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For Hitoshi, it doesn’t really start until high school. He’s always been a little spacey, quick to get a headache when he’s stressed and quick to lose focus on things that bore him, but it was never like this in the past. Not until one afternoon, training with Aizawa after having eaten half a sandwich that Midoriya had given him at lunch and nothing else all day.
Hitoshi feels strange. At first, he thinks he’s dissociating, as he dodges out of the way of Aizawa’s capture scarf, because it feels weird and distant and floaty. Hitoshi brushes it off, because he’s basically an expert on his own mental health after spending a million hours on the internet reading about it. He knows that he can handle dissociation during training; it happens practically every time, anyway. The lighting in the room is warm, yellow-ish white, and it reflects off of the steps that Hitoshi climbs, the mock buildings in this gym made of metal.
That’s strange , Hitoshi thinks as he stops on the second story of the structure, getting a height advantage on Aizawa. His vision is shifting, strangely. It’s not motion, not really, but instead it’s in the colors. The reflection of the warm lights in the metal floor is oddly cool toned, and as Hitoshi stares at it, it ripples, and the reflection grows a halo, like when Hitoshi is really tired and looking at a street lamp at night. He glances up, and the ceiling lights are doing the same thing, growing rainbow halos and shifting from warm to cool and back again. Hitoshi feels unbalanced, all of a sudden, but he isn’t moving.
And then Aizawa’s capture scarf wraps around his back and he hears his teacher sigh as he’s tugged back. The sensation feels strange, too. It’s like Hitoshi has pins and needles, except instead of a sharp, tingling almost-pain, it’s like a low, buzzing heat. Or cold. Hitoshi isn’t sure, really. He shuffles, turning to face Aizawa, even though the capture weapon is tight around his waist, pinning his arms to his torso, makes it hard to do. Aizawa’s face looks different. Hitoshi has no idea how, for a moment, and then he realizes he can’t focus on his teacher’s face, not at all. Everything is blurry and smeared with strange colors. He realizes, vaguely, that he feels weird in general, too. Like he’s drunk, maybe, except not at all.
“Shinsou,” Aizawa says, and his voice makes something pulse behind Hitoshi’s eyes. “You need to focus.” Hitoshi blinks, trying to do just that.
“I--” Hitoshi starts. “Ah.” He blinks, swallowing, moving his tongue around in his mouth. “I have a headache,” he says, and he’s so glad that it comes out as words , because for a second there he’d thought he couldn’t speak, that he doesn’t mind too much that his tone is off, too high pitched and too slow. He sees Aizawa frown slightly.
“Do you get them often?” Aizawa asks, taking a step forward. The capture scarf loosens around Hitoshi’s body as Aizawa presses a hand to his forehead. It’s warm and gentle, but he must not have a fever, because Aizawa removes it without any kind of reaction.
“Yeah,” Hitoshi says, faintly. “I just need to take a nap, and I’ll be fine.” Aizawa nods, and Hitoshi figures the guy probably gets it. Aizawa lets him go after he promises that he’ll be fine to make it home, and if Hitoshi doesn’t remember the walk home, well then, that’s just fine. He must actually take a nap, because he wakes up tangled in the sheets of his bed, the comforter tossed onto the floor. He blinks in the dim light, checks his phone. He’s only lost a couple of hours, and some of that he must have been asleep, so it’s fine.
--
The next time it happens, it’s in class. General studies has never been difficult, not for Hitoshi, not after how hard he worked in middle school so that he could be here, so that he could convince his parents that he isn’t just dangerous/difficult/disappointing. He doesn’t know who he’s kidding, really. It wouldn’t have mattered if he’d become the king of the world at 14, not that that would be possible with his quirk. After all, it was his quirk that landed him in gen-ed instead of heroics.
