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Hitoshi knows this was bound to happen eventually.
To their credit, they did last longer than most. Four months is practically a whole new record. The last person at the top of the leader board had been some girl from middle school who sat at his table during lunch for two weeks to win a bet with her friend.
Four months is a new record for him too. Hitoshi wonders what it says about him that he’s fallen for it that long.
For four months he’s tamped down that stupid little voice in the corner of his mind that plies him with his daily dose of ‘you’re never going to be enough’.
Today, he finally indulges it. Just a little bit.
It’s still horribly wrong about a number of things: he is going to be a hero, one way or the other, no matter what it costs him. But the reminder that ‘people do not associate with him except to use him’ might deserve some merit.
He waits for half an hour. A whole thirty minutes, Hitoshi stands in front of the cafeteria looking like an entire fool to whoever passes by. It's not like he can just go inside to wait for them. Ever since the attack on their summer camp, the first-year hero course kids sit clumped together.
As always, Hitoshi is the outsider here. They may not say anything when he’s with Midoriya and the rest of his little squad, but they will see him coming into their space alone as him stepping above his station.
And he’s all too familiar with what happens to those that overreach.
Finally, he sees one of his old classmates (from his English class, before it had been rescheduled to allow him to attend heroics part-time) exit the cafeteria and decides it's high time for him to leave.
He tries to go out into the courtyard, but a group of kids from his old homeroom are there, tossing a tennis ball back and forth.
The stairs to the roof have a couple of boys from his old gym class, bent over a wrinkled manga volume.
Hitoshi tries the library in a last-ditch attempt, but he spots a girl he’s pretty sure is in 1-B on her way out. Unfortunately, she spots him back. He sees her open her mouth to say something, so he just turns on his heel and walks back the way he came. He doesn't have time for hero kids and their complexes today.
Evidently, they don’t have time for him either.
He waits out the rest of the lunch period in front of the literature classroom, the excuse of needing homework help poised on the tip of his tongue in case someone asks him why he’s there.
No one does.
When the second to last period approaches, Hitoshi leaves the classrooms for the gym, taking the long way around so he doesn’t have to cut through the heroics hallway.
He gets to the boy’s locker room and reaches for the handle when the door swings open violently. The quick arm he throws up is what saves him from what would have been a truly incredible bloody nose.
Pity. It would have been a suitable end to the day.
The boy who emerges freezes in front of him, in the midst of wiping his eyes. His pale hair is wild, his face red and blotchy, and his long eyelashes are wet and clumped together.
The whole look screams ‘crying alone in the bathroom’, which, sure, he can relate to, but at the same time this guy looks like he goes to the gym for fun. Not your typical bathroom crier.
“Oh shit,” the guy’s voice catches, and his face goes even redder as he clears his throat, “shit, sorry dude, I totally wasn’t looking where I was going. You good man?”
Hitoshi opens his mouth to reply but nothing comes out. He tries again and manages a cracked, “no problem,” that almost has to be torn out of his throat. It’s dry and scratchy with disuse.
With a start, Hitoshi realizes that this is the first time he’s spoken all day. Weird. Back in middle school he could easily go a whole week without as much as a peep. He’s really been slipping here.
“Woah, that’s a relief. Damn, totally not manly of me.” The guy mutters to himself as he swipes furiously at his eyes again and throws a casual wave as he heads out into the hall. Hitoshi waves back awkwardly. He's pretty sure he’s seen this kid before. Mentally, he places him as another 1-B student-- Kirishima or something.
The cold water from the fountain is a blessing. Hitoshi can feel the metallic aftertaste of it on the back of his tongue even after he’s changed into his uniform and headed into the gym.
Aizawa isn’t there yet, so Hitoshi does his warmup stretches and starts running laps so it doesn’t look like he’s slacking when his instructor eventually drops in from like a window or something. He’s a weird guy; Midoriya told him that once Aizawa let their class have a free exercise period on the obstacle course, but it turned out he was watching them from the rafters the whole time.
Hitoshi inconspicuously checks the ceiling for a flash of the white capture scarf as he makes his way around the room. Just in case.
Ten minutes later, he’s slowed down to a jog.
Fifteen minutes later he’s just walking.
Twenty minutes pass and Hitoshi makes the split decision to send Aizawa a text asking him if they were still on for training, even though he has the schedule engraved into the back of his mind.
Twenty-five minutes: Hitoshi eats an old protein bar from the bottom of his backpack and remembers that he missed lunch.
Thirty minutes later, he abandons all pretense and just texts Aizawa a school-friendly version of ‘where the actual hell are you’. He and Aizawa have somewhat of a less formal relationship, it’s not like he’s terrified of the guy like Midoriya seems to be, but Hitoshi’s not confident enough to push it. Yet. Besides, knowing him, this might as well be a logical ruse, testing anything from his self-advocacy to how many times he can toss a stray ball at the wall before he goes mad.
Forty minutes: the answer is two hundred and seventy-five times.
Fifty minutes: Hitoshi gives in to the downright embarrassing noises his stomach has been making and eats part of his leftover lunch sitting on the gym floor.
Seventy minutes: he runs up the obstacle course ramp so he can roll down the other side like a child on a giant slide. It’s a great feeling. He vehemently hopes Aizawa isn’t watching him through the security cameras or something.
Eighty-five minutes after they were supposed to start, Aizawa texts him back. Hitoshi practically flies across the room when he hears the notification, but all the text says is ‘no training today’. That’s it. No ‘sorry for wasting your time’ no ‘something came up’, not even an emoji.
