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Clutching onto her fountain pen, Momo squinted at the blackboard. With the sun reflecting off the surface, the numbers can become a blur. Biting on her lip, she could not make out the letter Endoplasm had noted beneath the summation symbol. An n maybe? Or an i? Either would make sense especially given that Momo had plenty of exposure to calculus prior to UA courtesy of the tutors clustered in the Great Hall of her family home.
As deep blue ink bled onto the pages of her notebook, Momo scribbled down her best guess. Sighing, she eyed the sun beaming through the windows and distorting the equations written in chalk on the board. Still, given that her assigned seat was in the furthest back row she wasn’t too surprised the board had gotten to read.
Chewing on the inside of her mouth, Momo attempted to copy the numbers down as quickly as she could even as her eyes stung with strain. She didn’t need to be able to read the board perfectly – just good enough to make an educated guess.
An ache shot through her hand, beckoning Momo to set down her pen to take a break and massage her wrist. With a wistful sigh, Momo eyed the spot at the front of the room that she had so dearly coveted in middle school. A spot front and center where the instructors could always see her raising her hand. An unobstructed view of the board that helped satiate her hunger for more knowledge.
Tapping her chin, Momo wondered whether asking Aizawa to rearrange the seating chart so she could be at the front would be appropriate. But she found herself shaking her head and internally chastised herself for that line of thought as Shouto formed an extra hand to attentively make notes. Even if her classmates didn’t have the need to embed an encyclopedia’s worth of molecular structures into their memory that didn’t mean that they were any less eager to learn.
But Ectoplasm reached the edge of the blackboard, squeezing in an equation in a corner the lines looked even blurrier. Try as she might, the first digit looked too distorted to make a decent guess about what number it was supposed to be.
Taking a deep breath, Momo clung onto her fountain pen to anchor herself. Maybe one of the classmates sitting next to her had better luck making an educated guess about what her math instructor had written. Reaching out with her pen, Momo tapped Shouto on his shoulder.
“Sorry for disturbing you. I was wondering whether you can make out the first digit of the last equation. It is a little difficult to read the board from back here.”
A hush echoed through the room as Tenya disapprovingly shook his head at Momo for talking during class. Her stomach turned with shame – after all talking most certainly had bothered her beloved classmates who were trying to focus on the lesson. Still, given the direness of her struggle to decode the writing on the blackboard, Momo decided that she could allow herself a slip-up just this once.
“It’s a seven.” Shouto said before furrowing his brows. “I don’t know what you mean about the board. I have no trouble reading it from here.”
Without pause, Shouto turned to face the board again and noticed that he wasn’t squinted when he looked at the board. His expression was as relaxed as it had been the day she had first met him when the Yaoyorozus, Iidas and Todorokis had set up a play date between their youngest children for the first time.
Noting that the seven before she could fall further behind with her notes, Momo felt her stomach crawl. Maybe Shouto simply had a better angle of the board. But the denial drained away as she mulled over that Shouto was the same distance away from the board as her. And they were sitting right next to each other – so the difference in angle couldn’t possibly be that drastic.
There was only one plausible reason as to why Momo could not read the blackboard properly.
A choked noise escaped Momo’s lips, making her instinctively slap a hand in front of her mouth. Zeroing in on the blackboard, Momo tried to recall a point in time when signs and words in the distance were so much clearer. Rubbing her eyes, Momo wondered when her eyesight had gotten worse. 20/20 vision felt like it had still been within her reach mere moments ago.
Perhaps her vision declining had been a gradual process. Like radioactive materials decaying over decades. The sort of thing that sneaks up on you even if you are present every second as it happens.
Not that it wasn't like she hadn’t expected her vision to deteriorate over time. After all, both her parents wore glasses. Momo just had always imagined that she wouldn’t have to start wearing glasses until roughly her late twenties.
And it wasn’t as if Momo thought glasses looked bad or anything – Tenya wouldn’t be the same without his. Genuinely, the glasses underscored her friend’s stern charm. If anything, Momo was haunted by the guilt slowly churning in her stomach and telling her that the deterioration in her vision was purely her own fault. She couldn’t help but wonder whether the countless nights reading textbooks by flashlight underneath her bed covers had been the catalyst.
A tear stung in the corner of her eyes and took almost a minute of holding her breath to make the remaining flood of tears retreat into her tear ducts. Momo could sense Tenya furrowing his brows with worry from the opposite end of the classroom.
She swallowed hard and avoided direct eye contact. Momo wasn’t as strong as Shouto or as fast as Tenya – but she could at least try to be perfect. At least trying to rise above her shortcomings by excelling in other regards. And losing perfection when it came to her vision… stung.
A gust of wind whisked through the classroom. Coming to an abrupt halt in front of Momo’s desk, Tenya set a glasses case in front of her desk. As Momo raised a questioning brow, Tenya cleared his throat. “I am aware we likely both need different prescriptions – but maybe my spare pair can hold you over until the doctor tells you what correction you require.”
Stunned, Momo reached out for the glasses case. Even though to Momo there was no grander gesture than giving tea and other gifts to those she cared about, receiving presents was a rarity for Momo. She was the girl who had everything. The girl who could make everything. So as she sent Tenya a grateful smile, momo clung onto the glasses case like it was a lifeline.
Tenya made an abrupt bow toward Ectoplasm before speeding back towards his seat. “Sorry for the disturbance, Sensei!”
Mouth agape with amaze, Momo held onto the glasses. Tenya hardly ever broke the rules. Gratitude swelling in her chest, Momo slipped on the frame hoping that maybe just maybe she’d finally be able to read the equations clearly. But Tenya’s glasses had made Momo’s eyesight even more warped. But even as the glasses made Momo feel dizzy regardless of how still she sat, she could still make out Tenya’s satisfied smile.
An elbow nudges Momo in the side. With a curt nod, Shouto beckoned Momo to copy off his notes. Letting out a sigh of relief as she put pen to paper, Momo found herself grateful that her face read like an open book. That her friends knew exactly what she needed even if Momo remained too shy to say it outright.
As Momo pushed the glasses slipping down her nose back, she figured that the changes in her vision were reminiscent of a chemical reaction. Even when oxygen and hydrogen formed water, going from flammable elements to the molecules that put out fire, the atoms remained the same. With the millions of reactions firing off in Momo’s own cells perhaps that sort of change was inevitable.
Glasses perched on the bridge of her nose, Momo etched a water molecule onto the margins of her notebook. She couldn’t ever imagine herself chewing out an oxygen atom for bonding with hydrogen. So maybe it was alright if she evolved and changed like everything else. With a fond smile she turned toward Iida from his seat closer to the door. He didn’t long at her any differently for the frames now framing her face. And Shouto’s expression had been as reserved as ever when he had passed her Tenya’s spare glasses. Because at the end of the day – regardless of how the lens of her eyes had been warped – she was still the same Momo to her oldest friends.