He’s sitting in class, and they’re supposed to be doing their work, but Hitoshi is done, so he’s just flipping through his notes. His teacher doesn’t like it when they’re on their phones, but she’s also not in the room, so Hitoshi is seriously considering getting his out and looking at memes. He’s feeling a bit off, in a way he can’t quite place. He wonders if, maybe, he’s dissociating, but it’s weird, because when he tries his grounding techniques, tries to focus on the texture of the paper under his fingertips, when he listens to the scratching of pencils throughout the room, tries to count tiles on the floor, it makes it worse .
Hitoshi blinks, because he thinks there’s something in his eye, and then he recognizes it. The tiles on the floor, creamy white and reflective, start to look like an oilslick on water, but dimmer. Less pronounced, but still present, the colors start to drift and slide in Hitoshi’s vision, blooming and fanning out around each point of reflection. Hitoshi clenches his jaw and looks up, at the other students, and each of them is surrounded by a halo of rainbow light, too. He thinks his head might hurt, but he can’t tell. Everything feels very, very far away, and when he looks down at his hands, they’re shaking. Hitoshi’s hands never, ever shake, not unless he’s having a panic attack.
Hitoshi doesn’t think this is a panic attack. He feels something strange creep up the right side of his body, like heat except in a spiderweb static pattern. He tries to move his right foot, where the feeling is the worst, and it doesn’t move at all. Hitoshi looks down at it, the world blurring with the motion, colors bleeding together. He can’t move his leg, he can’t move his leg, he can’t--
And then the vision in his right eye goes out. It’s not like he sees black, or like it blinks out like a light. It’s like he’s seeing things, like he can feel the light on his eye or something, but he sees nothing at all. There is no blackness. There is nothing at all, absolutely nothing. Hitoshi swallows. At least he can still do that. He puts his hands in his lap and takes deep breaths, trying to wiggle the toes on his right foot every few seconds and waiting, waiting.
After what feels like far too long, his vision bleeds back into his right eye. Hitoshi lets out a breath he hadn’t meant to hold. His foot comes back soon after that, and then the strange colors are shrinking, tucking themselves back into the lights they’re emanating from. He starts to feel more present, less distant. His head really hurts, now. It’s a thick, heavy ache in the sides and the top of his head.
Hitoshi has the headache for the rest of the day, but he doesn’t tell anyone. He doesn’t tell his teachers, or his mom or his dad, not that either of them would do anything if he did. Hitoshi can handle this. It’s not a big deal. It’s probably just him making a big deal out of nothing, or maybe it’s a side effect of his quirk, or something . Hitoshi will be fine. He will be fine.
--
The third time it happens is after he’s moved into the dorms, after he and about half of the general education kids are piled into a mostly-empty building meant to hold all of his class, just in case the school decided to make the boarding aspect of things mandatory for gen-ed, too. He has the entire third floor to himself, and nobody is ever in the common area, so maybe that’s why he keeps accepting when Midoriya and Kaminari insist that he should come hang out with 1-A.
He’s in the 1-A dorm’s common room, that night, sitting on the couch and watching the TV screen. Kaminari, Sero, and Ashido had argued for ages over a movie, and by the time they’d finished, Midoriya, Iida, and Kirishima had joined the conversation. They’d picked something Hitoshi didn’t bother to catch the name of. It’s some kind of horror-comedy, and it’s pretty funny, up until Hitoshi starts feeling lightheaded.
He’s not sure why, though. Usually his head only feels like this if he hasn’t eaten enough, and that hasn’t really been a problem for him since moving into the dorms, where there’s always food in the kitchen and never his parents. He feels uneasy, though, unsettled all of a sudden, so he takes back the arm he’d slung over the couch just behind Midoriya’s shoulders, tucking his arms into his lap. Midoriya gives him a look, but Hitoshi has to ignore it. Nausea rolls in his stomach, once, then twice. And then he notices his hands shaking.
