A Ray of Hope for Tenya Iida

Contemplation

(AN: Finallyyyyyy, another chapterrrrr! Sorry this took so long, personal things happened in my life. Enjoy!)

(TW: Mentions of death, poor sleeping and eating habits, and poor mental health, and on purpose poor spelling because Denki's writing is lazy lol)

Denki's pov: Everyone kept glancing at me, wondering if I'd spill what I knew. Of course, I wouldn't. I wasn't even supposed to know in the first place. He wasn't this depressed when I saw him last time, something was wrong. How could I help him, though? What'd happened that made it this bad? Maybe if I went to him alone, he'd tell me. Aoyama was staring at me in class. I'd just sat down, Kirishima'd explained that Iida'd be late, and I was already getting stared at. I mean, Iida probably feels like this all the time. Now that I think about it, we're constantly criticizing him for the way he acts and then ask him for help when we don't understand something. He's always there whenever we need him, no matter the time. When does the dude sleep? Maybe he hibernates during breaks and sleeps whenever no one needs him? What if he powers off like a robot would and then wakes up as soon as he's needed? He could be sleeping in class for all we know, and we'd never even realize it unless we looked straight at him. But then again, he might just wake up whenever he's looked at. Why was I thinking so hard on this? Probably because no one can act normal all the time when they're up at 3 am, tutoring someone on basic stuff. Does he run on orange juice like his engines maybe? Maybe he was tired because he hadn't had enough orange juice? I decided I'd get an orange juice at lunch and bring it to him just in case. What were we having for lunch? I was starving, I couldn't wait to sink my teeth into something like rice, or pizza- OH! Or a burger! I hoped it was a burger, that'd be delicious today!

"Psst, mon ami." Aoyama whispered. He was holding a note on bubblegum pink paper out to me. I took it and read it. 

"You know about Iida's sudden absence, don't you? ~xoxo, Aoyama-kun." I scribbled back quickly while avoiding writing on his valentine pink cursive and handed it over. 

"y u wanna know?" He looked at it for a moment, then wrote something else. 

"You don't know the whole story; I can guarantee it. I know everything. What do you know? That way, I can save my time from writing the whole story. ~xoxo, Aoyama-kun." This guy really thought he knew all that? Well, I could prove him wrong and show him how much I know. I put my pencil to work and then tossed it at him. 

"his brother's in the hospital rn, he's depressed in his room." He had a look of mild concern and lowered his head while fluently signing is response. He handed it over and watched me as I read it.

"Alright, mon ami, you know more than most. His brother passed on in the hospital today, so he's going through a lot right now. It's truly a tragedy that he wasn't able to help swiftly enough. ~xoxo, Aoyama-kun." I could feel the confusion seeping onto my face while I read the note. His brother died? But he got there quickly, called 911! He did everything just right, didn't he? Why'd his brother still die? How'd Aoyama even find out?

"how do i know ur telling the truth?"

"Check records on Ingenium on the pro-heroes' section on Wikipedia. They work quickly to update those records. ~xoxo, Aoyama-kun." I looked it up and sure enough, Ingenium was listed as deceased since this morning. This was so messed up.

"how'd u find out?"

"I watch things happen often, it's very easy to find out what's happening in this school. Iida-kun falls apart a lot more than you'd think, for example. Aizawa sensei knows he's not doing well, but you've been the one out of the class who's seen the most of his emotions, I believe. Well, other than me. And possibly Bakugou-kun, he caught him crying at one point ~xoxo, Aoyama-kun." I was the person who saw the most of how he felt? But I hadn't even seen much! When was Iida crying? Why didn't Bakugou bring anything up? Is that what he meant by "Iida was hiding something"? How was he able to hide everything so well? Why didn't anyone else know about this? Is this what Aizawa sensei called Iida out to talk about? That's probably why he was walking so fast into his room. Had he been crying in his room when we were trying to talk to him? We'd probably been bothering him when talking to us was the last thing he wanted to do, especially talking to me. Could I talk to Bakusquad about this? They wanted to know what I knew, but I couldn't just spill a secret like that without having permission, right? But, Aoyama already knew and he told me... This was way too confusing! I needed to find a way to think about this in a smart way. 

"Denki!" the teacher called. 

"Oh! Huh?" I was too distracted to think about who was talking to me or what class it was.

"You need to pay attention, everyone else's working on the assignment." The teacher was frowning at me.

"Right, my bad!" I smiled and laughed a bit, playing it off as a joke before working on the assignment.

Aizawa's pov: I'd gotten news Iida'd skipped class for the rest of the day. I don't blame him, I know how it hurts to lose someone so important from them not caring about themself enough. Oboro was the same way, he was a ray of light that forgot to take care of himself, too. Tensei'd been a good friend, too. He'd been in our friend group we called "The Rooftop Squad", and he was the reason to our dumb choices. After Oboro died, though, Tensei drifted off a bit. He'd already been upset for a while and was starting to fall apart, but Oboro really set it off. His smiles were always forced after that. Maybe I should've reached out or something. I could've done something to prevent this, right? I couldn't change the past, but now that I knew, I could help others maybe. Now the problem was how to help Iida and get him to open up. Nothing else was working to get him to take care of himself, maybe I needed to get his parents to sign off on mandatory therapy? How would he handle something like that, though? Sometimes that can cause more problems than solutions, and I didn't want to make him afraid of going to a psychiatrist. This kid had to be the main priority, what would work best for him? What were his main issues at the point, other than Tensei dying? Was the pressure of being class president too much for him? He was already stressed before anything happened with Tensei. What wasn't he doing for himself? I knew that there were some concerns about him not eating or sleeping, maybe I needed to put someone with him to get him to take better care of himself? 

Which student would I nominate for that kind of a roll, though?