Chapter Text
Izuku Midoriya wasn’t always such a troubled teenager.
There was a time when everything about him was soft.
When he was barely two—maybe three—he would sit far too close to the television, small knees tucked awkwardly beneath him, one sock half-slipped off his heel. The glow of the screen painted his cheeks in flickering colors—blues, golds, violent flashes of red—and his wide eyes reflected it all back, brighter than the display itself. He didn’t understand what he was watching. Not really. Not yet.
But he felt it.
The crackle of energy.
The rush of movement.
The way the air seemed to bend around the people on screen.
His tiny fingers would curl into the fabric of his shirt, knuckles dimpling with effort, as if he could grab hold of whatever it was that made those people different. Special. Important.
Back then, quirks weren’t even a word in his vocabulary. They were just… magic.
Something in his chest would flutter when he watched them—an almost painful kind of excitement, like his ribs were too small to contain it. His breath would hitch at the wrong times, coming out in uneven little puffs, and sometimes he’d lean forward so far he’d nearly tip over, catching himself with clumsy hands against the floor.
“Mama! Look—look!” he’d call, his voice still rounded with baby softness, pointing at the screen even when the moment had already passed. Even when there was nothing there anymore.
And still, he smiled.
It was a bright, open thing. The kind of smile that didn’t hesitate. Didn’t question. Didn’t know how.
His mother would watch him from the doorway sometimes, unnoticed. The house would be quiet except for the distant hum of appliances and the muffled chaos of whatever hero video he’d managed to find. She’d press her hand lightly to the frame, fingers tapping once—twice—like she wanted to say something but couldn’t quite place the words.
Because even then… there was something about it.
The way he watched.
Not like other children, who laughed and clapped and moved on.
Not like something fleeting.
No—he studied it.
Even at that age, his gaze lingered just a second too long. His head would tilt, ever so slightly, like he was trying to understand something deeper than what was being shown. Like he was already searching for patterns, for meaning, for a place to fit himself into a world that hadn’t asked him to yet.
The screen would go dark eventually.
It always did.
And in that brief moment—just before he turned away—his reflection would stare back at him. Small. Still. Empty-handed.
He never seemed to notice it.
Not yet.
Not until his classmates all had theirs.
At first, it was subtle.
A flicker of light dancing between a boy’s fingers during recess. A girl laughing as something small and metallic trembled toward her open palm. The teacher pausing—just for a moment too long—before smiling a little too tightly and praising them. Encouraging them.
Encouraging everyone.
Except Izuku Midoriya.
He didn’t understand it right away. Not fully. He would watch from a step behind, shoes scuffing faintly against the classroom floor as he leaned forward just enough to see, but never enough to be seen. His hands stayed at his sides, fingers twitching once—twice—before curling inward, nails pressing soft crescents into his palms.
He tried, of course.
At home, mostly.
Late in the evening, when the air felt heavier and quieter, like the world had momentarily stopped watching. He would stand in the middle of his room, feet planted too firmly for someone so small, and squeeze his eyes shut until faint colors bloomed behind his eyelids. His breathing would grow uneven—sharp inhales, slow, trembling exhales—as he focused on his hands.
“Come on…” he’d whisper, voice barely there, like saying it too loud might scare it away. “Please…”
Nothing ever came.
Not even a flicker.
And still, he kept trying.
By the time he turned five, the silence of it had started to feel… loud.
So his mother took him to the doctor.
The office smelled too clean. Sharp, artificial—like something trying to hide what it really was. The lights above hummed faintly, a low, constant buzz that pressed into the back of his skull. Izuku Midoriya sat on the edge of the examination table, legs swinging slightly, the paper beneath him crinkling with every small movement.
He didn’t like that sound.
It was too fragile.
His mother stood close—too close—her hands clasped together so tightly her knuckles had turned pale. Every few seconds, her thumb would drag nervously over her skin, again and again, like she was trying to ground herself in something real.
“It’s probably just late,” she said, though her voice didn’t quite reach the end of the sentence. It thinned out, fraying at the edges. “Some kids develop later, right?”
The doctor didn’t answer right away.
Instead, there was the soft shuffle of papers. The quiet click of something being set down. A breath—measured, careful.
Too careful.
And in that space, something shifted.
It was small. Almost nothing.
But it was there.
When the words finally came, they didn’t sound loud.
They weren’t shouted. They weren’t harsh.
They were… gentle.
And that made it worse.
“I’m afraid… your son doesn’t have a quirk.”