Hitoshi recognizes it immediately, this time. The TV is bright and the room is dark, so when the rainbow halo of strange light that he knows isn’t actually there forms, he knows what to expect. His head feels strange, sure, and he can’t actually read the subtitles on the screen (since everyone kept talking over the movie), but he’s sitting down and he isn’t in pain so it’s fine. Midoriya turns to him, says,
“Are you cold?” He nods to Hitoshi’s arms, which are wrapped around his chest. “I can get a blanket.” Hitoshi doesn’t remember moving his arms, but he isn’t cold. He doesn’t think so, at least. Midoriya has his eyes on him, and Kirishima and Sero are loudly arguing about the movie, so at first it’s easy to miss what happens when he tries to speak.
“Nn,” Hitoshi swallows. “I--” He opens his mouth, closes it. He makes a couple of strange sounds, like a murmur that could be a monosyllabic word, a couple of hums that sound like vowels. Midoriya is staring at him, a crease growing deeper and deeper in his brow.
“A-Are you okay?” Midoriya asks, and Hitoshi watches as a rainbow halo grows around his hair, like it’s coming into focus. Hitoshi nods, because he can manage that. Midoriya frowns, reaches over and grabs the TV remote from the table. Hitoshi wishes he could tell him to stop, but when he opens his mouth to try, a bunch of strange garbled sounds come out instead, and Midoriya gives him another worried look. Hitoshi watches as the movements and changes in the colored light on his friends stop as the TV is paused, and everyone turns to look at Midoriya.
“Aww, what gives?” Kaminari whines. Hitoshi tries to look at him, but it’s odd. He hasn’t lost vision in his right eye, but it won’t focus. Just the left one. It’s strange.
“Yeah, dude, we’re almost to the best part,” Sero says, and Hitoshi blinks as he tries to see the other man. It’s hard. Hitoshi wonders, briefly, why he’s trying so hard to talk exactly. The world is kind of tilting, moving oddly. He sees Midoriya frown, and then he remembers.
“Something’s wrong with Shinsou,” he says, quietly, and then he looks back at Hitoshi. “What’s wrong? Are you feeling sick?”
Hitoshi shakes his head. He doesn’t try to talk, because he knows it would make things worse. Midoriya stares back at him.
“I dunno, looks like he’s fine, man,” Kaminari says, and it’s Midoriya’s turn to shake his head. Hitoshi blinks rapidly, watching as the rainbow halos start to fade. He feels the focus coming back to his eyes just as Midoriya says,
“I swear, just a minute ago it was like he couldn’t talk,” he says, “and his eyes looked weird, I don’t know how, but they just--they looked weird, okay?” Midoriya looks over to Hitoshi. “Are you really okay? Do you have a headache or something?”
“I think I was just starting to nod off,” Hitoshi says, and his voice is shaky and too monotone but it’s there . It feels like the words had never left him at all. “I should probably get back to my room.” Midoriya frowns, but the others crack jokes about how tired Hitoshi looks, and it’s enough to get the green haired kid off of his back. Hitoshi has a headache that makes the walk back to the gen-ed dorm uncomfortable, but it’s better than having to tough it out with a bunch of noise and light, he supposes. He doesn’t let himself think about the fact that this is three times, now.
--
There isn’t a fourth episode that stands out in Hitoshi’s mind, because they just keep happening, over and over, and he sort of stops counting. He starts to categorize them, instead, as he goes through training and eventually, finally, gets told that he can join 1-A and the heroics course once and for all.
There are the little ones, where it’s just the colors and the fuzziness and the distance. These are common, at least once a week, and Hitoshi doesn’t mind them, really. As long as nobody asks him to say something smart, he’s fine, and he can pretend that he’s just a little out of it, that he’s totally one hundred percent okay and that his brain isn’t doing something weird and a little unsettling. They don’t bother him. Not at all.
