Purple Band-Aids (ShinKami)

Chapter Thirty-Eight

He had never felt so alone.

He's never had so many people who cared for him, and yet, without his mom's support, he feels alone.

Without knowing where his mom went.

Knowing she left him without him knowing. Having to find out by going to his old home for himself.

Kaminari broke on the way back to the dorms.

It was so sudden and so utterly heartbreaking to see.

Aizawa didn't know what to do, so he pulled the car to the side of the road, and tried to comfort Kaminari, but since he's not all that great at it, he had no idea how to really help him.

All he could think about was bashing Kaminari's parents.

After full-on sobbing for over ten minutes, Kaminari passed out, and Mr. Aizawa had never had to deal with that before, so he was extremely nervous about messing it up.

It had been well over two hours since finding out about his parents leaving when Kaminari finally broke.

Mr. Aizawa is surprised it even took this long for him to finally crack.

It's extremely infuriating to Mr. Aizawa that Kaminari's parents would do such a thing.

There were tears streaming down Kaminari's face at first. He hadn't noticed since he was so quiet and the radio was on for some background noise. He doesn't know how long it took for him to notice that the blond was crying, but one of the times, or maybe the first time, the blond sniffled, Mr. Aizawa had turned around and seen the poor kid facing away from him, hand covering his mouth and body shaking.

His head was resting on the glass, and be was gripping his face so hard, his knuckles turned white.

It was devastating.

Now they're at the dorms, but Mr. Aizawa doesn't want to wake the blond up. Who knows how much sleep he really gets or if he'll be able to sleep after he's woken up.

Carrying him is not an option.

Dammit. Should he drive around some more? Just a bit longer?

Kaminari then wakes so suddenly and loud, gasping and pulling at the seatbelt.

Aizawa jumps in surprise.

"Kaminari."

Seeing the fear in the blonds eyes disappear at the sound of his voice fills him with pride for some reason. His voice is enough to calm the blond down.

Enough for the blond to feel safe.

The blond turns to him, hands falling to his lap and smiling at the teacher.

"Thank you for everything," he starts, before unbuckling his seatbelt and looking around for anything he could forget, "uh, I'm going for groceries tomorrow, so if you come by and I'm not here, that's why."

His talking is slow, like if his speech is barely keeping up with his thoughts.

"Uh, also, um," he opens the car door, only taking the papers his mom needs to sign in order to get the prescriptions he needs, "I'm really sorry about today," he remembers what he was going to say, "It must've been annoying to deal with all the driving and emotion."

Aizawa doesn't understand how he can still laugh and act like everything is okay.

Like he's okay.

"It's nice being around you, kid. Don't even worry about," he says, waving off the kid's worries. 

He watches as Kaminari's smile shows in his eyes for a quick second before his smile falls completely, not even pretending anymore.