DEKU

Kacchan?

TW: Heavily implied self harm and direct self harm mentions, heavily implied suicide attempt, Eating disorder, etc
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It's 3am and I'm reliving old memories. Tonight's entertainment is that one time Kacchan caught me cutting when we were 6, featuring that one time Kacchan told me to kill myself, and that one time I actually tried and some mysterious stranger (who may or may not have been Kacchan) saved me...

It's all so vivid and still so distantly dizzying, especially that last one.

I remember the cold feeling of the blade in my hand, an exacto knife I stole from my mom's craft supplies. It was about a week after the sludge villain incident and All Might was constantly reminding me of how disappointing I was. He was chastising me on my complete lack of progress and constantly pushing me to do things that my body just wasn't capable of at the time.
The bullying had gotten so much worse. Kacchan was leaving me alone so everyone else took it upon themselves to make up for the lack of deku-bashing just to fill the void.
I was receiving daily death threats, constantly throwing away full bouquets of spider lilies, and suffering through my daily run in with the entire baseball team after school. I would stay late everyday scrubbing the graffiti off my desk and tending to my never ending concussion. It all just became too much. So there I was, crying in the third floor bathroom that no one used.

Like me, this bathroom had a bit of a troubled past.
3 years prior a kid had a quirk attack in there and killed a teacher.  After that everyone avoided that side of the school so they just gave up on fixing it.
The door was wrapped in caution tape, the sinks were ripped from the walls and rusted pipes poked out the wall like broken bones. Shattered glass covered the floor from what used to be the mirrors. Dismal though it may be, it had become a safe haven for me. It was the only place I could hide that the bullies wouldn't follow.

That day I had gone there during our lunch period. I had stopped eating because All Might said that fasting would help me build resilience, so instead I came to the 3rd floor bathroom to get out some of my more negative emotions where no one would see.

This wasn't the first time I had done this,it was routine at this point, something I had done since primary school when I was diagnosed as quirkless and shunned by society as a whole. There was absolutely no reason why things had to go the way they did. I knew what I was doing and I was always careful to never go too far, but something about that day was just different. I couldn't stop myself. Even when I realized it had hurt far worse than before, or that I had gone a different direction than what I was used to, I couldn't stop. I didn't plan on dying, or at least I don't think I did? I can't really remember. It's all just a blur to be honest.

It was like I was in a trance and my body was on autopilot. I just kept going, digging deeper and deeper into my skin. There was so much blood, too much blood. I only stopped when I grew too weak to hold the knife. My vision grew fuzzy and I found myself unable to move.

At some point in the midst of all this the bell must have rung and class had started without me. According to the official statement recorded by the police it took the teacher about 30 minutes to send someone to find me. At that point a growing pool of blood had formed beneath me.
I don't know how he managed to find me, or how much of what I remember actually happened, a lot of it was probably just wishful thinking, but at the end of the day someone saved me, and that someone was Kacchan.

I remember the blur of blonde contrasting against his black uniform, the streak of red from his worried eyes, and the warmth of his hands shaking against my skin, desperately trying to seal my wounds. I remember him taking off his uniform jacket and ripping off a few pieces of fabric so he could wrap my wounds. I can almost feel him here with me again, cradling me in his arms, warm tears falling on my face as he desperately yelled for me to stay with him.