I Shattered My Arms, But My Rival Was The One Who Put Me Back Together

The first thing to break through the fuzzy, painkiller-induced haze was the rhythmic, placid beep of a heart monitor. It was a sound that had become far too familiar. I blinked, the fluorescent lights overhead stinging my eyes, and the world swam into a stark, sterile white. Hospital. Again. A deep, throbbing ache radiated from both of my arms, a grim reminder of the price of power I still couldn’t properly wield.

The memory of the training exercise crashed back into me. The massive training bot, the desperate gambit, the familiar, sickening crunch of my own bones shattering under the force of One For All. Frustration, sharp and bitter, coiled in my gut. I’d thought I was getting better, that I was finally starting to understand the torrent of energy All Might had entrusted to me. But in the heat of the moment, faced with a simulated crisis, I had reverted to my most self-destructive instincts. I had broken myself to save a theoretical objective. A failure. My hands, encased in thick white casts from my fingers to my elbows, rested uselessly on the thin blanket. I couldn't even clench them into fists.

A wave of despair washed over me, cold and heavy. How could I ever become the world’s greatest hero if I couldn’t even get through a single training session without ending up hospitalized? All Might had put his faith in me, and all I did was prove how fragile my body was, how far I still had to go. I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing I could block out the self-loathing as easily as the fluorescent lights.

A soft sliding sound cut through my thoughts. My eyes snapped open. The door to my room had slid aside, revealing a figure standing silhouetted against the brighter light of the hallway. I expected it to be a nurse, or maybe Recovery Girl coming to scold me. My heart gave a hopeful little leap at the thought of Uraraka or Iida, their worried faces a comfort.

But it was none of them.

It was Shoto Todoroki. He stood frozen at the threshold, one hand holding the doorframe as if he were unsure whether to enter or flee. In his other hand, he held a small, white plastic bag from a nearby convenience store, the logo crinkling under his grip. He wasn’t looking directly at me, his gaze fixed somewhere on the wall just past my bed. His expression was as impassive as ever, a carefully constructed mask of neutrality. But there was something in his posture—a stiffness in his shoulders, the slight hesitation in his stance—that felt profoundly awkward. He looked completely out of place in the quiet, antiseptic room, a stark figure of conflicted purpose. My mind went blank, every frustrated thought obliterated by a single, overwhelming question: What was he doing here?

He finally took a decisive step into the room, the soft soles of his shoes making no sound on the polished linoleum floor. He stopped beside my bed, his dual-colored eyes scanning the room before briefly, almost reluctantly, landing on me.

“I was in the area,” he said, his voice a low, even monotone that seemed too quiet for the sterile space. He placed the plastic bag on the small bedside table. “I thought you might need something. These don’t require you to use your hands.”

He gestured toward the bag. I could just see the brightly colored packaging of several jelly pouches, the kind marketed to athletes for a quick energy boost. It was a strangely practical, thoughtful gesture. It was so… Todoroki. My face felt warm, and I was suddenly very aware of how messy my hair must be and the pathetic state I was in, propped up on pillows with two useless limbs.

“T-Todoroki-kun,” I stammered, my voice sounding rough. “You didn’t have to. But… thank you. That’s really considerate.”

He gave a short, almost imperceptible nod, his gaze dropping to the casts that encased my arms. A flicker of something unreadable passed through his eyes. It wasn’t pity, the emotion I’d grown so accustomed to seeing in the faces of others. It wasn’t the awed horror that sometimes followed my victories. It was something else entirely—sharper, more analytical.

“The final attack,” he began, his tone shifting to the clinical way we might dissect a training video in class. “The force was concentrated in your fists and forearms. Was that intentional, to limit the damage to a specific area?”

I was taken aback by the directness of the question. Iida would have lectured me. Uraraka would have cried. Todoroki was treating it like a strategic problem to be solved.

“Uh, yes,” I said, trying to match his detached tone. “I tried to channel the backlash into my arms instead of letting it spread through my whole body like it did at the Sports Festival. It’s still… not very precise.”

He didn’t respond immediately. His eyes remained fixed on my bandaged arms, his brow furrowed just slightly. The intensity of his stare was unnerving. It felt as though he wasn’t just looking at the casts, but trying to see straight through them to the shattered bones and torn muscles beneath. He was studying my failure, my weakness, with a focus that felt more piercing than any doctor’s examination. There was no judgment in his expression, none of the disappointment I was drowning in myself. There was only a quiet, unnerving intensity, as if my self-inflicted wounds were a complex equation he was determined to solve.

The silence stretched, thick and heavy, punctuated only by the steady beep of the monitor. I felt pinned by his mismatched eyes, one a cool, distant gray, the other a startling turquoise. He was dissecting me, and for a moment, I braced myself for the verdict. I expected him to point out the flaw in my logic, to tell me that a real hero wouldn't need to resort to such crude, self-damaging tactics.

Finally, he looked up, his gaze meeting mine directly. The intensity was still there, but it was now focused entirely on me, not just my injuries.

“It was reckless,” he stated, his voice low and certain.

I flinched, the word striking me like a physical blow. There it was. The same judgment I’d been leveling against myself. My stomach twisted with shame.

“But it wasn’t foolish,” he continued, and the world seemed to tilt on its axis.

My breath caught in my throat. I stared at him, certain I had misheard. But his expression was serious, unwavering.

“You drew the bot’s attention away from the evacuation point,” he elaborated, his voice still holding that analytical, matter-of-fact tone. “The structural integrity of the area was compromised. If it had fired again, the entire section would have collapsed. By taking the hit, you guaranteed the objective’s safety. You sacrificed your arms, which can be healed, to prevent a total mission failure. It was a calculated decision.”

My mind went completely blank. Calculated. He saw it as calculated. Not as a moment of panicked desperation. Not as a failure of control. He saw the thought behind the action, the grim strategy I had barely been conscious of forming in the split-second before impact. All Might had praised my spirit. Recovery Girl had scolded my recklessness. My classmates had looked at me with a mixture of awe and concern. But no one, not even me, had looked at the shattered bones and seen… strategy.

A strange warmth bloomed in my chest, spreading through me like a slow-acting medicine, soothing the raw edges of my frustration and self-doubt. It was a feeling so potent, so deeply comforting, that it almost brought tears to my eyes. The constant, throbbing ache in my arms seemed to fade into the background, replaced by this profound sense of being seen. Truly seen.

“I…” I started, but my voice broke. I swallowed hard, trying to regain my composure. “Thank you, Todoroki-kun.”

He gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod, as if my emotional reaction made him uncomfortable. He took a small step back toward the door, his purpose fulfilled. “Heal quickly, Midoriya. Aizawa-sensei will be adding supplemental training after this. It would be a disadvantage to fall further behind.”

With that, he turned and slid out of the room as quietly as he had entered, leaving me alone in the sudden silence. The plastic bag of jelly pouches sat on my bedside table, a strange and solid proof that he had really been here. I stared at the closed door, his final words echoing in my head. Reckless, but not foolish. For the first time since waking up in this white, sterile room, the crushing weight of my failure lifted, and I felt a quiet, hopeful peace settle over me. I wasn’t just a boy who broke himself. I was a strategist. And Shoto Todoroki had been the one to see it.