For a second—just a second—nothing moved.
The air stilled. Completely. Like the room itself had stopped breathing.
Then—
A drop.
Not a sound, not exactly. Not something anyone could point to.
But it felt like one.
Like something fragile had fallen from very high up and shattered somewhere deep, deep below.
His mother inhaled sharply, the sound catching halfway up her throat, splintering into something uneven. Her hands trembled—not violently, not dramatically—but in small, relentless tremors she couldn’t quite control.
And Izuku Midoriya…
He didn’t cry.
Not immediately.
He just… blinked.
Once.
Slowly.
Like he hadn’t understood.
Like his mind was trying—desperately—to rearrange the words into something else. Something softer. Something temporary.
“No quirk?” he repeated, quiet, the syllables careful, like they might break if he handled them wrong.
The doctor said something else after that. Something explanatory. Something clinical.
But it didn’t matter.
Because it spread.
That feeling.
It moved through the room in a way that wasn’t visible but was undeniable. It pressed into the walls, sank into the floor, clung to the edges of posters and curled into the corners where light didn’t quite reach. It echoed—not in sound, but in weight.
His mother felt it.
God, she felt it.
Like something had cracked open right in front of her, and there was nothing she could do but watch the pieces fall. She could feel it in her chest, sharp and heavy all at once, like breathing had suddenly become something she had to remember how to do.
“Izuku—” she started, her voice trembling, reaching for him—
But he had already lowered his gaze.
His small hands rested in his lap, unnaturally still now. No twitching. No movement. Just… stillness.
Like he was waiting.
For something to correct itself.
For something to start.
It never did.
He never got a day of peace after that.
It didn’t happen all at once.
At first, it was just a pause.
A fraction of a second too long when Katsuki Bakugo looked at him. A tilt of the head. A narrowing of the eyes, like he was trying to figure something out—and didn’t like the answer he was coming to.
Back then, Izuku Midoriya didn’t recognize it for what it was.
He still followed him around.
Still lingered just a step behind, careful not to get in the way, careful not to breathe too loudly when Katsuki showed off the small, crackling bursts in his palms. There was always that sharp scent in the air afterward—faintly metallic, like something had burned just out of sight—and Izuku would inhale it without thinking, like it was something sacred.
“Kacchan, that was amazing,” he’d say, voice soft but bright, the words tumbling over themselves in their rush to be heard. “Did it hurt? How does it feel? Do you think it’ll get stronger?”
Too many questions.
Too much.
Katsuki would click his tongue, shoulders tightening, something restless and irritated flickering across his expression. His hand would twitch—just slightly—as if resisting the urge to do something with it.
“Of course it’ll get stronger,” he’d snap, like it was obvious. Like it was stupid to even ask. “Don’t you get it? I’m gonna be the best.”
Izuku would nod immediately.
Too quickly.
“Yeah—yeah, you will,” he’d agree, a smile stretching across his face, just a little too wide, just a little too eager. “I know you will, Kacchan.”
And for a moment—just a moment—it almost felt like before.
But then…
The word started appearing.
Quiet at first. Careless.
“Deku.”
It slipped out one afternoon, tossed over a shoulder like it didn’t matter. Like it was nothing.
Izuku blinked when he heard it, the name landing awkwardly in his chest, unfamiliar and heavy all at once.
“Deku?” he repeated, unsure, a small laugh trying to form at the edges of his voice. “What does that—”
“It means you’re useless,” Katsuki Bakugo cut in, not even looking at him this time.
The words were flat.
Simple.
Certain.
And something about that certainty made them sink deeper than they should have.
“Oh.”
That was all Izuku said.
Just—oh.
But his smile didn’t quite disappear. It just… faltered. Like it had lost its balance and didn’t know how to recover. The corners of his mouth twitched, unsure whether to lift or fall, until they settled somewhere in between.
“...That’s kind of mean, Kacchan,” he added, softer now, like he was trying to smooth something over. Fix something that hadn’t broken yet. Not fully.
Katsuki scoffed.
“If it’s true, it’s not mean.”
And that was it.
That was the moment it changed.
Not loudly. Not dramatically.
Just a shift.
After that, the name spread.
It echoed through the classroom, picked up by voices that didn’t understand it, didn’t question it—just repeated it because it was easy. Because it was given to them.
“Deku.”
“Hey, Deku.”
“Move, Deku.”
Each time, it sounded a little different. Some laughed when they said it. Some didn’t. Some said it without thinking at all.
