Midoriya comes to in a room with several other patients, his bed separated from their quiet talking by thin walls of hanging curtains. Ji-woo sits in a chair to his left, patiently scrolling through her phone, but her freckles are flared a bright, neon blue that clues him in to her agitation.
She glances up when he pulls himself into a seated position. The pain in his ribs is no more than a deep ache and he wonders how much medicine they'd had to pump into him for that.
"Your mother's on her way."
He feels calmer than he should at the words and blames it on whatever drugs they'd given him. Under normal circumstances he's sure there would have been some sort of panic attack involved. Instead there is only a looming sense of dread.
He still doesn't have a story. "The burn."
"What?"
"The burn," she repeats, pressing a hand into the back of her neck. "You used to always come in with bruises and burns," Ji-woo says, "You still come in with injuries you didn't leave with. I always mentioned it when I noticed, but..." she pauses, testing the next words in her head before continuing. "I gave you space. I was going to wait until you were comfortable enough to talk to me yourself. Then this happens. Don't lie to me Midoriya. Who did this to you?"
He freezes up, he doesn't want to lie to her, even if he's been lying to her from the start. He doesn't want to lie. But, what else is there for a liar to do?
"The burn was an accident."
"And your broken ribs?"
"A mistake," he mumbles, looking away.
Ji-Woo watches him silently, waiting for him to continue. But, he still doesn't know what to say, doesn't know what lies to use. The truth is a death sentence and lies could catch the attention of police. He needs something that won't require their interference, something that doesn't involve
other people. He studies his hands, studies the iv taped to the back of it.
"I tried to kill myself."
Midoriya doesn't know what kind of reaction he expects from the woman, whether it be outrage or silence he's not sure. The boy doesn't even know how he would react in her stead. He doesn't know what else to say, what else to do. Does he need to say more? Does she want him to say more?
He can't even bring himself to check the glow of her freckles.
"I wasn't thinking straight," Izuku murmurs, "I climbed a building that wasn't high enough and landed on something, a wall or fence or..." his hands shake. Even if his attempted suicide is a lie, it feels real. He remembers his first encounter with Reo, remembers the feeling of falling, of landing.
There have been so many moments throughout his short vigilante career that Midoriya remembers being marked for death, ones that he'd escaped alive by luck alone.
"Midoriya—"
He cuts the woman off.
He has sins he wishes to confess.
"It... It wouldn't shut up." Midoriya Izuku has told many lies, his next words are not one of them. The voice in his head was a secret just a few years younger than his dreams of becoming a hero. "It's always laughing," the boy chokes out, on the verge of tears. The monitor next to him beeps wildly, tracking his heart as his hand flies to his chest, bunching up the fabric of his hospital gown beneath his clenched fist. "It's al–always saying that I," he gasps, chest shuddering, side lighting up again with fire, "That I!"
There's been so many people that Izuku's failed, Eri and Thirteen and Aizawa and—
"Midoriya," Ji-Woo says quietly. She takes his other hand in hers, squeezing it gently. "It's alright. You don't have to relive it."
He covers his mouth with a hand, choking back sobs as he curls in on himself. Ji-Woo's hands are warm around his.
Midoriya Izuku thinks himself weak, thinks himself a loner, a nobody, a deku . No one will question his lie.
Even Midoriya, one of the only two people who knows the truth behind his injuries, has started to fall for it. It doesn't seem such a stretch for him to say that he caved beneath the pressure in his head, that his sun collapsed beneath the weight of his caustic thoughts.
He eventually tires himself out, falling asleep again and disappearing into a peaceful oblivion where even dreams dare not disturb him.
Inko arrives while he's still out, Ji-Woo pulling her to the side and reassuring her he'd be fine. She's the one to explain to the woman what Izuku had told her.
In any other circumstance Midoriya is sure he would've woken up to his mother's hysterical
sobbing. But as it is, he's the only one that doesn't.
He wakes up several hours later to Inko's hand replacing Ji-woo's. She's fallen asleep in the chair he'd last seen his instructor in. Her head hangs at an odd angle, wrapped tightly in her pink cardigan with Ji-Woo's jacket draped over her shoulders.
He watches the rise and fall of her shoulders with a deep, aching sadness that floods the entirety of his chest.
He never wanted to hurt her, not like this.
One of the curtains around his bed slides open, revealing a tall Chinese woman dressed in a doctor's coat. Her ashe blue hair is pulled back in a high ponytail, two long horns sprouting at the edge of her hairline. "You're awake," she says, surprised. "I thought you'd sleep longer, but at least this way I'll be able to talk to you." She picks up the chart at the end of the bed, reading over it. "How's your pain level?"
