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It started like this.
Shouto had never gone to a place that was anything like a cat café and Izuku thought it was a tragedy. So to commemorate such a wonderful new memory Izuku takes a selfie with Shouto, complete with cute animal ear filter. Then he takes a photo of Shouto staring wide-eyed at a fluffy black and white cat that boldly approached him and sat in his lap, content to soak up the warmth constantly emitting from Shouto’s left side. Then on and on as their little outing continued. Eventually Shouto catches on that Izuku is constantly looking at his phone and frowns.
“’Zuku, do we need to leave? Did you forget you had plans today?”
Confused Izuku looks at Shouto before he notices him pointedly looking at the phone still held in his hands and focused on Shouto. Understanding dawns on him and Izuku happily explains that he isn’t checking his phone but taking pictures. Intrigued Shouto asks to see the pictures and Izuku noticing his amazement with every picture he sees offers to send him copies.
The open curiosity on Shouto’s face when they first came into the café was nothing compared to the excited glint in his eyes and the small smile Shouto has when Izuku mentions that Shouto could take pictures of his own. From that moment on Shouto has had his phone out during every outing he and Izuku go on, during most of their lazy hangouts in either of their dorm room, and anytime he comes across a cat, all to capture his little moments of joy. His reminders that he has fun and freedom and a best friend to enjoy all those little moments with.
His photos show a very clear timeline of his abilities with a camera. His first few photos are blurry with vague suggestions of a focal point, often a wide angle shot of the cat café floor with cats in motion everywhere and a sleeping cat in the middle of everything. Then they transition to slightly off center photos of cute foods and desserts or drinks that Izuku introduces him to. Shouto gets better at using the zoom feature to focus on the things he really wants to capture, he finds out about filters. Soon his phone storage is full of pictures and he’s staring at his father’s contact information, a frown pinching his eyebrows together as his thumb hovers the call button.
“Shocchan? … Whatcha doin?”
Shouto’s thumb leaves it’s hover position to rest on the edge of his phone but he doesn’t look up, he continues to stare at the call button while answering Izuku.
“I’m out of space on my phone.” Confused Izuku hums his understanding and he opens his mouth after taking a breath about to ask further questions but Shouto finally looks up at him and continues, solemnly, with a dead look in his eye.
“So I need to ask my father for another phone. It’s a necessity.”
Pursing his lips in an effort to hide his amusement Izuku nods before he clears his throat.
“It’s because of all your photos, right Shocchan?” A nod and Izuku continues, “Ah well before you ask you father maybe we can try clearing out some of the old photos.” A scandalized look crosses Shouto’s face before his eyes harden into betrayal and a frown pulls at his mouth. Realizing what Shouto must think he's suggesting Izuku waves his hands in front of him while backtracking to rephrase himself.
“Ah! Ah n-no, not delete them forever Shocchan! I just mean maybe we can archive them digitally. Kinda like when we started scrap booking with some of your favourite photos we printed out?”
Wary Shouto asks him to explain while clutching his phone closely to his chest as if to protect it from Izuku’s grabby hands.
“You can put them up on herogram! We can make you an account, you can upload them there so that way you can look at them anytime you want and we can free up space on your phone so you can take even more photos!”
Shouto lowers his phone and hope enters his eyes.
“I won’t have to ask father for a new phone.” An awkward chuckle escapes Izuku as he nods.
So they reschedule their plans for trying out a new noodle shop and Izuku borrows Shouto’s seldom used laptop to setup a new herogram account for him. Due to the paranoid and overprotective nature of his father and the nervous fretting from his mother Izuku grew up with a heavy amount of internet safety in his head and knows just how to make an identity concealing social media account that will allow him to safely interact with different communities online.
So Izuku spends some time coming up with a username for Shouto, something that will be related to the type of photos he’ll be posting but also vague enough that if he ends up posting other things they won’t stand out too much. Izuku thinks about his friend and the amount of times he’s taken a photo of himself, hardly ever, and decides that in the off chance that he might slip a little bit of himself in his photos (he might if he’s holding a cat) he won’t be thought of as the account owner so Izuku decides that he might go for a more gender neutral or feminine username to throw suspicion off of Shouto.
plus it wouldn’t be uncommon for a girl to occasionally post a photo possibly showing off a “boyfriend” every now and then
Izuku mumbles to himself while Shouto sits behind him, watching as Izuku uses the new throwaway email address exclusively for his social media account(s?) and tries a few different usernames, some taken already and some not good enough for Izuku’s tastes.
“Why can’t we use my name?” He asks and Izuku doesn’t even turn around to answer him.
“We can’t use your real name because we have to keep your identity safe. Think about it like this, when we go pro everybody will want to see every part of our lives. I’ve always been careful about hiding my identity and thankfully you just didn’t have an interest in having an online presence to begin with and anything on you out there was released by your father. So we can keep things private and safe in the future, meaning we won’t have to stop going to our favourite places if fans were to find our personal accounts. I mean, it’s not exactly unknown that some fans can be a little… extreme when it comes to their heroes. Like Midnight-sensei! She has public accounts but it’s all heavily filtered to protect her actual favourite places so that on her off time she can relax and not worry about having to protect her professional image. She can just go to her favourite hamster cafés and be Nemuri-san and not worry about fans swarming the place looking for her!”