But it always meant the same thing.
Useless.
Izuku would flinch at first. Just barely—just a small tightening of his shoulders, a quick intake of breath like he’d been tapped somewhere tender. His fingers would twitch at his sides, curling in, then forcing themselves to relax.
Eventually… even that stopped.
He still followed Katsuki.
Still called him “Kacchan,” like nothing had changed, like the word didn’t taste different in his mouth now. Like it didn’t come out a little quieter each time.
Because somewhere in his chest—beneath the hurt, beneath the confusion, beneath the slow, creeping realization of what he was becoming in everyone else’s eyes—
He still admired him.
Still looked at him like something bright.
Even when that brightness burned.
And maybe that was the worst part.
Not the name.
Not the laughter.
Not even the way the world seemed to close in around him, smaller and smaller with every passing day.
But the fact that every time someone said “Deku”—
His head still turned.
Like he was waiting for it to mean something else.
However, that was when it happened.
Middle school didn’t feel like a fresh start.
It should have. New building. New hallways that smelled faintly of floor polish and something older underneath—something damp that never quite went away. New voices, louder, rougher, already settled into their places like he was the only one still searching for his.
But Izuku Midoriya carried everything with him.
It clung to him.
In the way he walked—shoulders slightly drawn in, like he was trying to make himself narrower than he was. In the way his eyes flickered across a room before he fully entered it, mapping exits, empty desks, spaces where he could exist without being noticed.
And still…
“Deku.”
The name found him anyway.
It always did.
The first few days blurred together—voices, introductions, the scrape of chairs against tile floors, chalk dust floating lazily in the air as teachers wrote things no one really listened to. The classroom windows let in too much light, harsh and exposing, leaving nowhere to hide.
That’s when he noticed it.
At first, it was just a feeling.
A weight.
Not heavy—not obvious—but present. Like something brushing just along the edge of his awareness, too soft to name, too persistent to ignore. It made the back of his neck prickle sometimes, a faint, crawling sensation that would fade the moment he tried to focus on it.
Then it became… clearer.
A hand on his shoulder.
Light. Brief.
Too brief to call out.
“Midoriya,” the teacher would say, voice smooth in a way that didn’t quite match the rest of him. “Pay attention.”
The touch lingered half a second longer than it needed to.
Just enough to notice.
Not enough to prove anything.
Izuku would stiffen—just slightly—his breath catching before he forced it back to normal. “S-sorry,” he’d mumble, eyes dropping immediately to his desk, to the faint scratches carved into the surface by students who came before him.
It happened again.
And again.
Each time, small.
Almost nothing.
A hand brushing his back as the teacher walked past. Fingers grazing the edge of his arm when handing back papers, sliding just a fraction too slow. The teacher’s voice dipping—not louder, not quieter—but different when he spoke directly to him.
“Good work, Midoriya.”
There was something in it.
Something that didn’t belong.
And then… the staring.
Izuku didn’t notice it right away.
Not consciously.
But sometimes, when he looked up—just for a second, just to check the board or glance around the room—he’d catch it. That gaze. Fixed. Unmoving. Too focused.
It didn’t look like the way teachers usually looked at students.
It wasn’t distracted. It wasn’t bored.
It was… intent.
Like he was being studied.
Like something about him had been singled out and set aside from everything else.
The first time their eyes properly met, Izuku froze.
Just for a second.
Something cold slid down his spine, quick and sharp, like instinct trying to speak up—but it faded just as quickly as it came, swallowed by something warmer. Something unfamiliar.
Attention.
Real attention.
Not the kind that came with laughter or mockery. Not the kind that dragged his name—Deku—through the dirt until it didn’t feel like his anymore.
This was different.
“See me after class,” the teacher said one day, casually, like it meant nothing.
Izuku’s heart jumped.
Just a little.
“Y-yes, sir,” he replied, too fast, the words tripping over each other.
After class, the room felt bigger.
Empty in a way that echoed.
The hum of the lights seemed louder without the noise of other students to bury it. The teacher stood near the desk, posture relaxed, eyes settling on him the moment the last student slipped out the door.
“There you are,” he said.
There was a smile.
It didn’t reach his eyes.
Izuku stepped closer, careful, hesitant, his shoes making soft, uneven sounds against the floor. His hands hovered awkwardly at his sides before clasping together, fingers fidgeting with the hem of his sleeve.
“You… needed me?” he asked.
The teacher’s gaze lingered again.