"Better," he croaks. The doctor hands him a cup of water from one of the bedside stands. He mutters a quick thank you before taking a few small sips. "I feel like I can actually breathe now which is nice," he laughs softly, eyes crinkling shut. His smile is small and tainted with the weight of his lies, but it's a genuine one.
"Good. If you feel like it's getting worse at any time, call for one of the nurses and they'll get you sorted out. I'm Dr. Sui by the way, your attending physician." She glances briefly at his mother before turning back to him. "The woman who brought you in gave me a run down of your situation. If it's difficult for you to talk about right now or if you want to wait till your mother wakes up before answering anything then we can save it for later."
Izuku straightens, sobering himself through the light hazy of his pain meds. "Now is fine."
She bobs her head in confirmation before pressing ahead. "I'd like to know if there are any other injuries you may have sustained in your fall. We want to make sure there's nothing we might've overlooked."
"Right," Izuku murmurs softly, glancing at one of the curtains when he sees it flutter. "I think I hit my head? I don't know if it was very hard, but it was bleeding a bit when I woke up."
She glances up at him, pen hovering over the clipboard. "You were knocked unconscious?" She asks.
Midoriya nods his head carefully, hands fidgeting in his lap, he flinches when doing so tugs at his IV. "Yes."
"Is there anything else you can think of?" He shakes his head.
"Alright, there's a few more questions I want to ask if that's okay? This time about your recent psychological state, but those can wait if you're not ready."
After some hesitation Midoriya agrees. "That's fine," he says, shrinking in on himself. "You're allowed to ask me to stop at any time," she explains carefully, "or simply not answer
something if you find you're feeling uncomfortable, okay?"
He makes a quiet noise in confirmation, mentally preparing himself for what's to come. He'd lied to Ji-Woo about the origin of his injuries, but he hadn't lied to her about where he was mentally. There were many times the voice in his head had pushed him too close to his breaking point growing up and while it'd been easier to handle in the last year with his push towards vigilantism, it didn't mean that it'd gone away.
Midoriya had deeper wounds for it to prod at now.
Izuku knows his mind isn't a very user friendly place. When people speak of drowning out the demons in their head he doubts that very many people have demons like his own. He knows there's something wrong with him, knows his thoughts aren't normal ones. In the back of his mind the voice rears its head. "Doctors too will file your fangs and cut your claws and clip your wings, perhaps more viciously so than their law enforcement counterparts," his demon laughs viciously. "They'll lock you in a cell of a different kind."
"This first question might be a little hard to answer, so remember you don't have to respond if you don't want to." When Midoriya shows no signs of changing his mind, the doctor continues. "Have you attempted suicide before this?"
He tenses, caught off guard by the question even after the woman's warning. "No," he croaks out weakly.
"Do you know if there's anything specific that might've spurred you into this recent episode?" "No," Izuku repeats, falling further into himself, sun flickering.
"No bullying?" his doctor asks, eyeing him with a raised brow. "Your instructor warned me there was a possibility of it."
His hand reaches for the back of his neck. There's a new set of bandages there. "It was an accident," he murmurs, pausing for only a moment to gather thoughts, "They told me they have trouble controlling their quirk."
While Izuku's story was a majority lies, the repercussions of it were very real. Implicating anyone by name or quirk or even vague association could be dangerous. An investigation could punch too many questionable holes through his lies and questionable holes in a cover story like his has every chance of drawing Detective Tsukauchi's unwavering eyes.
"Can I ask who?" Dr. Sui asks, breaking him from his thoughts.
"What?"
She rephrases the question, "Who left you with the burn on your neck?"
Midoriya's mouth snaps closed, keeping his silence. It's best to leave that part of the story open ended.
The doctor sighs, moving on. "Are suicidal thoughts something you experience frequently?"
"Not willingly," Izuku mutters truthfully. "Usually they're easy to ignore, more intrusive thoughts than anything." His fists clench in his lap. Usually such thoughts come in the form of Bakugou's taunting laugh. "Wish for a quirk in your next life and–" His words must have been recycled a million times over by now. "–take a swan dive off the roof!" He's certain they're destined to be
continuously recycled in his head till the end of time
"I don't want to die," Izuku sighs. "I just wanna sleep for a long time," he murmurs, more to himself than to the doctor. He's just so tired.
This seems to be what it takes to ease the tension in the doctor's shoulders. She marks something down on his chart, black eyes a little softer than they'd been before. "If it's worth anything," she says, looking up. "I'm glad to see that you're still with us."
Midoriya feels his heart clench in his chest. "I'm glad too," he croaks.
"I have more to talk with you about, but it'd be best to discuss it with your mother." Dr. Sui casts another glance at the sleeping woman. "It's important." Her voice tolds a more serious tone now and it sets a bitter kind of fear bubbling up in the teenager.
