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The sky is blue, the Sun is ninety-three million miles away from the Earth, and teachers love Iida Tenya.
It’s just a fact of life.
If there is such thing as a “problem child” (think the boy who eats crayons and jumps up in the middle of class to hoot like a howler monkey), Tenya has always been… the opposite of that. He raises his hand. He walks in a perfect line. He never talks out of turn, always submits his homework on time, and does his darn best to make sure his peers do it, too.
Teachers love Iida Tenya.
The same cannot be said for everyone else.
“Chill out, Iida!” and ”You’re not the boss of me, Iida!” and ”Oh my gosh, you’re so annoying, Iida!” Tenya’s been followed by the same old chorus his entire life. Does that stop him? Of course not.
(But he'd be lying if his lack of friends never bothers him at times.)
Conversations are hard work. He can start them—that’s easy—but others never seem to like the things he wants to talk about.
Like safety measures, for one! As a first-year middle school student in his first chemistry lab, Tenya reads the safety manual their sensei gives them from cover to cover. Fascinating stuff, really—hazard warnings and proper laboratory procedures and what to do if something explodes/catches fire/leaks/shatters.
“Oh c’mon, Iida-kun,” one of his lab partners gripes, “Hurry up and hand over the beaker already! All the other groups are already starting, and you’re just standing there and reading the stupid instructions.”
“It’s not stupid at all, Saitou-san!” Tenya reprimands him gently. “If we don’t follow proper protocol, we could put ourselves in danger and jeopardize the results of the experiment. And no, I’m not giving you the beaker. I’ve seen you hold beakers before. You’ll break it.”
For some unfathomable reason, the expressions of his group members do not scream understanding or undying gratitude.
Tenya doesn't understand. Rules are important. After all, there’s meant to be a balance to things. The Earth is a perfect ninety-three million miles from the Sun, and that makes it safe and happy. Too close, and it would boil. Too far, and it would freeze.
Even if nobody else understands, Tenya knows that rules exist to keep people safe.
As Tenya grows, he begins to realize that some rules are more complicated than others.
Take socializing—a procedure that Tenya is still trying to get down.
He tries to keep a list of rules in his head, but sometimes the order shifts out of place. In some situations, certain rules that seemed to apply before suddenly reveal themselves to be deceptive. Unreliable.
”How are you?” can mean ”I want to know what you’ve been up to,” but it can also mean ”I couldn’t care less; just say ‘fine’ and move on.” Or, it could mean ”I know exactly what you’ve done and I’m waiting for the moment you realize that I know,” or ”I love you, and this is the only way I know how to say those words.”
That’s why Tenya loves math much more than he does language. Math is honest with its rules, as complicated as they can be. In a perfect world, the sum of all the points at a fixed distance from a center makes an unbroken circle. Four is always equal to one plus three, two plus two, and three plus one. Everything meets back in the middle.
In math, Tenya can—with enough tenacity, with enough brainpower—always solve for the right answer.
Tenya is beside himself—literally incredulous—at the audacity of the green-haired, freckled boy a few rows back. Present Mic is laying out the rules of the practical portion of the U.A. entrance exam! He’s pointing out, one by one, the beautifully clear rules that spell out a straight path to acceptance to this renowned institution, and that ingrate is…
He’s…
He’s muttering.
Throughout Present Mic’s presentation, Tenya tries to tune out the ruckus behind himself in favor of taking notes in the legal pad he carries with himself. (Somewhere along the line, he had realized that writing down new rules was the best prevention against forgetting them.)
But…
The incessant drone coming from the boy’s motormouth is knocking everything all out of alignment. The straight path skews into a chaotic maze until Tenya can hardly make head or tail of the whole situation. He can’t stand it. Someone has to put a stop to this.
With perfect form, Tenya shoots out of his seat. He raises his hand at a practiced angle—waits for Present Mic to call on him—and unloads his grievances. First, he clears up a question he has about the exam itself. With that off of his chest, he squares up with the real bone he has to pick.