Slow.
Unhurried.
“Yes,” he said, voice lower now, smoother, like it was meant to settle over something instead of cut through it. “I’ve been noticing you.”
Something in Izuku’s chest tightened.
Not painfully.
Not yet.
Just… tight.
“Y-you have?” he said, and there was something fragile in his voice now. Something hopeful, despite everything.
Because no one noticed him.
Not like this.
Not without a reason to laugh.
The teacher took a step closer.
Not enough to alarm.
Just enough to close the space.
“You’re different from the others,” he continued, eyes never leaving him. “Quieter. More… attentive.”
His hand lifted.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
It came to rest on Izuku’s shoulder again.
This time, it didn’t move away.
And something—something very small, very quiet—shifted in the air.
A warning.
A whisper of wrongness curling at the edges of the moment.
But Izuku didn’t step back.
Didn’t pull away.
Because that warmth in his chest—the one that came from being seen, from being singled out for something other than failure, other than weakness—
It drowned it out.
“Th-thank you,” he said, barely above a whisper.
The teacher’s smile sharpened.
Just slightly.
And Izuku…
Izuku didn’t notice.
Not really.
After all—
This was the first time anyone, aside from his mother, had looked at him like he was worth something.
Even if, somewhere deep beneath that fragile, desperate relief—
Something inside him was already beginning to understand that it wasn’t the right kind of attention at all.
It became a routine.
And routines have a way of making things feel… safe.
For Izuku Midoriya, that was the most important part.
Every afternoon, the classroom would slowly empty, chairs scraping, voices fading into the hallway until only the hum of the lights remained. The silence that followed wasn’t empty to him—it was full. Full of possibility. Full of something that felt, for once, like it belonged to him.
He would stay behind.
At first, it was just for a few minutes.
Then longer.
Then long enough that the janitor began to glance in with mild curiosity before continuing on his way.
He’d sit at the front desk, feet not quite touching the floor, notebook open in front of him. Pages filled with careful handwriting—names, abilities, observations, diagrams copied from videos and hero interviews. His pencil would move quickly, almost frantically at times, as if the thoughts in his head couldn’t wait their turn.
“I saw this one video where Eraser Head cancels quirks instantly, but I think it’s based on eye contact duration, because—”
He’d pause, barely taking a breath.
“—so if someone avoids his gaze, maybe it changes how effective it is, right? Or maybe it doesn’t, but—”
He kept going.
And every time, Heiou Kurokawa would listen.
Not in the distracted way most adults did when a child spoke too much.
Not glancing at a phone. Not checking the time. Not interrupting mid-sentence.
He would face him fully.
Elbows resting lightly on the desk, fingers loosely interlaced, head tilted just enough to signal attention. His eyes stayed on Izuku’s face, tracking every expression, every shift in tone, every moment where excitement crept into his voice and made his words come faster.
“Go on,” he would say at times, when Izuku hesitated.
Or:
“Why do you think that matters?”
Simple questions.
But they kept Izuku talking.
Kept him thinking.
Kept him feeling like what he said had weight.
And that feeling…
It was addictive.
Warm.
Like something had finally wrapped around the empty space inside his chest and filled it with something steady. Something constant.
For the first time in a long time, he didn’t feel like he was speaking into nothing.
He brought extra notebooks one day.
Kurokawa had given them to him.
Plain covers. Clean pages. No labels. “For your observations,” he had said, placing them gently on the desk as if they mattered. As if he mattered.
Izuku had stared at them for a long moment before taking them with both hands.
“R-really… for me?”
Kurokawa had nodded.
“Use them well.”
And he did.
Every page became a collection of everything he could gather about heroes—their quirks, their movements, their weaknesses, patterns he noticed, small details others overlooked. His writing grew more confident over time, the lines less shaky, the structure more organized.
He wanted to be useful.
Even if he wasn’t born with anything.
Even if he had to build it all from scratch.
When he talked, he leaned forward slightly, eyes bright, hands moving as he explained something he had been thinking about all night. His voice would rise and fall with his excitement, sometimes breaking into quick, breathy bursts when he got carried away.
Kurokawa never stopped him.
That was the part Izuku noticed most.
He listened.
Always.
And that attention—focused, uninterrupted—made Izuku feel seen in a way he had never experienced before.
It made the world feel… smaller.
Contained.
Manageable.
But not everything settled so easily into that sense of comfort.
There were moments.
Small ones.
Almost easy to dismiss if he chose to.
