You Run and Run to Catch Up with the Sun(but it's sinking)

one

Izuku leans over the railing and his body folds above it. The building goes down, down, down, stories upon stories of windows and apartments. The streets below are rampant with people. From all the way up here, they look like little ants to Izuku. He knows that soon he would become an ant too and people would walk all over his tiny body.

A stifling breeze ruffles his hair and its fingers thread through the green locks. The door that leads to the roof of the building rattles behind him, yet he still stays in his position. He knows it isn't a person, it's simply just the wind knocking on the door. Izuku knows this roof like the back of his hand; he comes up here every day, after all.

Every day he treads up his apartment complex's stairs after school, picks the lock, and leans over the railing. Sometimes he imagines himself falling over it(intentional or not, he's daydreamed of both scenarios) and other times he simply just watches the people down below. He likes to play a game where he picks a person and guesses their quirk along with their whole life story. It was fun for him, to create a fantasy life of something he could never have.

He lives vicariously through these people. He'll watch as two teenagers walk down the street hand-in-hand with a bittersweet smile on his face. He'll watch as business men shout in the phone as they walk into a coffee shop. He'll watch as heroes stop villains and save people. He watches everything from up here. No one ever sees him.

The sun sets over a dewey afternoon. It's today, Izuku decides. Izuku would kill himself today. But for just this moment, as he watches the ants crawl all over the ground below, he wants to relish the warmth on his damp skin. He wants to take in the smell of smoke that clings to his uniform and gets carried away with the breeze. He wants to hear the sound of cars turning the corner, of bells ringing as the door of a shop opens, of chatter from teenage mouths. He wants to hear the sounds of people— of life.

The green-haired boy closes his eyes, and though he has always been a crybaby, his face remains dry today. He can't find it in himself to cry. How could he? It's such a beautiful day. He's happy, really, to be dying in an atmosphere of beauty and peace.

He leans back, and his body is on the roof rather than curled over the edge. He looks up at the sky— it's an ocean of soothing colors and the white, foamy clouds are its waves. Sometimes, when he comes up here after school on a particularly nice day like this, he imagines what it would be like to touch those clouds. Would he evaporate into a million little particles, becoming one with the foamy texture? Or would he be able to ride the fluffy waves? If it had been a grueling day with Bakugou, his mind would conjure up images of him falling through the clouds and to his death, splat on the ground.

Today is one of those days. The only difference is that he would actually go through with that scenario. He forces himself to smile, just like he always does. Maybe it's to spite All Might, and how he said Izuku couldn't be a hero because even he, the number one hero, hides fear behind his smile. Izuku would be grinning during his fall, so that if All Might ever saw him, he'd know. He'd know that Izuku had fears too, but he was willing to hide them as well— he already did. How else would his mom be so oblivious to the bullying he goes through?

But maybe it's just because he's happy to go. For a long time, Izuku has thought about ending it all. He couldn't remember a day where the thought hadn't crossed his mind. Sometimes it would happen when he was in the bath, and his brain would shout at him to drown himself. Other times, it was when he was shaving the peach fuzz off of his face. But most of the time, it was when he was on this very roof, repeating Bakugou's words in his head for hours and hours.

It's only today that he came to terms with it. He had been hanging on by a thin thread of hope, and All Might's confirmation of him being nothing but useless snipped it clean. He accepts now that this is his reality and the only way out is to die.