Izuku turns back to smile at Shouto and waits for his nod of understanding before turning back to the laptop screen. Slowly Shouto shuffles forward a little to get a better look at the screen.
“You want it to be a girl’s name?” Shouto asks in his usual monotone voice, not bothered in the slightest at the idea just curious.
“Mmh! It’ll conceal your identity as well as help you get lost in the crowd, so to speak. The kind of outings we usually have are typically also most enjoyed by younger kids or girls and while it’s not so uncommon for boys to enjoy such activities nowadays there are still not that many boys that post about it! And the ones that do are always popular, usually for the wrong reasons but well… That’s just how it is sometimes.” Shouto nods solemnly.
“What if we use that phrase from the program we watched. That’s girly and common isn’t it?”
“Shocchan, it was an anime not a program… But you’re on the right track! I tried some variations of moe moe kyun already but everything seems to be taken and it’s just a little too specific for my tastes anyways… We could try some other stuff as well though!”
Shouto and Izuku sat at the laptop for another hour and a half before Izuku finally found a username that held up to his high standards.
“Shocchan, you are now the proud new owner of your very own herogram account! Or should I say doki.roki_” Izuku grins at Shouto and Shouto flops onto his back with his arms spread and a soft smile on his face.
“Hm. It’s a cute name.” Izuku nods and starts to fill in the rest of the account information needed.
“We’ll call you roki and your bio can just be a few cute emojis, once that’s all set and we log you in on your phone and you can start uploading your photos!” Eyes sparkling Shouto nods and excitedly begins looking through his photos as Izuku explains how posting works and what the photo limit is for each post. He also vaguely explains the difference between hashtags, tagging, and captions. Slowly and meticulously Shouto goes through his photos and organizes them into little groups to post together as sets, not bothered by keeping them grouped by date but rather by what he felt made most sense. For the next two hours Izuku leaves Shouto happily laying on the floor sorting and posting while Izuku moves to lounge on the bed and message his boys all unaware of the beginning waves Shouto is making on social media. When Izuku finally leaves Shouto’s room for the night “roki-chan” has 5 photo sets posted and 23 followers, 9 of which are already active in the comments section.
The following day Shouto says nothing about the followers and the comment section activity, just as clueless about it happening as Izuku is. This trend continues as Shouto continues to post his photo sets consistently throughout the week when they have free moments in their days, unaware that by doing so he’s inadvertently pleasing the algorithm and Izuku doesn’t bother to check in on how the account or Shouto is doing, sure that if he needed help with something Shouto would ask him.
Between the sheer amount of photos he had and all the time allocated for training and classes it took Shouto five weeks to put all of his little moments of happiness online. And by coincidence, since Shouto for sure did not really understand the tagging system, his account grew a massive following. It really was a wonder how well it grew in popularity considering his posts typically had one hashtag that usually had nothing to do with the photos, often no caption or a simple caption with no context (typically it was just a random word or the name of the cat featured in the photo sets) but despite it all doki.roki_ blew up as a slice of life type of account. The famed “girlfriend account” that is so popular among girls and certain male demographics that won’t be mentioned.
Through his rise in fame Shouto never engaged with comments or followed anyone back, most of his followers thought he was a bot account but his posts were just too cute for them to unfollow or block. And while Izuku was in many of his posts his face and upper body were never in frame and oftentimes his choice of clothing for these outings consist of either shorts or a skirt under any one of his boyfriends’ oversized sweaters which only really added to the idea of “roki-chan” being a cute girl running the account. None of which was planned by Shouto it just happened that in many photos Izuku was in frame as whatever was Shouto’s true focus. And the fact that there are no selfies and the rare photos that have Shouto in them only show his legs in pants or other clearly men’s style of casual clothes also contribute to the “roki-chan has a boyfriend” theory adding to the allure of his account, everyone speculating on the mysterious person who periodically shows up in his posts as well as the mystery girl who runs the account.
All that is known of roki-chan’s identity is the name and the profile picture that Izuku picked out, a photo of the back of Shouto’s head when his hair was at its longest pre-haircut silhouetted against the café lights with a bear ear headband on. (his hair had grown to brush between his shoulder blades and he needed either to tie it back or have a headband to keep it out of the way, he let it grow out as a bit of rebellion towards his father who had scheduled several hair appointments but Shouto didn’t go or sent one of his classmates in his place and he didn’t want to admit that he needed to cut his hair because he was getting annoyed by how his hair was tickling him but Izuku had convinced him that evening to go in the next time he had an appointment scheduled) The way the café lights had a halo effect around Shouto had shadowed any hint of colour from his hair, making it look dark brown or black (depending on who you asked in the "Who Is Roki-Chan group chat) as opposed to his characteristic bright red and pale white split hair. It’s one of Izuku’s favourite candid photos he’d taken of his best friend during one of his favourite late night snack adventures, they had made a quick spontaneous trip to the nearest café for coffee (that Shouto was confident he could ice when they get back to the dorms) and cake before curfew during their designated skin care day. Izuku had parts of his face already covered in a mud mask and Shouto’s sheet mask which bravely held on during the brisk walk to the café had to be disposed of before they entered and Shouto stood next to Izuku in the line as he not-so-gently patted the leftover mask liquid into his face. When it was their turn to order and pay Shouto had pink finger outlines on his cheeks and his forehead was splotchy from his vigorous patting.