While he’s forever grateful for the chance that Aizawa’s given him, that doesn’t erase the fact that, sometimes, the man is kind of a huge prick. Hitoshi sends him back a ‘k’, just to be petty about it, and heads back to the locker room.
The two hours in the gym might have been a complete waste of his time, but he can’t deny that some time to run around and throw a ball at a wall really did help with his mood. Hitoshi eats leftover stir fry for dinner and by the time he gets back to his dorm room, the crushing fear disappointment from lunchtime has lifted enough for him to look at the situation logically.
No 1-A friends classmates plus no Aizawa probably means they were off doing a class activity or something. Those have been known to last nearly the entire day, and the students don’t have access to their phones. The only problem is, Aizawa usually gives him a heads up if stuff like that ever happens. Afterwards, Hitoshi always has a grand time lording his preemptive knowledge of whatever crackpot training exercise 1-A is going through over them.
The thought doesn’t seem so grand now. The stir fry sits heavy in his stomach.
When the clock strikes ten, Hitoshi tries contacting his usual group through the messenger app they use, but no one answers. He’d call them, but the tentative new acquaintanceship means that he hasn't given any of them his number.
Actually, he’s given Midoriya his number. He’d leaned over him on Friday in the way that made him squeak all funny and go red in the face and written his number on his hand.
It doesn’t matter, he’d probably washed it off right after.
Even in the small chance he hasn’t, Hitoshi doubts he’s the first person any of them would contact if it truly were an emergency. That’s the thought he turns over and over in his mind as he finishes up his homework and mindlessly scrolls through social media before bed.
When he catches sight of himself in the mirror as he brushes his teeth, Hitoshi accidentally says it out loud in the empty bathroom. It sounds weird. Midoriya must be rubbing off on him.
But the thoughts persist.
As he lays in bed, all Hitoshi can think about is all the other times class 1-A has gone radio silent.
The USJ for one, and he knows for a fact more than half of them still have regular nightmares about it. Sometimes, Tsu texts late at night when they keep her awake, just like Hitoshi’s insomnia does for him.
That example brings with it a sliver of embarrassment, from the way he addressed them right before the festival, too wrapped up in his own ambitions. He still can’t believe people thought them self-absorbed. If Hitoshi had nearly been murdered on a school field trip and someone insinuated he’d done it for attention, he would have decked them in the face.
Then there was that summer training camp, where Bakugou was kidnapped and Midoriya nearly got beaten to death. Sometimes he rolls up his sleeves idly while working and Hitoshi’s stomach turns at the sight. Less at the dark, rough skin of his upper arm, and more at the memory of Midoriya telling them, small and quiet, that in that moment, delirious with pain and pinned under a practical mountain, his parting words had been apologies.
One for his mother, for all the sorrow he’s brought her.
One for All Might, in memory of the potential he wasn’t going to live up to.
Sometimes, Aizawa will tell him cautionary tales while he trains—about heroes that were too careful or not careful enough-- but none of them get to him like Midoriya’s words do.
Maybe it’s because he knows the guy in person. Midoriya may have that whole golden boy theme going for him, but he apologizes at the drop of a hat, even for things that couldn’t realistically be his fault. Once Bakugou had crashed one of their study sessions yelling about something and Midoriya apologized to Hitoshi about it for a week, even though Bakugou had come there looking for Todoroki.
It’s not hard to imagine Midoriya’s last words being apologies. If Hitoshi works hard, he can hear the exact tone of his voice: the soft scratchy one where he’s emotional about something, but without the stutter, since he has also accepted it as an inevitability.
Hitoshi wonders what he’s doing with his life, throwing his all into a profession where he’s statistically likely to attend more than half his friend’s funerals. The reminder pulses louder with each step he takes towards the hero course, more so ever since he’s been strong-armed into spending more time with class 1-A, all of whom are veritable magnets for disaster.
It's that sick thought he settles into uneasy sleep with, that he knows what Midoriya’s hypothetical parting words are going to be.
As is fast becoming a trend, his initial assumptions are incorrect.
The phone call wakes him: Hitoshi shoots up, sweaty and tangled in his sheets, and nearly topples off the bed in his wild search for that infernal ringing.
He finally digs his cellphone out from where it had fallen between the mattress and the wall and blinks blearily at the screen, the bright light making his eyes water.
Unknown number.
He declines the call. Damn, this is what Hitoshi gets for taking his phone off silent mode. No one had replied to his texts, he didn’t want to miss if anyone did.
He’s started to get settled back into bed when the phone rings again.
Unknown number.
Groaning out loud, Hitoshi goes to decline the call and block the number before a thought strikes him. There is someone whose number his phone wouldn’t recognize. Could it be...
He picks up.
“Umm, hello?” starts a scratchy voice on the other end of the phone. Even half asleep, he can tell it’s too deep to be Midoriya’s.
Hitoshi’s ready to just hang up when it talks again, “Um, who is this?” which is a downright weird as hell question to ask, especially since they were the one who called him.
It’s the brain lag from being startled awake that has him answering.
“It’s Shinsou.”
“Oh? Ooooh! Shinsou-San!” the person on the other end recognizes him, Hitoshi really can’t say the same.
“Who are you again?”
“Oh,” the voice perks up, like they’re excited to answer his question, an uncommon experience, “I’m Izuku!”
Izuku? As in Midoriya Izuku?
“Midoriya?” Hitoshi throws out tentatively. It doesn’t sound like Midoriya, but what does he know, it’s not like he’s ever talked with him on the phone before.
“I’m Izuku,” maybe-maybe-not Midoriya insists. Hitoshi wonders if it’s his weird attempt at telling him to call him by his first name.