Izuku nods, leaning towards her chair and gently shaking her shoulder. "Mom?" he murmurs quietly. "The doctor's here."
She comes around slowly, then all at once. She tears up immediately upon seeing the boy up and moving and Midoriya has to hold his breath to keep from doing the same. "Izuku," she whispers hoarsely. She cups one of his cheeks with a cool hand, before it slips down to clasp his hand tightly. She brings his hand up to her lips, kissing it with shaking fingers. She holds them up to her forehead, resting her head on top of them. "My baby," she weeps.
"Hi, mom," he chokes quietly, "Sorry for worrying you."
Dr. Sui gives them a few minutes of privacy to recompose themselves before she comes back with a tablet that she holds up for them, showing off a set of CT scans he doesn't remember taking.
"I'll be frank with you both," she starts, eyes turning towards Midoriya to address him directly. "At the moment you have a total of five fractured ribs, one is a partial fracture and four are completely so. Of the four that are broken through, two are displaced," she explains, drawing a red ring around two areas that show the gory truth of what he's been living with the last few days. The image shows just how severely the two ribs overlap on themselves like gory tectonic plates. "Besides this you also have a costochondral separation on this rib," Dr. Sui says, pointing to one of the displaced ones. "Which means your rib and the cartilage that connects it to your sternum are no longer attached to one another leaving a rather large piece of your 6th rib free floating in your chest. Usually when someone breaks their rib there's no need for surgery, but with the amount that you've broken along with the displacement of your 7th rib and the detached segment of your 6th, surgery will be required in order to correct it."
Izuku feels his chest tighten, he hadn't thought it'd be that bad. Beside him his mother lets out a quiet whimper.
"Because of your ribs' displacement the current diameter of your ribcage is a few inches smaller than it usually is. If left alone it's likely to heal as it is and would cause permanent difficulty breathing, constant bouts of fatigue and dizziness, as well as leave you at a perpetually higher risk for contracting pneumonia. This would make any future physical activities much harder for you, even simple tasks like climbing stairs or walking could become chores." The woman sets the tablet down, directing her full attention to him. "Had your 6th rib shifted any further you'd be dead by now," she tells him.
His mother lets out a choked sob from beside him but can't bring himself to face her. He bows his head, face flushed with shame and fear.
"–'m sorry," Inko cries, "I'm so sorry!"
His mother is always repeating those words, always because she thinks she's failed him in some way.
He wonders how many more times he'll make her say them.
Izuku is the only one that should be apologizing. He caused this, caused her heartache, her tears. But, there's no changing anything from here on. He's committed to this story for the sake of continuing to save others.
That doesn't prevent tears from welling up at the sound of his mother's sobbing.
In order to save his dream he must first crush the hearts of those closest to him. When their dying suns have collapsed into black holes he will be the gravity that birthed their singularities. He is the cause, the sole reason for their pain.
Dr. Sui allows them to recover themselves again, though his mother is still sniveling when the woman presses forward with the conversation. "The good news is that the surgery is a relatively easy one, I've performed it many times in the past on patients in worse conditions than Midoriya's. You'll be living with some titanium plates bolted inside your chest for the rest of your life, but there shouldn't be any long term problems unless you're trying to get through airport security," the
doctor jokes, trying to ease the watery tension of the room. "Money also shouldn't be a concern with you attending UA. They have very good medical insurance built into their tuition costs and while it's usually geared towards hero course students it should foot a majority of your bill. We'll be able to refer you out to Recovery Girl post-surgery which will help shorten your recovery time as well as do away with the need for most if not all physical therapy you might've needed otherwise."
The doctor explains a few more things in detail to them before handing over more paperwork for Inko to sign and setting up a time for them to perform the surgery tomorrow. "It'll leave a few rather noticeable scars, even with the use of Recovery Girl's quirk."
He nods grimly. This wouldn't be the first time he'd received a nasty scar, just another reminder of his failures. He tenses. Will they question my other scars? He sighs as the two women step out for a moment to fill out more paperwork at the front desk and to perhaps discuss the answers to the questions the doctor had asked him earlier. He leans back in the bed, ribs twinging with pain. Worst comes to worst I can tell them they're old wounds, scars from times that have long passed. It wouldn't technically be a lie after all. He had the mark of phantom burns to prove it.
Reo stares at the news article in front of him in total disbelief. He only needs to read it once before it's been permanently ingrained in his head. He doesn't need to read it through the second time, nor the third to be able to be able to recite it perfectly line by line.
The Aftermath of the USJ Incident
By Akihito Jun April 16, 2232
(Disclaimer: Musutafu Hero Reporting and its writers neither support nor condone any form of
illegal activities including that of vigilantism.)