That trip was also one of roki-chan’s posts and was the main cause of #selfcare and #girlsnight to trend on herogram for a week straight after it was posted. It featured the opened face mask packaging (so that Shouto would remember which ones they tried and he could buy more), a photo of his laptop capturing one of Shouto’s favourite characters from the anime they started watching and the angle of the laptop screen was tilted just so that in the reflection the tops of their heads are visible and you can barely make out the matching bear and bunny eared headbands Shouto and Izuku were wearing, the adorable cakes and sugared fruit they had as snacks, their coffee and tea orders, and the pile Izuku had made with several of the cute plushies they had won on their first visit to an arcade. Shouto had become obsessed with the fat mochi-soft stuffed cats in the crane machines, so many of them reminded him of the cats from the cat café and they just had to get them all after he pointed out that fact. Izuku’s crane game expertise (developed over time by his need to get all the All Might merch publicly available, even the impossible to win ones in crane games) combined with Shouto’s allowance credit card made it a very successful operation and when they got back to the dorms they sat down and split their hoard evenly, it took them a solid two hours trading and debating which cat went to who.
After a while of Shouto having his account Izuku realised that he hadn’t followed it yet and thought it would be cute to see all of Shouto’s photos. So he pulled out his phone intent to follow his best friend, confident that it wouldn’t matter too much for him to follow it on his personal account but when he opens his herogram to follow Shouto he is taken by surprise at the huge following Shouto had amassed and promptly chokes due to the severity of his gasp. Shouto looks up from his notebook and stares at Izuku with a frown of concern as Izuku pats his chest to get over his coughing fit. As soon as he can speak again Izuku is asking Shouto if he’s aware of the amount of followers he has to which Shouto responds no, because Izuku had disabled all notifications for Shouto except for friend interactions but since Izuku had forgotten to give Shouto a follow and have him follow back he’s been unaware of all the engagement on his account. So all while explaining to Shouto what’s happening Izuku borrows the laptop again and sets to seeing just how popular roki-chan is and is slightly distressed to find that roki-chan while a new “face” on the scene is very popular and had quickly been established as one of the top “aesthetic girls” on herogram without either of them aware of it ( Izuku’s corner of the internet is much more involved with hero fandom and the like so no news of the aesthetic newcomer had crossed his timelines). Roki-chan is so influential that the posts Shouto puts up are part of the reason some of their favourite items had been low stock during a few of their supply runs, some snacks had to be buffed with similar snacks and others had to be completely forgotten because it was just consistently sold out along with their alternatives.
By this point in his researching Izuku decides that he has to get Shouto to interact with at least the rest of aesthetic herogram otherwise he will become more of a “have to know more” person of interest. So Izuku takes the rest of the evening to explain following other accounts and leaving comments, but he also informs him of how to be safe if he wants to interact with his own followers. Shouto asks to follow Izuku and as touched as he is Izuku knows that his main account cannot be the first follow “roki-chan” gives, not only would it shine an unwanted spotlight on him but it might give fuel to the boyfriend speculation and have his account under fire from fanatical followers who would find him “lacking” as roki-chan’s so-called “boyfriend.” So his easy fix is to make a new account specifically for Shouto to follow him on so he takes a good ten minutes to do that and soon after doki.roki_ has a mutual. His, or rather “her” best friend reveal via first follow was a big deal and chu_zuimu or, “imu-chan” as was dubbed by the followers of roki-chan, quickly gained a following that while not as high in numbers as roki-chan was pretty high considering the fact that “imu-chan” hasn’t posted any photos yet. (And Izuku planned on not changing that fact, it was going to just be an account known as roki-chan’s friend who went on these adventures with her and was tagged in them. imu-chan would have a camera shy or private type of persona to explain the lack of posts but would be actively liking roki-chan’s posts and occasionally commenting on them.) This was the start of roki-chan following and liking other aesthetic herogram accounts and posts and finding new places that Shouto wanted to try, it was also an opening brands were waiting for to begin reaching out to ‘roki-chan” to send PR packages and products to advertise or review on “her” popular account. This of course meant that Izuku had to set up a post office box for Shouto (or rather roki-chan) to receive said packages, which wasn’t a big deal for Izuku to do as at the end of the day Shouto would be sharing all of the free stuff with him and they would do the reviews together with Shouto posting the pics on doki.roki_ and Izuku leaving a comment on the post reviewing the product as chu_zuimu which brands were quite ecstatic for them to do as it meant they could advertise their products as the perfect thing for friends to do together which ended up boosting their sales in the long run.
And that was pretty much how Izuku had accidentally started Shouto’s side gig as one of herogram’s top “girlfriend” influencer accounts.