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Affection Affliction [Tenya Iida]

The soft sound of rain gently pattering against the ground resounded like a sorrowful record inside. Fingers rapped gently against the windows, soft skin leaving traces down the glass and demarcating their location, linking the natural canals together with every drop as the hand of the sky cast mist beneath it, soft footsteps, light and childlike, skipping throughout the ground, carefree and joyous, gentle but premeditated, following a thin line of fate as drops continued to fall. Even in the light of the room things still appeared dim. It was difficult to locate anything on your desk whatsoever - not that it mattered all that much. Today was just a lecture, just someone talking, repeating the same information you'd heard a million (or, rather, you supposed, now a million and one) different times in a million different ways. Sure, the words themselves may deviate now and then, and the principles discussed may be altered, but it was never significant enough to warrant any attention. There were only so many ways to say something before you'd heard just about every iteration of it, until it all melted together into some sort of synonym soup. U.A. was great, U.A. was the best school in Japan, if not all of Asia, if not the entire world, for children with quirks - 'children', yes, of course, because at fifteen you definitely felt much more like a child than a teenager, this was evidently the way logic was meant to flow - to train and become heroes. Heroes that the whole world would look up to, and admire, heroes that would get thousands of messages from devoted fans and groupie followings, ones who would kiss the ground you walked upon and worship the air you exhaled, all because, wow! you'd gone to U.A. This was supposed to be class. A time of learning. Of course, new was presented.

Frankly, you found it all exactly the way it was: faux propaganda designed to fake itself into a supposedly-guaranteed fame. As per usual you didn't pay it much mind. Those lies were exactly that - lies. Sure, maybe for some, they'd be true. Most of your classmates were capable of legitimately amazing things. Bakugou could be quite literally defined as Lord Explosion Murder, although you probably would've altered it to Lord Explosion Arsonist, given his quirk, Todoroki was the true genius behind IcyHot (and by God, if he didn't sue Shaquille O'Neal for the rights to the slogan, his father certainly would), Momo could, much to the dismay of Antoine Lavoisier, essentially create matter, Uraraka rendered Newton's laws null and void, Izuku could punch someone's consciousness out their body...those were the sort of things that could prospect the promise of pure greatness. And then there was you.

You still didn't really believe you'd made it into U.A., much less class 1-A at that. The only real comfort you had at securing your spot and keeping it for the rest of the year was the fact that Mineta existed. Even then, though, he was at least able to garner attention, even if it was for all the wrong reasons. Regardless, you weren't truly a part of 1-A, not in a spiritual sense, at least. Most people had already formed friendships, or knew one another from previous times, or else received some sort of recognition, some sort of acknowledgement. Not you. But perhaps that was for the best. Nobody had ever really noticed you - not that there was much to notice. You were never called on, never picked for partnering up, never praised, but simultaneously never put down or the center of attention, which was something you were admittedly rather grateful for. There was truly only one person who you had grown close to. And honestly, you wouldn't have had it any other way.

It didn't matter if nobody noticed you, if you were invisible. As long as Tenya Iida was there, nothing else mattered at all. You loved Tenya Iida, with the entirety of your being, every beat of your heart, every sentiment of your soul. And somehow, for some reason, some irrational, uncharacteristic, ill-defined reason, Tenya Iida loved you, too. The successor to a prestigious family full of fame and fortune had fallen for a nobody, someone who was perhaps voluntarily more imperceptible than Tooru. Someone who wasn't a successor to anything, a life of neglect and nothing and no one. But such was your life. And when he was with you, you had no complaints.