It has been several days since the vigilante known as Pied Piper was revealed to be involved in the UA attack that took place on April 11th. While no new information on the vigilante's current condition has been released, the true severity of the injuries he received Wednesday have come to light in a new interview with one of the witnesses.
Todoroki Shouto, son of number two hero Endeavor and student of class 1-A was there to see the events at the USJ unfold. Surprisingly it was Todoroki who approached me first, set on clearing any misunderstandings people had set against Piper after the incident.
"He [Pied Piper] showed up with the villains, but I only ever saw him fighting against them. The first thing he did coming through was take out the person with the warping quirk," Todoroki-kun told me, starting his story. He then went on to describe how the both 1-A's students and Piper had fought side by side. "He [Piper] and I tried to fight against the villain All Might had to take down. He was already running directly at it when he yelled for me to freeze it in place."
"And did you?" I asked him, wanting a bit of clarification from the teen.
"Yes. It wasn't enough though, that's how he [Pied Piper] got injured. My quirk wasn't strong enough," the hero hopeful recounts darkly. It was a terrifying sentiment coming from a powerhouse such as Endeavor's son, one that showed me just how strong of an enemy 1-A had been left to face. "He took a direct hit from that monster," Todoroki stated, looking grim.
In an earlier article I quickly addressed the fact that Piper had been injured during the fight, but the interviews referenced in it greatly under exaggerated Piper's condition. When asked, Todoroki-kun cited that the force of the punch was far "more than enough to break bones" and claimed that the attack had even knocked the vigilante unconscious for a time. "I thought he was dead... I thought I'd watched him die," Todoroki recounted in one of his many bone chilling statements.
The public is in an uproar as the whereabouts of Pied Piper remain unknown. How the vigilante managed to escape despite such injuries is still unclear. Some claim the work of a healing quirk while others call it a failure on the side of heroes and police. Search efforts for the Piper have slowed recently in favor of tracking down the main villains responsible for the attack. But, as the public's approval rating begins dropping dangerously it is expected for the Chief of the Police to make an official statement soon on the state of the vigilante's investigation.
On UA's side of things Principal Nezu has yet to comment on the vigilante's involvement in the USJ attack. But, did hold a short press conference discussing the school's new security measures as well as its plans to continue holding its annual sports festival.
Todoroki-kun's full interview transcript can be read here.
© 2232 Musutafu Hero Reporting, a division
of Musutafu Daily Network, LLC.
Reo reaches blindly for his phone, hands shaking as he dials Izuku's number. There's no answer.
Fear bubbles up dangerously in his chest, quirk pulling bits and pieces of information on just what can happen to someone who's ribs have been broken. He pictures Midoriya suffocating beneath a collapsed lung, pictures him dead. He dials again. And again. And again.
He's just sleeping. He's only sleeping, is what he tells himself to calm down. On the fifth call someone answers.
It's not Izuku.
"Hello? Tsukauchi-kun?" The voice on the other end of the phone surprises him. "It's Inko, Izuku's mom. He's resting right now. He um... He's at the hospital right now," she says, voice breaking over the phone.
Reo feels his whole body freeze, heart slowing dangerously in his chest. "The hospital?" the boy asks, voice dropping to a whisper.
"He'll be fine but... You're his only friend Tsukauchi-kun, so did you ever notice if... if he..." there's a long drag of silence broken only by the woman's periodical sniveling. Reo holds his breath, waiting for her next words. "No, nevermind. I'm sorry for worrying you. Izuku's going to be fine, he's supposed to have surgery sometime tomorrow. You should be able to come see him after school Wednesday if he's feeling up to it though I doubt he'd turn away a chance to see you," she laughs wetly.
"Surgery?" he asks, voice cracking. "What... What happened?" he asks quietly, sinking back into his seat. He's scared of the answer.
"I actually just ran into your mother earlier. I didn't realize she worked here," she laughs weakly. "You can ask her, I just... I don't think I can explain it anymore today," she whispers.
"Right," he breaths, "Right. I'll be there Wednesday then."
"Thank you." The sincerity of these words stab at him.
The call ends and Reo's concern quickly turns to cold anger. Midoriya had lied to him, again. But more than being angry with Izuku he's angry with himself for not noticing the lie, for falling for it despite the obvious state he was in.
Surgery... Surgery... The word works its way through his head on repeat. He needed surgery and no one even realized. Not me, not his mother, not anyone at school. He curses, running a hand through his hair, tugging at it harshly.
"Did they find you out?" he asks his empty room. "Was it worth it? Was saving people worth it, Izuku?"
"Of course," Midoriya's voice laughs softly in his head. "It's always been worth it."
The teen curses again, louder this time, slamming his fist into his desk. There's a resounding
silence that follows, ears ringing with static. "Dumbass," he murmurs. Tsukachi Reo knows a lot. But, recently he never seems to know enough.