A hand resting on his shoulder longer than expected during a conversation. Fingers that didn’t immediately withdraw after a point was made. A touch that remained present—not moving, not pressing, just… there.
Consistent.
Unchanging.
Izuku would notice it.
At first, he told himself it was nothing.
People touched shoulders all the time. Teachers guided students. It was normal.
Wasn’t it?
But sometimes, his posture would stiffen without him meaning to. His sentences would slow for just a fraction of a second before continuing, his hand tightening slightly around his pen as his thoughts briefly slipped out of sync.
And then he would correct himself.
Force the feeling away.
Because the alternative was harder.
The alternative meant questioning something that had become… important.
And he didn’t want to lose that.
Not this.
Not the only place where he was allowed to talk without being laughed at.
Not the only person who listened without interruption.
So he stayed.
He kept talking.
Kept sharing.
Kept filling the space between them with words, as if enough of them could anchor the feeling in place and make it permanent.
Even when, deep down, something quiet and uncertain lingered at the edges of his thoughts—something that didn’t quite match the warmth he felt when he walked into that room.
Something that hadn’t been given a name yet.
Something he chose, for now, not to examine too closely.
Because if he did…
He might have to admit that not every kind of attention meant the same thing.
However, once the first grading period was over, everything began to unravel.
It wasn’t immediate. Not at first.
The change came in small fragments—things that didn’t fully register until later, when they began to connect into something that could no longer be ignored.
That day in particular… stayed with him.
Not in clear images.
Not in a way he could replay cleanly in his mind.
But in fragments.
A tightening in his chest the moment he realized the room felt different than usual. The way the door had seemed heavier when it closed behind him. The way silence didn’t feel comfortable anymore—it felt… contained.
And then, something shifted.
Something crossed a line that shouldn’t have been crossed.
Izuku Midoriya froze.
His body reacted before his mind could catch up—muscles locking, breath catching, thoughts scattering in too many directions at once. It wasn’t a decision. It wasn’t a choice. It was instinct.
Fight, flight… or freeze.
And he didn’t move.
The moment passed, but it left something behind.
Not just fear—but confusion layered over it. His mind trying to make sense of what had happened, trying to minimize it, to file it away as something that could be explained, something that didn’t need to be confronted.
Because confronting it meant acknowledging it.
And acknowledging it meant risking everything he had started to rely on.
When he got home, the house was quiet.
Too quiet.
The kind of quiet that presses gently against your ears and makes your thoughts louder than they should be. The sky outside had already begun to dim, the orange of sunset bleeding through the windows in long, stretched shadows that crept across the floor.
He didn’t call out.
Didn’t turn on the lights right away.
He just stood there for a moment, shoes still on, backpack slipping slightly from one shoulder, his grip tightening around the strap until his knuckles paled.
Then he moved.
Slowly.
Mechanically.
Straight to the bathroom.
The shower turned on with a steady rush, steam beginning to fill the small space as the mirror fogged over, blurring his reflection until it was barely recognizable.
He stepped in.
The water was hot—almost too hot at first—and it struck his skin in a sharp, immediate wave that made him flinch. His hands moved without thinking, adjusting the temperature, then resting against the tiled wall for balance.
And then… stillness.
At first, he just stood there.
Letting the water run over him.
But it wasn’t enough.
His breathing became uneven, shallow at the edges, as his thoughts refused to stay quiet. They circled back again and again, replaying sensations rather than clear memories—feelings without clean shapes to hold onto.
His hands lifted.
Started scrubbing.
Not gently.
Not carefully.
Rougher than necessary, like he was trying to erase something he couldn’t see but could still feel. His fingers pressed into his skin, moving in repetitive motions as if persistence alone could undo what had happened.
But it didn’t.
The feeling stayed.
No matter how long the water ran.
No matter how many times he changed where he stood under the stream.
His shoulders began to shake—not at first, but gradually, like something inside him was losing its ability to stay contained. His breath hitched, then broke, slipping into uneven sobs that echoed faintly off the tile walls.
He pressed a hand to his mouth.
Trying to quiet himself.
Trying not to make it real.
Because if he let it fully exist—if he gave it a name, a shape, a place in his mind—then he would have to decide what to do with it.
And he wasn’t ready for that.
So instead, he stood there.
Under the water.
Holding himself together in pieces.
Waiting for the feeling to pass.
Izuku tried to avoid his teacher after that. He truly did.
