#fourth wing has brought me out of my depressive slump

[trench-rot]

I'm feeling better🖤 just wanted to say it somewhere.

I've read 267k words this week, time for 186.5k more😌

[guessmonsta]

Hi your tendou soulmate post was so beautifully written! I'd been saving this request for so long! Could you do a scenario for tendou having a crush on his school's idol who everyone sees as charming and happy but she struggles with depression and tendou finds her crying and comforts her and afterwards she develops feelings for him? I've been having a really hard time dealing with depression and how people perceive me lately. Thank you for your time even if you don't get around to this request!

《If you ever need anyone, I’m right here. My dms are open 24/7 and I literally do nothing with my life. I wish you the best ♡♡♡》

Perfection was nothing but deception. That’s what Tendou Satori thought, at least. Issues run fruitfully through the veins of anything to ever take a breath of air, and to Tendou, a flawless being is a being that doesn’t exist. That’s why he found __ __ to be so interesting.

She was definitely out of the ordinary but nothing extraordinary, either. Although, she did walk the halls of Shiratorizawa academy like she owned the place and truth be told, she probably did. She had the face of an angel, the generosity of a saint and the grades to get her a one way ticket straight to a PhD. If Tendou knew anything, though, it was that you can’t be nice, smart and pretty all at once, and if you are, you’re a fake. __ was a fake, and a convincing one at that. Convincing enough to trick Ushijima Wakatoshi into befriending her. When Tendou had gotten the news that Ushijima, the emotionally closed off, socially distant captain himself, spent a two hour study session in the library with her after practice, he was anything but baffled. He reckons that was when he started taking an interest in her, Shiratorizawa’s princess herself.

According to Semi, anyone who spends three seconds around __ will instantaneously fall in love with her charisma. It’s what she was infamous for, apparently, yet for some reason, Tendou could never find himself striking a conversation with her. He figured it would be utterly pathetic and not worth risking his dignity for. He imagined it would be a one way conversation of her asking him pointless, small talk questions and him red in the face, blubbering responses like like a toddler. That was the last situation Tendou would like to be caught in, especially during the most stressful time of the school year. He really didn’t mind not getting to talk to her, though. As a self proclaimed introvert, he much rather liked sitting by the sidelines and watching her interact with other people, except himself. This ‘hobby’, as Shirabu liked to call it, might get him deemed as a stalker, but Tendou disagreed. He was simply just dismantling her for now, taking the puzzle apart piece by piece until it was shattered on the floor. Only until then, would he make a move and piece it all back together.

Tendou really didn’t know much about her yet. He knew she liked music quite a bit. Earbuds always hug out of the pocket of her bookbag and the face of it was covered in band pins. She attended all their home games but never stayed to talk to anyone afterwards. He reckoned she had a knack for the fine arts since she always seemed to linger in that wing, which brought him to the conclusion that she was taking several fine arts courses to compensate for a void in her schedule, most likely lunch, since he never saw her in the cafeteria. The only time he’s ever seen her in casual clothes was in the library after hours. She wore a t-shirt with a funky octopus looking animal on the front which made him realize she wasn’t as cool as she wanted people to believe she was. He made an inference that she came from a rich family, because as smart as she was, grades alone couldn’t get you into Shiratorizawa, not without a prominent extracurricular activity, that is, and she did none. Although she was the poster child of the dance team, but the whole fine arts department was gravely outshined. With all the minimal information Tendou had stockpiled, he came to the conclusion that this tragic hero’s flaw was undeniably depression.

It had to be, there was no way it couldn’t. It was a mischievous little devil that was easy to hide but quick to come out and just by staring at her, he saw its dead eyes in hers. The dark rings underneath the sockets, the glossiness, the agony. Tendou thought it was silly to judge a person based on their eyes, for all he knew she could just be tired all the time. Although, in this case, he knew she wasn’t just tired. There was so much more, a forest full of secrets and lies that she kept flourishing. Tendou couldn’t wait to chop all the trees down. His teammates would tell him he was being creepy, that his crush had become a full blown obsession, but he couldn’t disagree. At this point, he knew it was far too early to say that he was in love with her, but he was definitely intrigued with her. He was intrigued enough to spy on her, sometimes. Well, he wouldn’t call it spying, per say, more like uncomfortable one-sided observing. He found himself spending a lot more of his free time roaming the arts wing. He found out she was a marvelous dancer, a ballerina, much to his amusement, with movements that sent shivers down his spine. He reckoned that she had to have noticed him at this point, even for a second, at least. In the matter of three months he had become her biggest fan on the sidelines, and he kept mindlessly hoping that one day he’d get to talk to her.

And that day came.

But not like how he wanted.