The second kind is a lot like the first, just that either his vision will go out in one eye or he can’t talk or he can’t move his leg or he can’t read. Hitoshi tries to think of these as bonus episodes. He’ll be in class and his vision will cut out and he just turns his head slightly to compensate. He’ll be in training and he won’t be able to talk so he’ll practice his stealth instead. He’ll be studying and he suddenly won’t be able to read the words on the page, so he’ll take a break where he just lies face down on the couch and prays. These ones might bother him, just a little, but he tries to tell himself that it’s not a big deal.
And then there are what he calls his special episodes. Hitoshi has done reading on these things, of course. He knows they’re probably something with a name, something with some kind of medical term to describe them, but calling his episodes anything at all is already a lot for him and he tries not to think too hard about them, generally speaking. He knows he gets one of his types of events roughly once a week, knows that they’re more common in the afternoons, knows that he gets them more often when he’s tired or stressed or skipped a meal.
Hitoshi doesn’t know what causes the special episodes. He calls them special because they are , because they’re the times when he blacks out completely, loses a few minutes of time and wakes up sitting in the chair with scribbles all over his notes. They’re the times that his leg will jerk and move strangely, all on its own. They’re the times where he loses vision in both eyes.
The special episode that sticks out in Hitoshi’s memory happens on a lazy Sunday afternoon, after he’s transferred into 1-A into the empty room beside Midoriya’s. They’re studying together, more or less--Hitoshi can’t focus with another person in the room, and Midoriya keeps his stuff on his desk, so they’re actually each in their own rooms. They’re next door to each other, though, with their doors open to the hallway and the balcony. It’s nice, with the breeze blowing through Hitoshi’s room keeping him cooled off and Midoriya occasionally saying something from the other room, his voice raised just enough for Hitoshi to hear.
The only thing that’s keeping Hitoshi from actually getting things done is the fact that he can’t focus. It’s not like he isn’t trying--he hasn’t gotten on his phone at all, and he’s kept his eyes glued to the textbook. He just keeps spacing out, thinking about nothing at all, his eyes unfocusing. He probably should have realized what was happening earlier, in retrospect.
It starts like most of his episodes do. He’s staring at the page, and the words start to ripple in multicolor, rainbow ripples around them. Hitoshi blinks, hoping it’s just something in his eye, but it isn’t. He presses his lips into a frown as the same thing he always feels, that strange, distant unfocus, starts to fog up the edge of his mind. Looking down at the page and trying to read makes it worse, and maybe that’s what makes it start to feel different. Hitoshi’s mouth begins to fill with saliva, and even though he’s not nauseous, that’s only really happened before when he was about to throw up, so he turns to the side, trying to get out of his chair, only to find his legs aren’t working.
Hitoshi blinks, leaning forward slightly where he’s facing the door. The room goes out of focus in a special way, the air breaking and cracking like spiderwebs, almost. His vision is hazy, and Hitoshi cannot move. He is aware; he can hear the sound of Midoriya sneezing the next room over, can feel his own mouth filling with saliva, but he cannot move. His elbows are frozen where they rest on his knees, and his head is tilted down slightly, his lips just barely parted. It’s not like he’s gone limp , but he can’t get his limbs to move, can’t get them to shift.
Hitoshi stays there for too long. It’s at least five minutes, probably more, that he’s leaned over, forced to stare at the same patch of the floor. A drop of crystal clear drool falls from his mouth, making a string of saliva that stretches down to the floor. Hitoshi feels disgusting. He feels disgusting and helpless and most of all, scared . He can’t move; what happens if he stops being able to breathe? What if something’s really, really wrong?
Hitoshi sits there, unmoving, and he hopes. He hopes that Midoriya will ask a question, get no response, and come to Hitoshi’s room to check up on him. He hopes that Midoriya will pop in to show Hitoshi something in his notes, see that Hitoshi is in this strange position, drooling and still as a statue. Hitoshi, who has never once seriously considered asking for help with this, desperately, desperately wants someone to see him now, to help him.
