Version A, Too | Boku No Hero Academia Reader Insert

XV: Tightrope

Days after my encounter with Gang Orca, a nurse formally announced to me that I was discharged from the hospital. The news made me happy -- I no longer wanted to stay in that white room, cooped up and left to my own means of keeping myself entertained, no matter how well-endowed and favored I was regarding my hospital treatment.

I was fortunate enough to have UA faculty come over to the hospital to deliver school work that I had missed out on in my time in the facility, so I wouldn't have to push myself to the brink of death catching up on assignments.

Though it was peculiar, how UA staff personally came to the hospital, but never visited my room. A nurse would always open the door and give me my work -- not once had I seen a familiar face come to greet me. My classmates hadn't messaged, called, or visited either.

I expected to be disappointed, or disheartened at the fact that they suddenly stopped communicating, but in a way, it relieved me. They acknowledged that I wasn't in a mindset to see them, much less than talk to them, and instead gave me time to heal, to nurture myself back into a state in which I could come face-to-face with society again and not feel uncomfortable.

Their absence provided me with the purest form of self-reflection and self-betterment.

I was appreciative of the gesture. It seemed as if they did take something away from this predicament after all.

However, I couldn't carry the thoughts for long, as in the present, it was late in the evening, and I decided to do some last-minute studying before I had to pack up and head out. To where I was going, I wasn't certain, but the nurse told me that my ride would be waiting for me in the lobby. I don't know why she phrased it this way -- vaguely and slightly nonsensical -- but I couldn't really complain.

As I was trying to reconfigure a math equation, a knock at the door interrupted my studies. I paused for a moment, setting my pen in between two pages of the textbook I was going through and looked in the direction of the sound.

"Who is it?" I called, feeling my stomach churn with a certain degree of uneasiness. The figure on the other side shifted, clearly anxious about our to-be encounter. Anybody would have guessed who it was, given their demeanor and carefulness, almost hesitancy, in approaching sensitive events such as this. Softly sighing at the thought, I got out of my chair and walked towards the door, taking a deep breath once my hand landed on the handle.

"Midoriya, I know you're out there." No sound came from outside. The silence made me furrow my eyebrows before I unlocked the door, twisting the latch in order to swing it open and reveal the identity of the not-so-mysterious figure on the other side.

I froze. My assumptions and the cool nature that came along with it melted away immediately after I set my eyes on the person standing in front of me. Goosebumps pricked my skin, spreading the sensation of tiny needles puncturing my flesh as my jaw went slack and my eyes were blown wide.

It wasn't Izuku.

It wasn't anyone that I had ever expected.

Though it was one of those that I had dreamt about.

"Mom?"

My mother's eyes were puffy, pink, like her abnormally swollen cheeks. I could tell she'd been crying -- presumably for long hours all at once. The sudden expelling of all the bodily water brought upon a drought that ravaged her health, sucking her lifeforce and bloating her skin. Regret crept up my neck in a rushing redness that constricted my airway, leaving me breathless with no other methods of revitalization.

It should've been that way, anyways.

Never once had I thought about what trauma and devastation she'd been through, or rather, what my family had been through, when they received the news that their baby had been taken away so easily. There was an element of guilt inside me, but also an unrecognized sense of knowing.