Everyone imagines their first conversation with their crush to be something picturesque. A James Dean and Audrey Hepburn moment, if you were to get into specifics. Although, Tendou clearly wasn’t receiving that in this very moment. It was fourth period lunch and since he had nothing better to do than ramble with Semi, he found himself getting lost in the arts wing. Even if __ wasn’t down there, the school had some remarkable violinists he had never known about, if they were even violinists, that was. Although when he got there the hallway was barren, except for a dark, looming corner at the end of the hall. The lights were off somehow, but through the light of closed classrooms he could still make out the figure hunched over and bawling into the crevice of its sleeve. It was her.

Half of Tendou wanted to book right then and there. He was an incompetent emotional wreck himself and barely knew how to cope with his own cranial calamity. The other half wanted to approach her and comfort her in her most vulnerable state, knowing he’d never get a chance at this again. Although, all of him was absolutely thrilled. He had guessed right yet again. He stood there for a moment, frozen in his tracks, watching her with a blank face as she sat there and screamed. If Tendou had never seen this same situation played out in front of him before, he might’ve been horrified.

But he wasn’t horrified, and that was all the motivation he needed to approach her. She didn’t hear his footsteps, as boisterous as he tried to make them. She only noticed him after he was hovering above her for a solid three minutes, when he cleared his throat abruptly. She looked up at him, wide eyed, and screamed, making haste as she gave him an impromptu kick to the shins. He shot her a feared look, she shot him a feared look, and everything went dead silent until one of them dared to open their mouths. “I uh… Are you okay?” Tendou ended up muttering, breaking the looming, dead silence. “Do I look okay?”“Well you kick okay, that’s for sure.” She shot Tendou another glare. He did nothing but shrug. “Do you want to talk about it? Instead of, you know, screaming your lungs out by yourself?”“I’m sorry for kicking you,” Was her reply instead. “I get really anxious when people surprise me.”“Nah, you’re alright. I can take a blow.” Tendou shrugged again, waiting for any positive reaction, or any reaction at all for him to sit down next to her against the wall. She sniffled, and he took that as his queue for him to slump up down in a ball at her side. “Aren’t you on the volleyball team?” She inquired. She had reburied her head in between her knees, but Tendou knew she had stopped crying. The cracks in her voice had smoothed out, though the tremble of pain was still there. “Yes ma’am.”“Why do you care about me, then?”

Tendou really didn’t know why he cared about her.

“I don’t really know. I, uh, I see you around a lot though, I mean, everyone does but-” Tendou paused. He knew what he wanted to say but didn’t know if he should say it. He was already the weird kid who approached her in a dark hallway, he didn’t need another title. Her hands were gripping at the fabric at her knees. She had lifted her head up but refused to look at him, even when he was talking. He didn’t care, she was coming out of her shell. “-but I figured you must be hiding something the moment someone first mentioned your name. I hate to say it but…”“But what?”“But nobody’s flawless. Even people who think they can try to be flawless, people like you, they still have flaws. It’s like foundation for the mind, you know, you can use so much but the blemishes are still there.”“I thought…” __ peeped, looking up at him, finally, for the first time that day without a menacing look in her eyes. “I thought you were supposed to be the funny one on the team.”

Tendou snorted, and without thinking burst, out laughing. She kept giving him an odd look, but didn’t move. “Did I say something funny?”

“No.” He replied, shaking his head in the midst of giggles. “But see here, everybody has a reputation they’ve built up. Mine, I guess, is the funny guy on the volleyball team, or whatever. You, you’re the schools idol. The chick everyone’s parents are like, ‘Why aren’t you more like that __ girl! She gets good grades and dances!’ No matter who you are, everybody faces the same demons sometimes. If you really want my opinion, which I’m guessing you don’t, Look, look at your face. Do you know what kind of face you’re making at me right now? You look like you want my blood.” At this, she cracked a smile. Something inside of Tendou had burst.

“But __, I think you’re going to be just fine. Whatevers going on right now in your life, it’ll pass. You got decades ahead of you, and you’ll find your paradise along the way. If anyone can do it, it’s you”“I really don’t know what to say. I’m a bit shaken right now, to be honest? But, um, thank you, thank you so much. You must’ve gone through a lot too, I’m guessing?”“Yeah, but that’s for a different time.” Tendou shrugged, faking a smile down at her. He sighed and got back up on his feet, helping her up with him with a little bounce in his step.

“Listen to me now, I mean this in the nicest way possible, but you look like you just hopped straight out of a horror movie scene. Go wash your face and get back to class. School’ll be over in three hours, and don’t try to push yourself to be lively. That’s not who you are today, and that’s okay. If you need me to beat anyone up, I gotchu. Tendou’s the name, okay?”“Tendou…” she bowed, eyes pointed at her feet. “For someone with such an odd reputation, you’re quite the character, you know that?”“Well, I’ve been told. It depends, do ya mean character in a good way or in a bad way?”“Good, good for sure. Um, will we ever talk again?”“Depends, do you wanna talk again?““Definitely. Maybe next time we don’t have to talk about my crippling mental state?”“Sounds like a deal.”