Spray-Painted Truths (Denki Angst)

Surprise Visit

no mentions of anything that hasn't been covered yet

***

"Kaminari." His voice was just as stiff as I remembered, a bit of a deeper edge to it. He looked... older, tired, a bit more drastically than Bakugo had. "When they said you were-... I wasn't sure what to-... Ah, I'm sorry. I'm just.. glad to see you."

He's the type of guy you'd never even think of seeing disheveled, so his rattled demeanor was off putting, to say the least. I couldn't think of anything to say. I just smiled weakly and nodded as Dr. Martin urged him to sit down.

"I'm going to take a bit of a back seat to this conversation. You boys feel free to talk." The doctor replied and walked back to go sit at his desk. I was turned the opposite way to face Iida, who was sitting rigidly on the couch. Iida was one of the last people I expected to be so insistent on coming to see me, but I found myself a little relieved that it wasn't anyone I was particularly close to.

"I... would like to apologize." The words that left his mouth were deeply confusing; I couldn't understand why he looked so guilty. It made me uncomfortable. Maybe it was one of those 'I'm sorry this happened to you' moments, but it didn't feel like it, not with the way he was looking at me.

"Why?" I asked hesitantly. It was the first thing I'd said to him since he got here, and I wasn't really in the mood to put up a conversational front. I was tired and weak and hungry and I really just wanted to wheel myself out to lunch. But it was kinda good to see him, so I'd humor this a little longer.

"I feel responsible." Iida started slowly. "For a lot of what happened. And for not being as insistent with you back in the day. I know the kidnapping was out of my control, but I feel I could have... prevented this from happening to you. There were a lot of circumstances that I-.. I did not disclose soon enough, and I failed to check up on you that evening."

He was being vague in a way that made me feel prematurely defensive. Circumstances he didn't disclose? What was he saying?

"What circumstances? I don't see how anything that happened could've been your fault.."

"Nobu Isamu." Iida said firmly, and I could tell he was trying his hardest to meet my eyes. "He was the circumstance."

Nobu Isamu? The name sounded eerily familiar. Not a classmate, no, couldn't have been anyone I knew closely, but my mind was taking me back to that night. Nobu Isamu...

The party.

"Nobu Isamu? I think he was.. there that night. He tried to help me home before-.." I trailed off, mentions of the crash tasting sour on my tongue. Iida looked at me with a solemness I thought might make my heart stop.

"Nobu was my cousin, and he had made... some unsavory choices a few months before you were taken. He took the wrong side of the law and rejected everything our family stood for. I had failed... to report it in time. We didn't want the backlash to be too severe, and we tried to construct a proper public announcement, but.. God, maybe if I had told you, he wouldn't have-.." Iida's voice broke, weighed down by long-standing remorse as he tried to look up at me. "I'm so, so sorry, Kaminari. I never stopped looking for you."

No part of anything he said made me think it was his fault. I couldn't hold this against him. It was family, it was complicated, he couldn't have known. I could put two and two together with what happened. The guy spiked the punch, got me vulnerable, and took advantage of that to get me in the cab. The whole party was probably a ploy from the start.

"It's not your fault, man. Don't do that to yourself." Iida was probably one of the only people in class 1A I didn't harbor any hard feelings towards. I wasn't always treated kindly by my classmates. Partially due to my drawback, partially due to the fact I still acted like a bumbling idiot without it. Sometimes I was ignored and made fun of just because it was a 'joke between friends.' All in good fun, right? Iida was never like that. He was good to me. He tutored me, encouraged me, always checked up on me. No one else treated me the way he did.