At first, it was small things—lingering a little longer in the hallway before class ended, taking slower routes between rooms, keeping his head down and his pace steady so he wouldn’t draw attention. He would sit farther back than usual, hands folded tightly in his lap, eyes fixed on the edge of his desk as if looking anywhere else might somehow invite the wrong kind of notice again. But avoidance, he learned quickly, didn’t matter when someone already knew how to find you.
When he was told to stay after class, there was no confusion.
No hesitation.
No hope that it might be about anything else.
It was a quiet moment when the last of the students left, chairs scraping softly, voices fading into the hallway until the door clicked shut and the room settled into a heavy silence. That silence felt different now. Not calm. Not peaceful. Just… empty in a way that made every small sound seem louder than it should have been.
“Midoriya, I see your grades have… begun to slip.”
The voice cut through the quiet, smooth and measured, like it always had been.
But to Izuku, it no longer sounded the same.
Izuku Midoriya flinched at the sound, his shoulders tightening almost imperceptibly as his head lowered further, eyes dropping to the floor as if that alone could make him smaller, less noticeable, less present in the room. His hands curled into his pockets, fingers gripping the fabric inside as though anchoring himself to something tangible might keep his thoughts from spiraling.
“S-Sorry… Sensei,” he said quietly, the words coming out thinner than he intended. “I’ve been… distracted.”
The lie hung in the air for only a second before it was met with a small, dismissive scoff.
Not loud.
Not angry.
Worse—casual.
He knew he wasn’t a good liar. He had always been too transparent, too honest in the way his voice wavered or his eyes shifted. But this wasn’t just about being believable. It was about being safe. And even that small attempt felt fragile, like it could break under the slightest pressure.
Footsteps followed.
Slow.
Measured.
Each one deliberate enough to be heard clearly across the room, growing closer in a way that made the space feel smaller with every step. Izuku didn’t look up. He didn’t need to. His body already reacted—his breath tightening, his posture stiffening, his pulse quickening in a way he couldn’t control.
“I know you would never dare to report me, Midoriya.”
The words landed softly.
But they carried weight.
A kind of certainty that didn’t need to be explained.
His gut tightened instantly, a cold, sinking feeling spreading through his chest as the distance between them closed. It wasn’t just the words—it was the understanding behind them. The implication that the situation was already seen, already contained, already understood in a way that left no room for escape without consequence.
“Would you, Deku?”
The nickname hit differently now.
It wasn’t the same as before—not the careless teasing of classmates, not the dismissive shorthand he had grown used to hearing in passing. This time, it carried something sharper. Something that felt less like a name and more like a reminder of where he stood in someone else’s perception of him.
Useless. Quiet. Easy to overlook. Easy to control.
His stomach dropped.
Tears gathered in his eyes before he could stop them, blurring his vision as his throat tightened painfully. His breathing became uneven, caught somewhere between panic and restraint, as his mind struggled to reconcile the contradiction sitting in front of him.
Because this wasn’t just any adult.
This was the person who had, for months, treated him differently from everyone else.
The one who listened when he spoke.
The one who encouraged his interests.
The one who made him feel, even briefly, like he had value.
That trust didn’t disappear easily.
It didn’t break cleanly.
Instead, it twisted.
It made the fear harder to accept, because accepting it meant acknowledging that something he had relied on—something that had felt safe—was never truly safe to begin with.
And in that moment, standing there with his head lowered and his hands still clenched tightly inside his pockets, Izuku didn’t move.
Not because he didn’t want to.
But because everything inside him had already frozen in place, caught between what he knew and what he didn’t want to believe, unable to choose a direction that wouldn’t cost him something he wasn’t ready to lose.
For the next few months, everything became… structured around avoidance and endurance.
Three times a week, sometimes more, Izuku Midoriya would find himself staying behind after the final bell, each time with that same tight feeling settling in his chest long before the classroom emptied. He learned how to anticipate it—the tone in the teacher’s voice when class ended, the way his name was called just slightly differently than everyone else’s, the subtle shift in the air that signaled he was expected to remain.
Outwardly, nothing changed.
The room still looked like a classroom. The same desks. The same chalkboard. The same quiet hum of the lights overhead. But to Izuku, it no longer felt like a place of learning. It felt contained. Predictable in a way that removed any sense of control he might have had.
He adapted in small ways.
He stopped speaking as much. Stopped volunteering thoughts unless directly asked. His notebook entries became more rushed, more mechanical—less about curiosity and more about occupying his mind with something that felt safer than silence. Even his posture changed, shoulders more guarded, movements more careful, like he was constantly aware of where he was in the space and how to exist within it without drawing unnecessary attention.