“I’m Hitoshi then.” He might as well reciprocate. Friends do that kind of shit right?
“Hitoshi,” Midoriya whispers, “Hitoshi, Hitoshi, Hitoshi...” he repeats the name so softly, like he’s trying to memorize it. For no particular reason, Hitoshi’s face feels warm listening to him.
“I remembered your number Shinsou-San.” Midoriya (Izuku?) informs him. Hitoshi frowns. They're back to formalities now? Midoriya hasn’t called him Shinsou-San since the sports festival.
Half asleep, Hitoshi takes it in stride. Midoriya has enough anxiety to nerf a god; using someone’s given name too often might give him an aneurysm. He still calls his best friend, the girl who basically shares a closet with him, Uraraka-San. Even Todoroki, who practically sits in his lap when they do homework, is Todoroki-Kun.
“I remembered your number Shinsou-San,” Midoriya repeats, “I was very happy that you gave it to me.”
Damn. Honesty. From Midoriya? About his own feelings? Hitoshi sits up and rubs the back of his neck in embarrassment.
“Uh, you're welcome, I suppose.”
“I’m so happy I could call you,” Midoriya continues. His tone is slow and some of the words slur together, like he’s just woken up, or hasn’t slept in a while, “Where are you right now?”
“Umm, at my dorms? In U.A?”
“U.A?” Midoriya sounds surprised at the name.
“Midoriya, you literally go to school here. How sleep deprived are you right now?” another, more important question comes to mind, “Where were you guys today? Aizawa drag you out to the training fields overnight again?”
“Aizawa, Aizawa,” what’s with Midoriya and repeating everything today, “No I didn’t do any training today.”
“Why,” Hitoshi teases, tipping back to lie down again, “you too good for it?”
Midoriya pauses for a moment too long and Hitoshi sits back up, worried for a second that he’s come off as mean unintentionally. Midoriya has gotten a lot better at recognizing his sarcasm, but he also sounds like he hasn’t slept in a week.
“I didn’t train today,” Midoriya informs him finally, “I think I was sick.”
“You think?”
“I don’t know ,” Midoriya whispers, and now he sounds more familiar, like he’s close to tears, “ Should I know? I think I should. But I can’t tell, Shinsou, I can’t tell . Shinsou there’s something wrong with me isn’t there?”
Well, that’s an alarming thing to say. Hitoshi doesn’t know if the phrase is leaning more towards emotional vulnerability, or if Midoriya has broken another bone.
“Midoriya are you alright?” No response, just some light sniffling.
“Izuku?”
“Yeah?”
“Hey, is everything good?”
“Hitoshi I just told you,” Midoriya gasps, “Hitoshi I just told you I don’t know . It’s so cold here. What am I going to do ?”
Midoriya’s chronic anxiety notwithstanding, this sounds pretty concerning. Hitoshi has heard him panic about plenty of things, but about himself is a first.
At the same time, friends or not, Hitoshi is the new guy in their group. No way in hell is he the most qualified to handle this.
“Hey, hey Izuku, do you want me to call someone for you?”
“’S fine Shinsou, I don’t want to inconvenience anyone. I just. I’m just gonna- I'm just gonna sleep,” Hitoshi hears him take a deep breath, probably to calm himself down. Over the phone, the exhale sounds like a rattle. He repeats the process slowly. In and out.
In.
And.
Out.
Hitoshi feels his own eyes grow heavy.
“Yeah, sounds like you need it,” a thought crosses his sleep-addled brain, “Ya know, I was actually asleep when you called. And you weren’t. Funny right?”
“You should sleep more Shinsou-San, it’ll be good for you.”
“I think it’ll be better for you right now.”
“Yeah,” Midoriya agrees, voice light, “It’ll be better. I think I’m going to sleep now Shinsou-San.”
“Yeah, get that rest.”
“I think I’m going to sleep now,” the voice doesn’t sound like Midoriya again, too deep, too steady, syrupy and cold, “I think. I think I’m going to sleep for a real long time now.”
Something about the way he says it makes Hitoshi uncomfortable, so he decides to cut the conversation off before the memory can take root enough to keep him awake all night, “Yeah, goodnight Midori- Izu- Midoriya.”
“Goodnight Shinsou.”
“Sweet dreams, avoid bug beds and all that good shit,” somewhere in his brain, the empty feeling from today’s lunch period blinks in reminder “I’ll see you tomorrow?” He tacks on hopefully.
“Okay,” then, in a voice so quiet Hitoshi thinks he could have imagined it, Midoriya whispers, “I love you ‘Toshi.”
Ha. That’s funny. Like telling it to the pizza guy by accident.
The call clicks off.
“Love you too,” Hitoshi chuckles as he nods off.
-------
The next day he spots the 1-B girl again, this time on his way to the cafeteria.
Unfortunately, she spots him back, and starts towards him before he can pull a tactical retreat. Her stance is loose, her body language casual, but her hair and uniform are perfectly arranged.
Hitoshi runs an awkward hand through his seemingly perpetual bedhead as she approaches.
“Hey, um, you’re Midoriya’s friend, right? From general education?” On a better day, Hitoshi might protest the title, but right now he’d rather just get this conversation over with.
“Yup, that’s me.”
“Oh, good. I recognized you from the joint class simulation. I’m really sorry, but I can’t seem to remember your name?”
“Shinsou Hitoshi.” He inclines his head, hoping for a response. Honestly, he doesn’t remember her name either.
“I’m Kendo Itsuka, the class president for 1-B,” she bows politely, Hitoshi feels his quirk catch at the answer and ignores it, “actually, I was wondering if you’d heard from anyone in 1-A since yesterday.”
