing up, and Izuku grinned when he saw her coming, waving at her as she skipped down the forest path. She immediately knelt down beside him, helping him sprinkle water on the seeds as he worked his way down the row.

“These ones are lettuce seeds,” he informed her, handing her the packet with a bunch still left inside. “My book says they can grow in as little as two weeks, so you guys should plant another row every few days, so you’ll end up with a constant source of them. If you cut the leaves from the outside, they’ll keep growing from the middle for a while, so you can just take what you want each day and let the rest keep growing.”

“That’s so cool!” Eri gushed. “I’m gonna eat all the lettuces!”

“I need you to promise me something, though!” Izuku said with a grin. “I planted some around Kouji’s place, too. I think he just expected one or two plants, so he didn’t make a fuss, but I planted a lot of them. I need you to stop by and water them, when I’m not here, for the bunnies.”

“I will! I promise! And I’ll plant lots more for him, so the bunnies never go hungry.”

“Perfect. You’re such an awesome little farmer, I’m so impressed.”

“Thank you!”

As they headed to Mirio’s for breakfast together, Eri caught him up on all the goings-on in the town, and Izuku listened attentively to everything. He hadn’t been gone for that long, at least he hadn’t thought it was a long time when he did it, but now it felt like years.

Aizawa and Hizashi were already at the table when Izuku and Eri made it, and Izuku just stared at them for a moment, watching them bicker and talk like old friends. He supposed Hizashi’s family had travelled through Chimura a lot when they were trading, Hizashi had said, but he’d never expected them to get along so easily!

“Uncle Hizashiiii!” Eri sang, when they kicked off their shoes in the doorway and hurried inside to join them. “Are you gonna come see the farm after breakfast?”

“Absolutely!” he assured her. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Together they ate a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs with melted cheese, one of Izuku’s personal favourites, and hash browns – Aizawa had gotten pretty damn great at making them, although they were still nothing on Inko’s. Izuku laughed sheepishly when Mirio piled his plate and Hizashi’s extra high, refusing to hear any protest about it.

“You two’ve got a big day ahead!” Mirio said knowingly. “Gotta keep your strength up for the trips!”

Izuku glanced over at Hizashi, finding a grin already waiting for him in return.

“I’m gonna head up the hill today,” he explained. “Then I’ll come back down to trade with the people here, afterward. Don’t forget to put your package together for me!”

“Yeah! I’ll do it first thing after breakfast,” Izuku promised, taking another bite of his eggs. “Thank you again, I know they’ll be so happy.”

Mirio brushed Izuku off when he offered to help with the dishes, but before he sent him on his way to the farm again, he pulled out two huge, blanket-wrapped bundles, shoving them into Izuku’s arms with determination.

“The top one is for your family,” he explained. “I want your mother especially to try my tomato soup, so don’t you dare try to say no! There’s heaps of cheese and some oil in there too, from Aizawa, so she can try some new stuff and share it with you when you visit!”

“But this is way too much!” Izuku huffed. “This will feed them for days!”

“Good! They deserve it!”

Aizawa nodded his agreement, and Eri beamed at him across the table.

“We made lots of cheese!” she said. “I want your mommy and Mei to eat it.”

“You’re all way too kind,” Izuku whined. “Thank you, make sure you eat everything from the farm that gets ripe while I’m gone, instead!”

“That’s exactly it,” Mirio said with a grin. “You’re not gonna be here to eat your fresh stuff, so you’ve gotta take ours, to keep you going! The bottom bundle is for you, make sure you eat it and get to Tsuricho safely!”

“I’m gonna hug you now.”

Izuku set his bundles on the table, while Mirio laughed, turning to wrap his arms around the strong body and squeeze him extra tight. Mirio was all muscle from his farm work, and his hug was so tight and secure that Izuku hardly wanted to let him go.

“Grab anything ripe from your farm, too, of course,” he continued, when Izuku freed him from his clutches. “Eri and her friends are gonna take care of it all while you’re gone, but they don’t have school today, so you’ll have to do your own work for now!”

“I’m gonna miss you guys!”

“No you aren’t,” Aizawa said, chuckling to himself. “You’ll be having the time of your life, and we’ll be right here when you get back.”

“Yeah!” Eri agreed, taking her own turn at hugging him. “We aren’t going away! And I helped make the cheese, so it better be the best cheese ever.”

“Good, I can’t wait to come back and see you again! And I’m sure it’s gonna be amazing, thank you. I’m gonna have cheese for dinner every night, and think about you.”

“But first I’m gonna help with the farm,” Eri insisted. “I wanna show Uncle Hizashi what we did!”

“That sounds great, shall we go for a walk?”

“Yeah!”