It doesn’t happen. When the edges of the spider-web blurs and the rainbow whispers start to pull away from his vision, when he can pull himself up, when he can wipe the drool from his chin, Hitoshi is still alone. He hears Midoriya crack a joke from the other room, but he doesn’t laugh. He stands up on shaky legs, the headache he’s so used to after the episodes settling into his scalp as he wipes off his face and then the floor.
Hitoshi doesn’t tell Midoriya what happened. There’s no point, not when it’s already over. Hitoshi would prefer not to relive it.
--
Hitoshi isn’t the type of person to make excuses for himself. He’s had enough people decide that he can’t be successful without him deciding that for himself, too, so even if he’s sick or hurt or tired or whatever, he doesn’t let it stop him from doing what he’s supposed to do.
Besides, these episodes, whatever they are, aren’t something that Hitoshi thinks is a big deal, really. It’s just a part of his life at this point, so when Hitoshi is sitting in class and scribbling down notes and it feels like his brain starts to slide to the side, like his head starts to disconnect from his body, he ignores it. He can work through it, he can get past it, and he can keep taking notes. Hitoshi’s arm feels strange and achy as he keeps writing, pressing his pencil to the page more firmly to try and keep his handwriting steady as the episode starts to wash over him.
Hitoshi can see the words on the page get sloppier and sloppier as he writes, his letters turning shaky and misshapen and then turning into scribbles. His hands feel clumsy and strange as the world starts to take on that multicolored ripple around the edges, as he starts to unfocus and grow fuzzy and strange. Hitoshi takes a deep breath, looking down at his notes just as a curtain of nothing falls over his right eye. This one is hitting him harder than usual, he notices, as he presses his pencil to the paper again, tries to make himself write something, anything. He can’t he can’t make his pencil move in the shapes of words, and when he glances up at the board, watching Present Mic scrawl on the blackboard with white chalk, Hitoshi can’t read the words there, either. He knows they’re words, knows they’re letters and knows that he should be able to read them, but when he tries, it just... doesn’t click. It fails to compute in Hitoshi’s head.
Hitoshi resolves to just wait it out, to let himself drift through the strange bubbling of his mind as the world warps and shifts strangely. Only a few minutes , he thinks to himself distractedly, praying that Present Mic doesn’t try to call on him. It’ll only be a few minutes, and then it’ll go away and he can just power through the headache that comes after. He’ll be okay.
Hitoshi takes a few deep breaths as he realizes that not only can he not read, the things that everyone around him is saying, the words that Present Mic is using and the things his classmates occasionally say in reply--it doesn’t make sense to him. Hitoshi feels a cold wave of fear move through him as he realizes that he can’t understand a word, English or Japanese. He’s trapped, with everything colorful and blurred around him, with his right eye failing him and his ability to write stolen, and he can’t even listen in on class.
Hitoshi spends a few minutes like that, helpless and silent and still, and then, quicker than it came on, it fades. His vision comes back into focus as his right eye clears, the colors fading and the words on the board sharpening, becoming readable. The headache sets in, too, even and light on the top of his head. It’s not a bad headache, and Hitoshi can easily ignore it as he moves his pencil and starts to copy down the words on the board. He can understand Present Mic, too, but he really isn’t listening.
Instead, Hitoshi is shaking. His hand is trembling, and he can feel the slightest hint of panic start to rise in his throat. He swallows it down, raising one hand carefully. Present Mic smiles at him.
“Yes, Shinsou?” Present Mic asks. Hitoshi swallows.
“I need to use the restroom,” he says, not asking out of habit. Present Mic doesn’t even seem to notice, giving Hitoshi a quick nod and a thumbs up.
“Okay!” Mic replies. “Go ahead,” he says, and Hitoshi doesn’t wait. He stands up out of his chair, careful and controlled. He walks slowly out of the classroom, trying not to show any sign of the anxiety that pulses through his body. He walks down the hallway in much the same way, his shoes clicking softly on the tile floor.
