Chapter Text
It would be a few weeks before Iida’s new glasses came in. To his relief, Aizawa had been gracious enough to permit him to sit in the front row in the interim.
The cost of ordering twenty new sets of high-quality glasses would have been a significant expense even for a family as rich as the Iidas. Thankfully, he had been permitted to send in all of his frames aside from the pair he was currently wearing, so the only thing they had to pay for were the lenses.
It was a slightly frustrating time; now that Iida had noticed the changes in his vision, he found that they were impossible to miss. The next few weeks seemed to drag by, but finally, the optometrist office called to inform the school that his glasses were ready to be picked up. All twenty pairs of them.
He could hardly wait.
Iida stared. And stared. And tried to stop staring because it was probably weird, but he found his eyes roaming back to the heads of his classmates without his say-so.
Had his prescription really changed so much?
It was one thing for the leaves on the trees to suddenly be in higher definition, and for it to be easier to read the text on the board at the front of the room-those were changes he’d been expecting, and his reactions were modulated accordingly.
He had not been prepared, however, for the sudden sharp clarity of people’s hair. He could see individual strands. From five feet away. It was a lot more distracting than it by rights ought to be.
The rest of the day continued in this vein, with Iida staring at the crispness of the paper in the sides of the textbooks, the texture of the grain of wood on desks and benches, even the dust and dirt on the training grounds and the rough surface of the concrete were bizarrely crisp and clear and visible.
In some ways, it was nice, being able to properly see clearly again. In other ways, it was…frankly a little overwhelming.
Did people with normal vision really see with this much clarity? Perhaps he had answered one of the optometrist’s questions incorrectly and skewed his own results, thereby leading to his eyesight being overcorrected? And yet, he could recall quite a few instances in which his peers had made commentary regarding something they were able to see which he had been unable to discern from the distance they were standing.
Perhaps it truly was simply because it was a new prescription. He had been wearing the previous prescription for quite some time without being aware that his vision had changed, after all. It followed, then, that there would be some degree of an adjustment period.
Still. He had never quite encountered this precise scenario when obtaining a new prescription in the past.
During one of their training breaks, Iida caught himself staring once again, this time at the fibers of Professor Aizawa’s scarf. He blinked, then frowned and looked up instead, into his teacher’s face.
Aizawa was standing in front of him, looking down at him impassively, but with his new super-vision, Iida thought he might have detected a tiny hint of concern amidst all the teeny tiny hairs that made up the stubble on his chin. “You okay there, Iida-san?”
Iida immediately straightened up and saluted his teacher. “I’m perfectly alright, Professor! There’s no need to concern yourself!”
Aizawa raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure? You’ve been zoning out a lot, today. It’s not like you.”
Iida drew himself up even straighter. “I apologize for my lack of attentiveness, Professor! I shall endeavor to do my best to see that it doesn’t happen again!”
Something in his teacher’s eyes gleamed. “So, you admit that you’ve been distracted?”
This brought Iida up short, and he fumbled a bit as he tried to figure out what the correct way to answer this was. “I, ah-“
”Relax, Iida-san. I’m not angry with you, I just want to make sure nothing’s wrong. This kind of distraction can get you killed in the field, so it’s best to deal with it as soon as it appears.”
Iida winced, and dropped his hand to his side. “I’m sorry, Professor. It really is nothing serious. I received my new pairs of glasses today, and-“
”Ah. You’re adjusting to the trees having leaves again.”
”That is an accurate assessment, I suppose. I was not aware that my vision had deteriorated so drastically. The sudden shift in visual quality has been a little disorienting.” He paused, realizing that this could easily be misconstrued. “That doesn’t mean I require any assistance, however! I shall do my utmost to push through it, and I’m utterly certain that I will become used to my new prescription with incredible speed! So there is no need to concern yourself, Professor!”
Aizawa grunted. “Suit yourself. Just make sure you don’t start zoning out in the middle of training. I’d rather not have to tell your parents that you were injured because you couldn’t stop staring at the scenery.”
Iida saluted him once more. “You can count on it, Professor!”
”Hmm.” Aizawa turned and walked away. Iida stared at the details of his footprints, fascinated at the degree of texture that was possible even with such a simple pattern on the shoe. He jolted out of his reverie as Aizawa called for everyone to line up for the next round, and grimaced as he realized he’d been doing it again.
Hopefully he would be able to keep his promise.