“No,” Hitoshi draws out, “why?”
“Well, the entire class wasn’t here yesterday, and it seems like they're not going to be here today either. Some people in our class have friends from 1-A, and none of them have been answering their calls or texts.”
Ok, that sounds eerily like what’s going on with Hitoshi. If not for that odd phone call from Midoriya yesterday, he’d probably sound as worried as Kendo. But like, on the inside.
“Do you think it’s a training thing? Their homeroom teacher makes them do some whack stuff sometimes.”
“No, because our homeroom teacher wasn’t in class today. And a bunch of other teachers have been gone unexpectedly as well.” Kendo explains, looking a bit forlorn.
“Okay, um, I’ll try and see if I can get a hold of Aizawa-Sensei?” Hitoshi finds himself offering, “Just to make sure everything is all right.”
“You would?”
“Yeah,” Hitoshi rubs the back of his neck at her surprised tone.
“Well, thanks for that! Say...” Kendo nods back at a cluster of tables, Hitoshi can pick some familiar faces from the joint class training exercise, “If your usual crowd isn’t here, do you want to sit with us instead?”
It sounds too earnest to be a pity invite or anything malicious in nature, but Hitoshi can never be too careful, “Nah, I gotta go see Present Mic about a quiz I had to make up. Thanks for the offer though.”
“No problem,” nearly all of 1-B looks up expectantly as Kendo approaches their table. She shakes her head, saying something he can’t hear over the noise of the cafeteria and reaches out to squeeze the shoulder of a kid with pale hair consolingly.
Recognizing him as the guy from the locker room yesterday does nothing to help Hitoshi’s already fast diminishing appetite. Every second he remains in the cafeteria, eating lunch takes a step further away from the land of good ideas.
For the second time in the past four months, Hitoshi spends his lunch period tucked away in a corner of the hall in front of his next classroom.
Present Mic isn’t in class today. Halfway through the period, Hitoshi asks the substitute teacher if he can go to the bathroom and ducks into a stall to call Aizawa.
He doesn’t pick up.
-------
On the fourth day, Hitoshi wakes up with a half-baked plan: if Aizawa and his little class of terrors aren’t here today either, then he’s personally going to march down to the 1-A dorms for some answers.
It’s not that big of a deal, he’s been there plenty of times for study sessions that, now that he thinks about it, were really just thinly veiled excuses to hang out. He even has a designated spot in Midoriya’s room: on the floor, next to whichever side of Midoriya Todoroki isn’t occupying. The guy’s kind of short, but he makes a good armrest.
It starts out as an invasive thought, but every glance at the unread messages he panic sent en masse in the group chat solidifies it into a task on his to-do list.
Fortunately, he’s saved from having to make that awkward walk by his phone-- which hasn’t been in silent mode since Aizawa missed their training session three days ago-- buzzing during his morning math class. A quick glance tells him the notification is from Uraraka; she’s liked one of the cursed memes he’d spammed them this morning.
Unlocking his phone, he checks the chat properly. No one has responded, but whatever messages he’s sent over the past couple days are marked ‘read’. Something in his chest lifts at the sight of a typing bubble appearing under Uraraka’s name.
The teacher clears her throat and Hitoshi stuffs his phone back into his bag. When he glances back, she’s looking at him, brows furrowed. Not in anger, for having his phone out in class, but more in... pity?
The phone stays in his bag for the rest of class. It doesn’t buzz again.
-------
Things get even weirder during lunch, when his first interaction with Uraraka after the weekend and her class’s three-day disappearing act, is her dragging him into the cafeteria by the arm.
It’s not even a casual, come-take-a-look-at-this kind of hold. She wraps both her arms around one of his and presses herself up against him, guiding him bodily to their lunch table. They get a number of strange looks; a kid he’s never met before even grins and wiggles his eyebrows at Hitoshi, which makes him want to die .
The fact that it’s Uraraka, who people often refer to as Midoriya’s girlfriend in everything but name, makes it ten times worse. Hitoshi catches a group of management students glaring at him like they’re considering cutting him up and selling his organs to make up for the money he’s going to lose them in bets.
His ears are burning by the time they reach their little table, and he’s sure his face is doing its best to imitate a lobster fresh out of a crawfish boil. Thankfully, Uraraka lets go of him when they get there, although she seems reluctant to. She takes a seat across from him, next to Todoroki, leaving him the empty chair by Iida.
Aizawa’s always hounding Hitoshi about his spatial awareness, but he’d have to be blind not to see that he’s missed something over the past couple of days. It hangs over their table, pressing on the atmosphere, and almost physically filling Midoriya and Tsu’s empty seats.
Hitoshi takes an inconspicuous glance around their table as he pops the lid off his bento: Uraraka is pushing her sprouts around her plate and Iida stares at his rice like it holds the meaning of life. Todoroki has a lunchbox today, but he’s too busy glaring at the table to open it.
“So, no little green people today,” Hitoshi asks in a halfhearted attempt to lighten the mood. He kind of regrets it when Todoroki’s glare swings over to him, but he ignores it. He doesn’t care much for Todoroki’s attitude right now.
“Oh,” Uraraka, bless her soul, snaps out of her rivière and chuckles lightly, “Ah, no, Tsu went home yesterday.”
“Really? Is everything alright?” All three of them shift suspiciously at the question.
“Yea- um, she said she just wanted to see her siblings. She’s really missed them.” Uraraka takes a big bite after answering and makes a show of chewing as Hitoshi squints at her. Outwardly, he can’t detect any falsehood in that. Tsu often remarks about how much she misses her younger siblings, but she does so in a lighthearted manner, following it up by patting the bush on Midoriya’s head and declaring him her replacement brother.
