Chapter 302

The Wrong Way To Put Out A Fire, Part 2 (の) is the three hundred and second chapter of Kohei Horikoshi's My Hero Academia.

Summary
After Toya's attempted attack on the young Shoto, Enji choses to seclude Shoto from his siblings, and since he was going to be busy with work he chose to hire some help. He also tells Rei to keep her eyes on Toya at all times. Rei tells him that Toya just wants him to notice him, but Enji says that all he can show anyone is the world of heroes. Rei, however, accuses Enji of merely running away.

Five years later, Fuyumi and Natsuo ask Toya to play with them outside. Shoto sees them but Enji pulls him away, telling him that his siblings live in a different world than him. Shoto asks to play with them just once, but Enji refuses, telling him they will work on his output capacity. Outside, Toya heard them and started to grow jealous. One night, he talks to a sleeping Natsuo, telling him that he acknowledges it was his fault for attacking Shoto, who did nothing wrong, but he adds that Enji is to blame as well by not paying attention to the three of them because they are "failed creations" and asking if this is what modern day Heroes do with their kids. Natsuo drowsily tells Toya to bother Fuyumi about this stuff, causing Toya to become upset that Natsuo is ignoring him. He tells Natsuo that he chose to talk to him because he believed he was the only one who understood him, calling his mother and sister useless.

One day, Rei catches Toya preparing to go out into the mountain and she asks why he won't play with his classmates. Toya declares he doesn't need friends because he lives in a different world than them. Rei asks Toya if he even wants to be a Hero, and as his mother, it looks like to her that he is suffocating because of Enji. She tells him that there are other paths and options for him and to look beyond his father, positive he will become the man he wants to become. Toya angrily asks what she knows and where she got that advice, causing Rei to freeze in shock at his intensity. He tells her that her family was poor, which is why they sold her off to Enji, so to him, she is just as guilty as him for why he was born too.

During the winter season, Toya's body developed, and his fire's color changed from red to blue. He realized his fire is linked to his feelings and gets excited at the thought of Enji seeing him. He starts crying saying he doesn't know why he does when he gets worked up. Shortly afterwards, Toya approaches Enji and tells him to come to Sekoto Peak on his next day off so he can show off his progress to him. Enji lifts up his shirt and sees his burn scars, angry that he had been hiding them on purpose. Toya starts tearing up telling Enji that what he can do now is really cool and perhaps he will be as awesome as Shoto and stronger than All Might one day, and then he will have to give him respect and be happy he made him. Frustrated, he takes his anger out on Rei for not stopping Toya, causing Shoto to yell at him to not bully her while his siblings listen on and Enji tells Shoto to stay out of it. Rei admits internally that she had limited options but she made her choice and walked on it, and as much as she wanted to keep smiling, she couldn't, and she confesses to Enji that she can't stop him.

In the present, Rei asks Enji why he didn't go to Sekoto Peak, and Enji answers that he thought it would only throw fuel onto his fire, but in truth, he just didn't know what to say to him. Rei confesses that she too didn't know what to say to him either. In the Villain hideout, Dabi thinks back to when he lost control of his fire, engulfing the entirety of himself and the mountains in flames, but he still blames Enji since he only ever taught him how to increase his output.

Enji tells his family that he should have just given up everything that day, but since he felt he killed Toya, he felt he had no choice but to keep moving forward with Shoto, no matter the cost. Rei reveals that after Toya disappeared, he got worse, up to the point she couldn't look at him anymore and started to see his face in her children. Fuyumi confesses she knew of their problems but she was too scared to intervene, which is why she tried to fix things just to keep up appearances. Natsuo calls him the root of all their problems, but admits that if he had more courage, he could have knocked some sense into Enji to talk with Toya seriously and then Dabi would never have been born and they could have had a more healthy familiar relationship.

Rei tells Enji that he isn't the only one responsible for Toya's fate, that all of them need to take responsibility for what comes next, and even though his heart is broken, they will help him get back on his feet because he has no choice but to fight Dabi. A stunned Enji asks if he is talking to his wife right now, and after a moment of silence, Rei says Shoto had suffered more than them and had every right to resent her, yet he called her his "Mom" again. He also made friends at U.A. and now he was the one saving them all right now; she calls Shoto their family's Hero.

Shoto weakly tells Enji that he talked with the others before they came to see him because he thought initially he wouldn't be able to fight and it would be all up to him, but he was wrong. He extends his hand to his crying father and tells him to stand up after he finishes grieving because all of them need to stop Dabi together.

Outside the room, Hawks and Best Jeanist are revealed to be listening, and are pleased by the results.

Chapter Notes

 * After Shoto was born and started showing signs of manifesting a hybridized-Quirk, Enji made the decision to keep his son isolated from his siblings. He also asks Rei to keep a close eye on Toya.
 * Once Shoto turned five years old, Enji started training him in isolation while his brothers and sister grew up together.
 * Toya, noticing this, grew jealous of the fact that his dad stop training with him in favor of Shoto. He also started resenting his mother for having children since his father viewed them as failed creations.
 * Attempting to win back his father's attention, Toya started training in the mountains to increase his firepower, and started isolating himself from his friends and other family members. Rei tries to tell him that he doesn't have to force himself to become a hero, but he responds by mentioning her Quirk Marriage.
 * During his training, Toya learns that the intensity of his flames can be influenced by his emotional state. His physical state also changed, suddenly growing a lot taller after being born premature. His fire soon changed from red to blue.
 * As a result of change in his firepower, Toya's burns became much more intense, and started coating entire portions of his body. Enji takes his anger out on Rei out of frustration for not keeping an eye on Toya's behavior, Shoto shouts at his dad for hurting his mom, and Natsuo and Fuyumi silently cower in fear.
 * After that incident, Toya runs into the mountains and starts crying. Eventually, his flames ignite so intensely that it engulfs his body and lights the surrounding forest on fire, starting the event that caused the boy's presumed death. In the present, Rei asks her husband why he didn't chase after Toya. Enji says that at the time, he didn't know how to respond to him, with Rei saying she felt the same.
 * After Toya's disappearance, Enji put all his energy into Shoto as a way to salvage his "work", and this caused his behavior to worsen. While Enji was the root of his family's issues, the rest of the family admit they played a part in Toya's turn to villainy. Rei, for her deteriorating mental state, Fuyumi, for being too scared to intervene, and Natsuo, for not being more upfront to his dad about his behavior.
 * Rei says that she and her family need to make an effort into what happens going forward, and says that her husband has to be the one to confront Dabi, as Shoto fought his brother and lost, and was paving the way for his family to grow for the better.
 * Prior to leaving the hospital, Hawks and Best Jeanist listened in on the Todoroki Family's conversation.