Izuku scooped his bundles back up, giving Mirio a last quick thanks before Eri dragged him out the door, leading the way down the little forest path Izuku was so intimately familiar with. She skipped off ahead when they got close, grinning to herself, and when they rounded the last corner, Izuku heard Hizashi gasp beside him.

“It’s not much yet,” Izuku said sheepishly. “We had to throw the trellises and the tools together, so it’s not the neatest, but it’s getting better! We’re really proud of it, though.”

“Not much?” Hizashi asked, leaving Oboro behind to run his fingers across a slightly wonky trellis, covered in tomato plants. “I’ve never seen this much food growing here at once.”

“Aizawa said something similar,” Izuku said, with a nervous smile. “I’m just glad I could help.”

“What did you do? If you don’t mind me asking?”

“Fertiliser!” Eri announced, holding up a bucket of manure she’d brought across before breakfast. “And Izuku spent lots and lots of time here, and now me and my classmates do too!”

“We’ve been burying our food scraps to help with the soil, and mixing in any spoiled milk we have lying around, and the potato water from cooking. And I read something about manure and realised it was to do with, uh...”

“Poop!” Eri said cheerfully.

“Right,” Izuku said, smiling awkwardly. “Animal poop is really good for the soil, apparently. So we’ve been mixing it into any new rows that we dig up for planting, and around the roots of the cherry trees, to help the plants grow stronger.”

“Everyone from class brings their fertilisers too,” Eri said proudly. “If people have spoiled milk or dinner scraps, they bring a bucket to school for the plants.”

“Right,” Izuku repeated. “So we’ve had plenty of fertiliser to help, and I think that’s what’s making things grow – the soil seemed really hard and kinda grey at first, but now it seems much fuller and healthier, in a way? Like maybe the ground was just hungry too, or something.”

“That’s amazing,” Hizashi said softly. “Shouta and I used to come pick the cherries down here, as kids, but everything was so spindly and half-dead all the time.”

“As kids?”

“Uncle Hizashi went to school with my dad,” Eri explained. “He went away with his parents and didn’t come back much anymore.”

“Just for the occasional trades, when my parents brought me along,” he clarified. “But now I can go where I want.”

“I didn’t know that, sorry,” Izuku said sheepishly. “So you know all about this place already, and here I am taking you on a tour of your own town!”

“I wanted to see the farm!” Hizashi assured him. “I want to be around more, now that I choose my own trade route, so I’m glad to see everything you’ve been working on.”

“You’re always welcome to come grab some food here,” Izuku told him. “Nejire always insists on buying my leftovers to sell in the store, but really I just like sharing them. And now Eri’s class are the ones working here, so they take food home to their families, which I love. No one will object if you want some, too.”

“Thank you, I appreciate that. When there’s a big crop, I’ll be sure to take some up to your family, too.”

“Would you really?” Izuku asked, his eyes watery. “That would mean a lot to me.”

“Of course!” Hizashi said, clapping him on the back. “I would do it anyway, but even if I wouldn’t, it’s not like Aizawa and Eri and Mirio would let me get away with skipping them.”

“Yeah!” Eri said, puffing out her chest. “You gotta be nice to Izuku’s mommy!”

Izuku laughed, and Hizashi grinned at them both, though his eyes were surprisingly soft.

“Oboro and I are gonna head up there now,” he said, returning to his horse’s side to give him a good pat. “Pack up a bag or a bundle of anything you want to send, and I’ll take it along.”

“Let’s harvest!” Eri said, running for the pile of tools. “We have radishes and tomatoes ready, Uncle Hizashi, come learn!”

Sure enough, Hizashi joined her in front of the rows of plants, listening attentively as she explained exactly how to harvest a tomato, the pair of them laughing together as they quickly filled a bucket with the bright red orbs. Izuku excused himself to the forest, sprinkling water on some grass seeds he’d scattered earlier – Kouji had said they grew fine without watering, but Izuku didn’t want to run that risk. If nothing else, maybe they’d grow quicker or stronger, with a little help along the way.

As he walked, he plucked cherries from their bushes, quickly amassing a huge collection. The cherry harvests had been so bountiful, much more than Aizawa and Mirio claimed they’d been the year prior, although Izuku wondered if they’d just never spent so much time looking. He and Eri plucked a few bushes a day, making their way through the forest bit by bit, and there always seemed to be new ones grown by the time they finished the whole rotation.

“How long do you think these will last?” he asked, when he returned with his haul. “Will they go bad on the way up the hill, now that the weather is warmer?”

“I don’t think so,” Hizashi said, tilting his head a little as he contemplated the heaving buckets. “I sometimes carry crops in water, to keep them a little fresher. We could try that if you’re concerned?”