As much as Hitoshi likes her, asking about Tsu had been a dance around his real question. After all, she wasn’t the one who'd called him at one in the morning two days ago.
“And Midoriya?” The oppressing weight becomes impossibly heavier. It's almost comical how fast Uraraka straightens her face after it falls. Iida puts his chopsticks down with a sharp click. Hitoshi swears he smells something burning.
Ah, so it's Midoriya then. ‘What a problem child’ whispers a voice in the back of his head. It sounds suspiciously like Aizawa.
Hitoshi racks his mind for the contents of the phone call. Midoriya had mentioned something about being sick, hadn’t he? He can’t say for sure. For some reason, his clearest memory of the conversation is that slurred little ‘Love you’ Midoriya had blurted out at the end. Man, Hitoshi’s going to clown him so hard for that when he’s back.
“Is he feeling alright?” Evidently, that’s the wrong thing to ask. The smell of smoke grows even stronger. This time, Uraraka doesn’t fix her forlorn expression.
Just like that, the small glow of relief sitting in Hitoshi’s chest since that phone call evaporates. There’s something wrong with Midoriya. There’s something wrong with Midoriya and his friends are visibly scared for him. And Hitoshi doesn’t know-
“Hey, what-” what’s wrong with Midoriya? Hitoshi’s not nearly panicked enough to have the courage to just blurt out the question, so he switches to a lighter tone, “What Midoriya do this time? Break another bone?”
The tables around them fall quiet at the resounding clang Todoroki’s chair makes as it hits the floor.
“Todo-,” Uraraka reaches out but Todoroki practically swats her hand away as he slips around her and storms out of the cafeteria.
“Wait! Todoroki!” Uraraka nearly falls out of her chair in her haste to chase after him. Iida, eyes still trained on the ground, follows behind her wordlessly. Huffing in frustration, Hitoshi slams the lid back onto his lunch container and takes off after them.
He jogs after Iida all the way up the stairs and turns the corner just in time to see Todoroki and his ridiculous hair stomp into the boy’s bathroom.
Uraraka comes to a pause in front of the door, eyeing the “Men” sign on the door for a moment before she practically shouts, “Pardon the intrusion!” and barges right in.
There’s a high-pitched scream from inside the bathroom, followed by several yells of surprise.
“Uraraka wait!” Iida borderline squeaks as he chases after her, arm swinging. Hitoshi makes to follow and nearly gets brained for the second time this week by the door swinging open violently, this time to let out a group of slightly traumatized looking boys.
The humidity greets Hitoshi like a slap to the face as he enters the bathroom. All the mirrors are fogged over, and he can already feel his collar getting damp. Todoroki is crouched on the floor in front of the row of sinks with visible steam drifting off his shoulders. Uraraka sits on the floor next to him rubbing slow circles into his back.
For some reason, the image scares Hitoshi. Todoroki is like the antithesis of a voice of reason in their group: every other word that comes out of his mouth is an absolute trip, but he always appears calm and vaguely uninterested. The wild display of emotion, coupled with erratic quirk use is like a fishhook to the gut.
Uraraka isn’t any better. She tries to brush it off, but Hitoshi watches the way she’s extra careful of appearances in her every interaction. It’s almost worse, seeing her sitting on the floor of a boy’s bathroom, trying to get Todoroki to breathe evenly.
That’s Midoriya’s job.
“What. The. Hell. Is going on here?” Hitoshi demands, nails digging into his palm, “What is with you guys! You disappear for four days and come back like this, and Midoriya and Tsu are gone, and,” he gestures helplessly, “ What happened? ”
Warm water drips off the ceiling and lands on Hitoshi’s face. On the floor, Uraraka makes a wet sniffling sound.
“Oh, shit,” she whispers, “oh shit, Aizawa-Sensei didn’t tell you.”
“Tell me what?” he asks. Aizawa hasn’t told him jack. He won’t even answer his phone.
“Shinsou,” Uraraka starts, her voice catches halfway through, and she has to stop to take a deep breath, “Shinsou, I, Deku- Izuku,” she lets out a proper sob this time.
“Why can’t I just say it!” she cries, throwing her head back. It cracks loudly against the sink. She freezes for a moment, then goes to do it again, but Hitoshi rushes forward, sliding a hand between white ceramic and the back of her head.
Uraraka half turns, latching onto his arm instead, “Shinsou, no, listen, you- I need- you deserve to know. Iida...” she looks up expectantly, but Iida just turns head to the side, “Iida, Iida please someone needs to tell him .”
“Tell me what?” He repeats.
“That, that Deku-, Deku he-”
“He’s gone,” Todoroki rasps. Hitoshi shivers involuntarily. Suddenly, the room feels a lot cooler.
He’s gone.
He’s. Gone.
Gone...
“Gone where?” Hitoshi asks like an idiot. He knows exactly where Midoriya went. His mouth just hasn’t caught up with his brain.
“Mido- Midoriya,” Iida visibly swallows, “Midoriya passed away. Earlier this week.”
It’s an insensitive question. He shouldn’t push it. But hell, Midoriya is was his friend too and Uraraka just said he deserves to know-
“How?” Hitoshi whispers. His voice sounds further away. The water dripping from the ceiling is cold now, like freezing rain.
“It was suicide,” Todoroki’s voice is hollow in all the wrong places, “he hung himself. Right?” He turns to Uraraka, but Hitoshi doesn’t catch her reply because, all of a sudden, his brain is assaulted with images of dark curls, scarred arms, swollen knuckles, and rope -
Hitoshi’s legs tremble as he collapses onto the floor next to Uraraka. He can feel water soaking into his pants.