Internally, he knew something was wrong.
But acknowledging it fully meant confronting the fact that he had been putting himself in a situation that wasn’t safe, repeatedly, over and over again. And that realization came with its own kind of fear—one that made it easier to keep going than to stop.
Until the day everything broke.
Near the end of the school year, the pattern shifted.
It wasn’t something Izuku immediately recognized, but the atmosphere in the room felt… different. The usual rhythm was off. The expectation that had been silently understood between them no longer matched the teacher’s behavior. There was urgency now. Impatience. A kind of instability that hadn’t been there before.
And that instability led to a mistake.
The door wasn’t locked.
The timing wasn’t right.
The precautions that had once been taken without thought were skipped, overlooked in a moment that lacked the usual control.
That was when a student walked in.
The interruption was abrupt. The door opening too quickly, the sound of it not quite aligning with the quiet that had filled the room moments before. Books slipped from a student’s hands, hitting the floor in a scattered, echoing clatter that seemed far too loud for the space.
For a split second, everything froze.
The student’s eyes widened.
Confusion hit first—trying to process what they were seeing, trying to make sense of a scene that didn’t belong in a classroom, that didn’t belong anywhere a school was supposed to be.
Then realization.
And with it—shock.
Izuku Midoriya was visibly shaken, his face pale, tears already present, his breathing uneven in a way that suggested something deeply wrong had just occurred. His posture was collapsed inward, protective, his hands trembling as he struggled to steady himself. The student looked down, noticing the blood that was pooling where the two bodies were conjoined. Midoriya's blood. Blood from somewhere that no 12-year-old boy should have blood coming from.
And then the student saw the teacher.
The pieces connected instantly.
No hesitation. No second guessing. No confusion left to linger.
The books on the floor were forgotten.
The door remained open.
And just as quickly as they had entered—
They turned and ran.
Footsteps echoed down the hallway, fast and urgent, growing louder as they accelerated toward the office. The sound carried a sense of alarm that didn’t need to be explained, because anyone who heard it would understand that something had gone seriously wrong.
Back in the classroom, silence returned.
But it wasn’t the same silence as before.
This one was heavy, final. Like something irreversible had just been set into motion.
Everything moved too quickly after that.
There wasn’t time for closure. No final conversation. No clean explanation that would neatly organize itself into something understandable. One day the routine existed, and the next it was gone—cut off abruptly, leaving behind a silence that felt heavier than the situation ever had while it was ongoing.
Izuku Midoriya was pulled out of school before the final month could even begin.
The hallway he had walked through hundreds of times before now felt unfamiliar. Teachers avoided his eyes in a way that was subtle but noticeable if you had learned how to read small things. Conversations paused when he passed. Whispers lowered. Not out of cruelty—but out of uncertainty, discomfort, and the quiet awareness that something serious had happened, even if they didn’t know the details.
The teacher was gone.
“Suddenly,” they said.
A replacement was announced with little explanation, and most of the students accepted it without question. For them, it was just a change in schedule, a name swapped on the board, another adjustment in a school year that was already close to ending.
For Izuku, it wasn’t that simple.
At home, the weight of it shifted into something more personal.
His mother’s reactions came first—shock, confusion, then a deep, quiet guilt that she tried, unsuccessfully, to hide. She replayed moments in her mind that no one else could see, searching for signs she might have missed, moments she might have interpreted differently. It manifested in small things: the way she watched him more closely, the way her voice softened when she spoke to him, the way she hesitated before asking simple questions as if she feared saying the wrong thing.
“I should have noticed,” she said one evening, her voice barely above a whisper, her hands clasped tightly together.
Izuku shook his head immediately.
“No,” he replied, quick and certain in a way that cut through her self-blame. “It’s not your fault.”
And he meant it.
Truly.
Because from his perspective, she had been outside of all of it. She hadn’t been in the classroom. She hadn’t seen the patterns. She hadn’t been given the chance to understand what was happening. There was no clear path where this could have reasonably been her responsibility.
But even as he reassured her, something inside him remained unresolved.
Because the absence didn’t feel clean.
It didn’t feel like something that had simply been removed and replaced.
It felt… complicated.
There were moments—quiet, private moments—where his thoughts would drift back. Not to the end, not to the discovery, but to the beginning. To the earlier days, when things had felt different. When attention had been something he didn’t have to question. When someone had listened to him speak with focus that made him feel seen in a way he hadn’t experienced elsewhere.