“Oh! That’s clever!” Izuku looked over his piles of gear, humming to himself. “Would a bucket be okay, instead of a bag? I could fill it with water and crops and you could just deliver the whole thing home, if that wouldn’t be too annoying?”

“That’d be fine,” Hizashi assured him. “We’ll tuck it between some bags and bundles, tie it to the saddle good and tight.”

“Perfect!”

Eri grabbed a clean bucket and ran off to the stream before he could say a word, so with a smile to himself, Izuku started gathering his supplies. A lot of the food went in his bag, for his own venture, but he made sure that at least a little of everything – along with the gifts provided especially for them – went into the Musutafu pile. He wrapped his vegetables carefully in scraps of cloth he’d picked up extra cheaply from the general store, tieing them shut with the little offcuts of string he knew he’d saved for a reason, and when Eri returned with a bucket of cool water, he began submerging them one by one. A few of the jars went in too, the milks and cheeses and soups he preferred to keep cool, and then he contemplated it for a minute before he put another, empty, bucket in the top. It rested on the lids of the jars, kept the bundles gently submerged, and when he tied the handles together with string, it kept the bucket beneath from leaking too easily. The rest of the jars – the oils and vinegars that wouldn’t spoil – he put in the top bucket, combining everything into one neat little package.

“Looks great,” Hizashi said, when Izuku looked up. “Easy to carry and not likely to spill, I like it.”

“Mei is gonna laugh when she sees it,” he said, more to himself than to Hizashi or Eri. “She would have come up with something much more clever.”

“I think it was super clever!” Eri praised. “Are you gonna do another for your food?”

“Maybe I should,” he mused, glancing at the stack of buckets that were always waiting with his other gear. “My bag is kind of over-full right now, so it might make sense.”

“I’ll help!”

Eri ran off for more water, and Izuku chuckled to himself, sitting down to start bundling his crops. He’d just about run out of string, so he settled for folding the cloth carefully to help keep it sealed, dividing his massive stock of supplies between two of his clean buckets. Hizashi sat down to join him, and by the time Eri returned, they had two evenly-distributed buckets, along with a method devised for hopefully attaching them to his backpack to carry along.

Eri poured the water between the two, extra careful to make sure she wouldn’t spill a single drop, and finally they sealed up the two containers with another bucket each, hooking them to the straps of his backpack where they’d, hopefully, hang at his sides as he walked. He hadn’t bothered to stock himself with oil and vinegar, since he wouldn’t have a proper kitchen again until who-knew-when, so the lid-buckets remained empty, saving him a little weight and offering some extra space in case he came across anything else during the walk.

“Looks like we’re both sorted,” Hizashi said with a grin, when Izuku had packed up his tent and left the farm looking strangely bare. “Have a great trip, Izuku. I look forward to crossing paths with you out there somewhere, make sure you keep an eye out for me!”

“Of course!” Izuku agreed, swallowing hard over a lump quickly growing in his throat. “I’ll leave messages with the people I meet, to let them know where I am – if we meet the same people, they’ll tell you how I’m doing! You do the same, okay? It’ll be like... a really long, drawn out conversation.”

“It sounds great!” Hizashi grinned, swinging his leg over Oboro and settling himself in the saddle. “You take care too, Eri – I’ll be back in a couple of days, so you take care of Shouta until then!”

“I will!”

They waved goodbye as he started up the hill, waiting until he disappeared into the trees before Izuku pulled his own backpack on, Eri handing him his tent bundle to settle on his shoulder. They made the walk back to town together, and Izuku said his last goodbyes to his friends, blinking and sniffing much too often as he valiantly held back his tears.

“We’ll see you soon,” Mirio said knowingly. “I can’t wait to hear about your adventures.”

“Definitely,” Izuku said, his voice a little squeaky. “I’ll have all the coolest stories for you.”

They walked with him to the bridge, and Izuku felt oddly touched by the gesture – they had their own things to do, jobs to work and people to see, but still they walked with him, waving from the end of the bridge as he crossed it. Nejire had poked her head out to say goodbye as they passed the store, shoving some extra rags and a ball of string in one of his buckets and refusing to take no for an answer; Tamaki had waved from the same doorway, quiet as ever but with a smile on his face; even Kouji had stood on the highest point of his hill, sneaking in a quick wave when they passed through the one space where he could see them, Yuwai sitting contentedly on his shoulder as he waited for the glimpse. Izuku had thought leaving home had been hard, but leaving Chimura seemed to be even harder, somehow.

Then again, look how leaving home had turned out. He didn’t think anyone could top the friends he’d made in Chimura, but he’d thought that about the people back home, too.

There really was a whole world out there waiting to greet him.

[Chapter 11]