Midoriya’s gone. Midoriya killed himself
“Are you guys messing with me?” he wonders out loud. Some people find these kinds of things funny.
Uraraka makes a funny noise and throws herself at him, her arms tightening around his midriff. It makes it harder to breathe.
-------
Hitoshi spends the rest of the day in Recovery Girl’s office.
Initially, someone had offered to let him sit in Hound Dog’s, but he gets away with the excuse of needing to change out of his uniform, which is practically soaked at this point. Todoroki’s quirk really had done a number on it. He honestly feels bad for the next person who tries to use that bathroom. They should have left a ‘wet floor’ sign at the very least.
Recovery Girl gives him the same look his teachers have been giving him all week. At least that makes sense now. She hands him a spare gym uniform, a packet of gummies, and calls him ‘sweetheart’ twice before leaving him alone to sit on the cot.
Uraraka and Iida take a seat on their own cots on either side of him. Todoroki eyes the bed in the corner of the room, the one that Recovery Girl had jokingly designated to Midoriya, and curls himself up next to Hitoshi.
His head is right there so Hitoshi tentatively reaches up and pats the top of it. He can feel Uraraka and Iida’s gaze burning on him as he runs his fingers through the strands. Midoriya used to do this. He removes his hand.
Todoroki’s hair is still wet.
Outside of the bathroom, the air isn’t the only thing that becomes less stifling. This time both Uraraka and Iida can recount the memory with minimal pauses. Iida does fall quiet when they get to the part about getting Midoriya’s door open, but Uraraka continues by describing her brief fight with Bakugou.
“You didn’t let me see,” Todoroki tells her almost petulantly when she starts talking about the ambulance.
“You saw Deku on Friday,” she reminds him patiently, “He was really happy then.”
“He was going to go see his mother,” Todoroki murmurs next to him. Then, he leans over and rests his head on Hitoshi’s shoulder. Hitoshi can hear the way his breathing evens out.
“Umm... when did you guys last see him?” Hitoshi asks, lightly shifting his arm-- Todoroki isn’t exactly light. Midoriya had made holding him look so effortless; like the guy wasn’t pushing a good hundred and sixty pounds. Then again, he’d seen Midoriya lift the couch with one hand to get Jirou’s pencil back when it had rolled under there.
“I saw him on Friday as well, when he was leaving the dorms to go home,” Iida says.
“Same, we walked together halfway to the gate. I’m kinda kicking myself now, cause I should have walked him the whole way,” Uraraka exhales lightly, “Oh, but I texted him on Sunday,” she digs outs her phone and scrolls through it before holding it up for the three of them to see.
The conversation is something about an English assignment. Hitoshi grins at the way Uraraka has sent a photoshopped version of one of Present Mic’s promotional posters as a reaction image. The last text is from Midoriya, a key smash followed by a “omg I have a copy of that in my closet!” and a sparkly cat sticker. It’s very Midoriya: polite, cute, and somehow hero themed.
“If you ask Inko-San she’ll probably let you keep the poster,” Todoroki reminds her, reaching for his own phone, “also Midoriya texted me on Sunday too.” He pulls up his chat with Midoriya and lets them pass it around.
Hitoshi is a bit of a nosy person by nature, so he scrolls up a bit further than he suspects Iida or Uraraka might have, but Todoroki is sitting right behind him, and he doesn’t say anything at all, so he figures its fine. Most of the chat is just the two of them asking where the other is, and where on campus they should meet up. Consistent with their messenger app chat, Todoroki uses a lot of odd emoticon combinations, although Midoriya has received a disproportionately larger number of ones with hearts in them.
Midoriya also keeps asking Todoroki things about his dad. Except, instead of nerding out over Endeavor, Midoriya just calls him right afterward. Their last conversation is of the same vein: Midoriya had sent a ‘Is your dad home this weekend?’ and Todoroki replied with an ‘unfortunately’. Below is a tag noting that they were on an hour long call immediately after.
Iida’s private chat is pretty much the same: the two of them going back and forth on when to work out together. Toward the end, Iida sent a whole block of text about something and Midoriya had replied with an All Might sticker.
“It’s our schedule for the week,” Iida explains, “Midoriya felt worried that he might forget important events, so he asked me to text him a list of the ones I knew of.”
Hitoshi nods and accidentally scrolls past it to the last messages Iida had sent-- a series of texts asking Midoriya to open the door.
They’re all marked unread.
Iida politely snatches his phone back. Now, the three of them turn their attention to Hitoshi, waiting for him to share his own conversation.
His fingers shake a bit as he pulls his phone out of his pocket. The rest of them had known about Midoriya, had probably poured over those last messages multiple times before they were ready to share. Midoriya has never privately messaged him. Hitoshi barely remembers their last phone call.
Uraraka reaches over to put her hand on his shoulder, “Shinsou you don’t have to share anything if you don’t want to.”
“Yes, as your friends it is important that we value your privacy. It is completely up to you,” Iida waves his arm. Todoroki just tightens his grip on Hitoshi’s wrist.
“No, it’s just that,” he rubs the back of his neck, “I don’t exactly have a chat history with him. We just talked in our group one. And the last time I saw him was lunch on Friday.”
“Oooh, when you gave him your number right?” Uraraka teases, “he kept staring at it afterward, I think he basically memorized it. He didn’t wash his hand all afternoon.”