And in those moments, he would hesitate.
Not because he wanted things to go back.
But because his mind struggled to separate the two versions of the same person.
The one who had offered him attention.
And the one who had violated his trust.
Those two realities didn’t reconcile easily.
They clashed.
And that clash left him with a kind of emptiness that wasn’t just about loss—it was about confusion, about trying to understand how something that had felt so meaningful could also have been so harmful.
Sometimes, late at night, he would sit quietly in his room, hands resting loosely in his lap, staring at nothing in particular as his thoughts looped in slow, uneven cycles. His expression would go blank—not calm, not peaceful—just… distant. Like he was trying to process something too large to fit neatly into his understanding of the world.
He didn’t miss what happened.
He knew that.
But he did struggle with what came before it.
Because for a long time, that attention had felt like the only place where he belonged.
And losing that—while also realizing the truth of what it really was—left him with something harder to define than grief.
It left him with a sense of loss that had nowhere to settle.
----------
Izuku couldn’t sleep over the summer.
Night after night stretched long and thin, the hours passing without rest, his mind refusing to settle into anything resembling peace. When he closed his eyes, it wasn’t darkness that greeted him—it was fragments. Sounds. Sensations. Moments that didn’t line up cleanly, that refused to organize themselves into something he could fully understand or put away.
So he stayed awake.
Staring at the ceiling.
Listening to the quiet hum of the house.
Barely moving.
Days began to blur together. Morning into afternoon into night, each one indistinguishable from the last. He didn’t go out. Didn’t seek out distractions. Even small things—reading, watching videos, writing—felt distant, as if they required more effort than he could manage.
He withdrew.
Even when guests came over—when Mitsuki Bakugo brought her family by for dinner—Izuku struggled to bring himself into the room. He knew them. Trusted them. Had grown up around them. But something in him hesitated at the idea of being perceived again, of stepping into a space where attention might land on him unexpectedly.
He stayed in his room for a while, listening to the muffled voices downstairs, the faint clatter of dishes, the familiar rhythm of people interacting without him. When he finally did come down, it was late, his movements quiet, his presence almost tentative.
The familiarity was there.
But it didn’t reach him the way it used to.
And then—
He saw him.
Katsuki Bakugo.
For the first time in a year, truly seeing him felt… different.
Not the passing glimpses in hallways. Not the brief moments where their eyes almost met before someone shoved past or pulled him away. This was real. Present. A shared space where neither of them could avoid the fact that the other existed in front of them.
Katsuki looked the same.
Stronger, maybe. Sharper in presence. More grounded in the way he carried himself, like he had fully settled into who he was becoming. His expression still held that familiar intensity, that edge that made people hesitate before speaking to him.
Izuku noticed all of it at once.
But he didn’t move closer.
Didn’t call out.
Didn’t smile the way he used to.
Instead, he stood at the edge of the room, uncertain, his posture subtly closed off, hands hovering near his sides before folding in on themselves. His eyes flickered briefly toward Katsuki, then away again, like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to linger there too long.
There was a time when seeing him would have meant excitement.
A reason to talk.
A reason to follow.
Now it just felt… distant.
Like a connection that had been stretched too thin over time.
And yet, something inside him still reacted.
Not in a clear, understandable way.
But in fragments.
Memories that didn’t present themselves as full scenes, but as impressions—tones of voice, brief flashes of attention, moments where he had once felt acknowledged in a way that stood out from everything else in his life.
Acknowledged in such a way by his teacher that was so, so wrong.
Those impressions lingered.
Because even though he understood, on some level, that what had happened was wrong—deeply wrong—his brain had also stored the experience of being singled out, being listened to, being given focused attention, as something significant.
Something that had left an imprint.
Now, in its absence, that imprint didn’t disappear.
It just became… quieter.
Less defined.
But still present in the way he struggled to fill the space it left behind.
He didn’t reach for it.
Didn’t try to recreate it.
Instead, he existed around it.
Carrying the weight of an experience he couldn’t fully reconcile, in a mind that kept trying to make sense of why something that had hurt him also felt, in fragments, like it had mattered.
And that contradiction—unresolved, uncomfortable, and difficult to name—sat with him through the evening, through the conversations he didn’t fully join, through the moments where he was physically present but mentally elsewhere.
Because he wanted to go back.
He just wanted his Sensei.