It’s only once he’s in the bathroom, standing in front of the mirror with his hands braced on either side of the sink, that he lets himself panic. He lets his breaths quicken, lets tears build up in his eyes and wet the skin just above his cheeks, the hollow places under his eyes that are smeared with dark bruises from lack of sleep. He lets himself cry, lets himself worry about this, think that this might be something serious, after all, for just a moment.
And then Hitoshi cleans himself up and heads back to class. He pushes the worry out of his mind and forces himself to think of anything else.
--
They’re in the middle of a first aid exercise, when Hitoshi’s hands start to shake. He stares down at them, watching his fingers twitch and tremble, and he thinks oh, I guess it’s time for one of these .
He’s been put in a group with Midoriya and Kirishima, both of whom are talking through the exercise they’re about to practice on Hitoshi. It’s supposed to be a simple injury scenario--Hitoshi is supposed to lie face down and pretend to have a cut to his forearm and a broken rib on his left side. With the way his vision is starting to warp and the colors are growing and spreading into oil-slick patterns, Hitoshi doesn’t think he’s going to be a very good actor.
“Hey,” Hitoshi says, his voice sounding strange to his ears. Midoriya and Kirishima look up at him simultaneously, and Hitoshi can see open curiosity, eagerness, on both of their faces. He hates to ruin that. “I’m about to--’m about to have a seizure,” he says, because even though he’s pretty sure they’re not seizures, it’s easier to explain than saying an episode . “They’re not a big deal, just...” Hitoshi blinks rapidly as the world bobs briefly out of focus. “I can still do the training thing,” he says, and the words sound distant, foreign. Hitoshi’s right eye starts to feel funny, like it’s numb, and then he can't see out of it at all, but he’d been expecting that.
“Uh, maybe you should lie down,” Kirishima says, and there’s a nervous edge to his voice. Hitoshi watches him glance over at Midoriya, watches Midoriya’s brows furrow slightly. Hitoshi raises one arm, holds his hand out. He stares at it, watches the ripples and echoes of color around it, like a 3-D movie without the glasses. He thinks that it’s pretty, that he’d like to look at it more, if it didn’t come with this annoying dullness to his thoughts, this fuzziness.
“Shinsou?” Midoriya calls his name, an undertone of worry in his voice. “What happens when you get these? Are you going to start, you know, um--” Hitoshi cuts him off, because he knows what Midoriya’s asking.
“No, not...” Hitoshi blinks a couple of times. “I don’t, uh, shake,” he says. He feels like he’s tilting, except he knows he isn’t. He feels vague, distant. He hears voices.
“Hey, you okay?” Kirishima asks, and Hitoshi looks over to him. His hair looks extra spiky with the visual distortion, and Hitoshi wants to tell him that, but everything feels strange, and he tries to move his lips to speak.
“Mhm,” he says, because he can tell that he’s not getting any words out. He tries to keep his vision focused on Kirishima. Midoriya isn’t there, anymore, and Hitoshi wonders where he’d gone, and more importantly, when . Hitoshi doesn’t remember him moving at all, and while he thinks he’s lost small pieces of these episodes before, this is the first time he’s actually told anyone that it was happening. Hitoshi wants to know why Midoriya didn’t stay.
“Shinsou,” a deep voice says, and Hitoshi blinks as he looks up to see his teacher, standing with Midoriya a short ways behind him. Aizawa’s face is set into a scowl of some kind, and Hitoshi thinks its his worried one, but he’s not quite sure.
“S-S-Sens...” Hitoshi tries to address Aizawa, but it feels heavy and weird in his mouth. He makes a few more noises, a hiss like a snake and an aborted a sound, but he can’t get any words out. Aizawa’s brow furrows, and he looks over at Kirishima.