“Didn’t even use hand sanitizer.” Iida adds dryly, which makes Hitoshi’s stomach give a funny little lurch. Looking at his friend’s (his friend’s) earnest faces, he suddenly wants them to know about that midnight phone call too.
“Oh yeah, he called me once, like in the middle of the night. Honestly, it was just really funny, because we were both so out of it. Midoriya sounded like he hadn't slept in weeks and the phone call woke me up,” he wipes at the corner of his eye, frowning when his finger comes away wet.
“I- I don’t remember a lot of what he said,” now that he’s started, the words just won’t stop. They’re spilling out of him like he’s broken a dam and let the tide in, “he said he wasn’t feeling well? I think. Honestly, the only bit I remember was during the end, where he um--” he cuts off here, embarrassed.
“Where he?” Uraraka prompts.
“He, um, he was like ‘oh love you’ and then this guy, just hangs up.” It wasn’t like that, not really. Maybe it’s just his desperate imagination, but it had sounded more personal.
But Hitoshi has known Midoriya the shortest out of all of them; he wants to keep this one for himself.
“Oh Deku,” Uraraka giggles, “that totally sounds like something he’d do. Man, he was so nervous to call you.”
“Really?” At this point his hand is going to become a permanent fixture on the back of his neck, “I mean, he could have at least called at a reasonable time you know, so we could have talked longer. Instead of like, one in the morning on a Tuesday.”
It takes him a moment to realize that the others have fallen quiet.
“Wait, Tuesday?” Uraraka asks, face scrunched in confusion.
“Yeah, it was after the first day you guys weren’t there,” the question floats back up, “which reminds me, where were you guys this week?”
Uraraka makes a strangled noise. She looks both confused and anxious, hand half raised, lips parted like she wants to say something but is holding herself back.
“Shinsou,” Iida starts, “They confirmed Midoriya’s time of death at 3 in the morning on Monday. ”
Hitoshi recalls the voice on the other side of the phone, too dark, too deep for him to recognize as Midoriya’s when he’d picked up.
“No wait,” he scrambles for his phone, swiping over to the call log and scrolling through all his calls to Aizawa until he reaches Tuesday. Sure enough, the call is still there, except it says ‘Midoriya’ because that’s how he’s saved the unknown number.
Todoroki hooks his chin over Hitoshi’s shoulder to peer at his screen, it digs into him as he talks, “That’s not his number.”
“What?” Hitoshi feels like he’s on a boat in a hurricane with the way his stomach has been rising and flopping all damn day, “That’s not possible, I literally spoke to him!”
“Shinsou,” Iida starts out awkwardly, “It’s possible that you could have--”
“That I could have what?” Shinsou bites, “That I could have imagined it? It’s literally in my call log. I saved it as his name on my phone because I had a whole ass conversation with him.”
“A conversation you don’t remember,” Todoroki and his sharp chin add unnecessarily. Hitoshi kind of wants to shove him off the cot by now.
“Boys, let's be rational about this,” Uraraka starts, “Shinsou, are you absolutely sure it was Deku you talked to.”
“Yes,” he may not remember the specifics of the conversation, but he recalls the name, the way Midoriya had repeated his, small and soft, “I’m sure.”
“Ok,” Uraraka gives him a small smile, like she's trying to be reassuring, “Do you think we should talk to Aizawa-Sensei about this?”
“No!” Hitoshi blurts out. Talking to his friends is one thing, but taking what is rapidly starting to sound like an exceptionally cruel fever dream to the guy essentially holding Hitoshi’s future in his expulsion-trigger-happy hands is another, “Let’s not do that.”
He glances down at the number on his phone, “You guy’s sure Midoriya didn’t use, like, someone else's phone?”
“Shinsou,” Uraraka starts, face is drawn, “there’s no way he could have called you Tuesday.”
Oh, yeah. How could he forget? It was because Midoriya had-
Midoriya was-
Gritting his teeth, Hitoshi impulsively presses ‘call’ on the number.
The phone rings.
Once.
Twice.
“Hello?” someone picks up.
“Hello?” The voice is too dark, too deep to be Midoriya’s.
“Is anyone there?” The voice drifts further away and Hitoshi blurts out a “Hi!” to stop them from hanging up. Like any time he speaks, his quirk reaches out, but the phone means that it can’t grab at the person when they respond.
“Hey, umm, I’m sorry but who is this?” The conversation seems strangely flipped.
Talking to this veritable stranger seems like a stupid idea, but Hitoshi needs answers. Besides, he’d rather his friends believe he has no sense of stranger danger than think he’s delusional. At least the first one can be trained out of him.
“I’m, uh, Hitoshi.” In front of him, Uraraka gestures violently. He ignores her.
“Hitoshi, Hitoshi...” the stranger repeats, pulling at the syllables of his name, “sorry, I don’t know a Hitoshi.”
“Ah, no I um, I was looking for my friend,” Hitoshi adds, “He called me from this number a couple of days ago, and I wanted to reach him again.”
Damn, even talking about it smarts. How’s Hitoshi going to do this for...
For the rest of his life basically.
“Oh, uhm, wait a minute,” there’s the sound of paper rustling, “what was your friend’s name again?”
“Izuku,” he can feel Iida’s glare on his back, Hitoshi knows not to give strangers people’s full names, plus that was what Midoriya had introduced himself as over the phone “He called me two days ago, super early in the morning.”
“I don’t remember anyone coming in then,” the voice muses, “What does this friend of yours look like?”
“He’s um short? Curly hair?” Hitoshi tries to be as generic as possible.
“Eye color?” the stranger asks. Well, that’s an odd question.
“Green?” he offers.
“Was that a question or an answer?”
“Answer.”
“Ok, thank you. Do you know if he was left-handed or right-handed?”
“Why do you need to know this again?” The thought of this being a prank call is becoming more and more of a possibility. Todoroki nods like he can hear his thoughts, his pointy chin on his shoulder helping to drive the point home.
“Well, you’re the one who asked for him,” the guy sounds frustrated now, “just, what hand does he write with?”
“Umm...” Uraraka waves her arms in the air, miming holding two pencils, “Both?”
“Does he have a preference?”
“Listen I have no idea-”
“Ok, thanks for the info. He isn’t here right now, but if I find him, I’ll send you a text. I'm not allowed to call in the evenings, it might wake them up.”
“Ok-”
The call ends.
“Umm..Shinsou?” Uraraka starts.
“Yeah, that sounded like the person who called me,” Hitoshi admits. The way he’d repeated his name had been nearly identical. It makes the back of his neck prickle.
“It sounds like a practical joke,” In Tsu’s absence, Uraraka is the one who says it out loud. Which, fine, Hitoshi can accept that. It’s not like he believed it was his last conversation with a close friend or something. (I love you Hi-)
“Yeah,” he relents, “yeah it does.”
“Shinsou I still think we should be telling Aizawa-Sensei,” Iida adds, “even as a joke, this is taking it too far-”
“Nah it’s fine,” Hitoshi closes his phone and tosses it on the bed table, “just leave it.”
He flops back on the cot and throws an arm over his eyes, both to block out the stupid bright lights in the nurse’s office, and to signal that he’s done with this conversation.
Todoroki lies down next to him, his goddamn spiny ass elbows digging into Hitoshi’s ribs. Uraraka leans over to snap a picture of them. Iida is still going on about stranger danger.
Hitoshi wants Midoriya back so bad it aches .
-------
The text notification wakes him.
Some asshole (likely Todoroki) had moved his phone, so it rests directly below his ear. So, when it vibrates, Hitoshi jolts awake in a tangle of clothes.
The sun is still out, but low enough that everything in the nurse’s office is bathed in orange. Hitoshi yawns loudly and leans forward until he feels his back pop. His hands feel numb, he can’t make a proper fist with them, and his chest hurts like there had been something heavy pressing on it that has just been lifted.
He glances at his phone; the banner notification says that he has two new texts from ‘Midoriya’.
Oh yeah.
Midoriya.
Standing up, Hitoshi stretches again and peers through the curtains separating the cots from the rest of the office. Uraraka is slumped in one of the plastic waiting chairs, doing something on her phone. She catches sight of him and waves.
“Hey Shinsou, did you have a nice nap?”
He yawns again in response, “Whacha doing?”
“Oh, Recovery Girl said that we could go, but we wanted to stay together, so we were waiting for you to wake up. You were sleeping pretty deeply,” she lifts her phone, “I was just chatting with Tsu. She says hi by the way. Iida went back to the dorms, but I think Todoroki was looking for a vending machine. He should be back soon.”
He nods, settling down in one of the chairs next to her. Uraraka fidgets a bit before turning to face Hitoshi. She reaches out and places a hand on his arm. Uraraka has been a lot touchier today. Hitoshi wonders if, in Midoriya’s absence, she’s going to become the friend who gives hugs and links arms and all that. Sure, she’s done some of that before, but never as much as Midoriya had. And especially not with him or Todoroki.
Hitoshi wonders which one of Midoriya’s mantles he’s going to have to assume. Probably the ‘primary problem child’ one; someone has to make sure Aizawa goes grey before he hits fifty.
“I’m so sorry,” Uraraka starts, “Shinsou I’m so sorry no one told you. It’s just that everyone thought Aizawa-Sensei was going to, but still, that’s not an excuse. You’re one of Midoriya’s friends. One of our friends, and someone should have let you know.” It seems like Uraraka is already shooting for the ‘fastest rambler’ spot. She’s going to have tough competition with Iida on that one.
“Hey, its fi-” but it’s not fine. Not really. Hitoshi’s eye catches on the notification banner on his phone screen.
“Oh yeah, that prank caller actually texted back by the way,” he types in his password and opens the messages, tilting the screen so Uraraka can read too.
The first message is just a simple ‘hey’, the second one seems to be a picture. As he presses to download it, Hitoshi vehemently hopes it isn’t a virus or something. Can people even send viruses as pictures?
He tilts the phone back towards Uraraka and gets to watch in real time as her face twists in horror and she brings her hands up to cover her mouth.
“Shinsou-” she scrambles off the chair and dives toward the waste basket, her hair falling over her face as she dry heaves into it.
Hitoshi looks at the screen, at first, the image doesn’t make any sense, but he feels bile rise in the back of his own throat as he realizes what he’s looking at.
It's Midoriya. It’s Midoriya for sure and the worst part of it is that he can tell it’s Midoriya.
Midoriya isn't supposed to look like that.
The head and upper shoulders peeking out of the sheet are pale and stiff, lit by light reflecting off the metal table underneath. The start of cuts, bound shut with thick dark thread, are visible toward the top of the chest. Its neck and jaw are purple, the color of fresh bruising, even though it's supposed to have been days.
Its eyes are open.
Its eyes are green.
Midoriya does look like that: it has the dark curls, the large eyes (now wide and glazed over), the somewhat childish face, the rounded nose, the freckles.
Midoriya’s hair. Midoriya’s eyes. Midoriya’s face. Midoriya’s corpse.
He just got sent a picture of Midoriya’s corpse.
Hitoshi almost drops his phone when it buzzes again.
Midoriya: Is this ur friend?