“How long has he been like this?” Aizawa asks as he crouches down, and Hitoshi feels something coil in his gut. He doesn’t want to worry his teacher, so he swallows and focuses and ignores the way he still can’t see out of his right eye.
“I can still,” he starts, his voice sounding distant even to him. “Still can... c-can do the training,” Hitoshi says, and Aizawa turns to look at him, clear worry in his face.
“Someone else can do the training,” Aizawa says, his voice careful and controlled. “You need to rest.” He turns his head to Kirishima, who’s still kneeling beside Hitoshi. “Help him lie down,” Aizawa says. Hitoshi wants to protest, because he can lie down on his own, but it’s nice when Kirishima’s hands, warm and strong, hold his shoulder and help guide him to the ground. Hitoshi lets his eyes shut, but less than a heartbeat later, he’s opening them as Aizawa snaps his fingers in front of Hitoshi’s face.
“Hey, stay with me,” Aizawa says, his tone urgent and firm. Hitoshi blinks up at him, and as he does, the episode starts to fade, starts to pull away. The colors condense together, his right eye comes back, and he settles into awareness with a headache that spreads over the top of his head. Hitoshi swallows.
“I think it’s almost over,” he says, because even though the colors have started to fade and he’s worlds more aware than he was a moment ago, he still feels a little uneven, a little on edge. The more time passes, the more the world clarifies around him. Aizawa’s face stays dark, urgent.
“How long have you been having seizures without telling anyone?” Aizawa asks, and there’s a hint of bright anger in his voice. Hitoshi grimaces.
“I’m, uh, not actually sure they’re seizures,” he says, starting to sit up. Kirishima’s hand and a glare from Aizawa stop him, and he resigns himself to lying on the floor.
“How long?” Aizawa repeats, his voice firm. Hitoshi sighs, turning his gaze to stare up at the ceiling of the gym, at the dangling lights that glow too-bright for his eyes.
“Uh, a few months,” he says, and he can hear the sharp intakes of breath from at least two of them. Hitoshi likes to think that it was Kirishima and Midoriya, that Aizawa had managed to not outwardly react. Hitoshi hears a slow, pained sigh, and he can’t help but look over to see Aizawa pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Of course,” Aizawa mutters, and Hitoshi finds himself struggling to really feel all that bad about worrying his teacher. “Were you planning on keeping it a secret until it happened during a mission and it got you seriously injured?” Aizawa asks, his voice sharp with something that sounds far more concerned than it does annoyed, at least to Hitoshi, who’s had more than enough practice interpreting his teacher’s mood.
“I wasn’t planning on it being a problem,” Hitoshi says in reply, and he knows that Aizawa’s rolling his eyes even though Hitoshi looks away, to stare at Kirishima. Kirishima’s red eyes are wet with tears, and he looks so openly and abjectly concerned that it sends a pang of something sharp through Hitoshi’s chest.
“You’ve been dealing with this all alone?” Kirishima asks, his voice small. “For months?” Hitoshi blinks at him, not really sure how to reply. He’s used to dealing with things alone, used to putting up with the things his mind and his body put him through without complaining. He’s been through so much worse at the hands of other people, so why should he share this with someone? Why burden someone else with what he should be able to handle, what he should be able to control?
“He’s not going to be dealing with it alone any more,” Aizawa says, his voice almost a grunt. Hitoshi blinks, looking over at his teacher, who meets his eyes with a narrowed gaze, with lips pressed tight together.
“I’ve been handling it fine,” Hitoshi says, but his voice sounds too soft for the protest to mean much of anything. Aizawa sighs, and Hitoshi can see Midoriya shifting nervously behind his teacher.
“Let’s get you to Recovery Girl,” Aizawa says, his voice quiet. “We can talk more later, when you’ve rested.” Hitoshi wants to protest, wants to say that he doesn’t need rest, that he can keep on training, can keep on going, but he doesn’t. He lets his friends and his teacher take care of him, for once.