“You, there, in the back!”
At last, the infernal noise is cut off. The green-haired boy jerks as if he’s been electrocuted.
“Stop muttering!” Tenya points sharply, for good measure. “You are being a huge distraction!”
Satisfied at last, he sits back down and waits for Present Mic to resume. He can finally focus on learning the rules. He knows from experience that if only he can manage that, then he can accomplish anything set in his way.
The rules were not enough.
Tenya fights the feeling of unfairness that threatens to choke him when he learns about the rescue points. They had not been in the rules anywhere. He knows. After the exam, he had checked his notes three, four times over. If they had been mentioned, they would have been marked down in ballpoint ink.
Tenya tries not to let it get to him, because he understands why the proctors included this level of deception in the exam. He really does. After all, Tensei has explained to him countless times the most important aspects of Heroics.
Compassion. Empathy. Self-sacrifice.
Those qualities elevate a “hero” to a Hero.
Tenya knows this, so he bites down the jealousy and outrage and walks through the doors of Class 1-A to shake the hand of the small, green-haired boy that had—against all odds—understood the rules better than himself.
“Why do you want to be a Hero, Iida-kun?”
Uraraka’s question is as familiar as Tenya’s own name at this point, so he doesn’t hesitate to give the well-worn answer he’s always given.
“I am training to follow in the footsteps of my brother, Pro Hero Ingenium, and make my family proud!”
One plus one plus one plus one equals four. Tenya’s great-grandfather was a Hero, his grandfather was a Hero, his father was a Hero, and his older brother, Tensei, is a Hero. Tenya will also be a Hero.
Those are the rules. Those are the facts of life.
And giving this answer never fails to put a warm feeling in Tenya’s chest, because it reminds him that he is stepping into the legacy of a man he couldn’t respect more. Iida Tensei is—and has always been—his pride and joy.
Tenya learns, at long last, that life is a big, fat joke.
There are no rules.
There never have been.
Because if rules keep people safe, Iida Tensei would not be in the hospital with sixteen stab wounds and a life sentence of paraplegia.
Because if Villains like Stain exist, the rules would never matter anyway as long as they are trampled into oblivion.
Because if Heroes like Tensei exist, the rules would never allow them to come face to face with death—close enough to kiss—in a bloody alleyway.
Because the perfect circle is broken. Because four is no longer equal to one plus one plus one plus one.
It doesn’t add up.
There are cracks where order had once lived, and Tenya is falling through.
For the first time in his life, Tenya breaks the rules.
“I would have never expected that from you!”
Tenya has heard it again and again, but it hurts the most coming from Tensei on his hospital bed. He tries to meet his brother’s gaze as he should. He fails.
“Tenya, how—" His brother sputters, seemingly unable to even articulate his astonishment. “How could you—I can't even—I am so disappointed in you.”
Tenya knows he deserves to hear those words, but he flinches anyway.
“I just don’t understand. Why, Tenya?” His brother is pleading now. “This isn’t like you at all.”
He knows.
“We could have lost you. You could have been killed."
He knows.
"What would Mother and Father have done?”
Tenya breaks.
His knees hit the linoleum floor, hard. The impact travels through his entire body, jarring his still-bandaged arm. He prostrates himself right there, on the hospital room floor, and presses his forehead to the ground.
“Tenya—!”
“Forgive me, nii-san,” Tenya chokes through his tears. He bows again. And again. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. I know now that I was wrong. It—it was inexcusable of me to go after Stain. I hurt you, and I hurt Mother and Father. I hurt my friends.”
“Tenya-kun.”
“Nii-san, forgive me. Forgive me, nii-san.”
“Tenya-kun.” His brother sounds gentle now. Softer. “Raise your head.”
Tenya obeys, and the look on his blotchy and tear-streaked face must be quite a sight, because it makes his brother laugh.
“I’m not angry at you,” Tensei says. “You did do the wrong thing, but I’m not upset because I’m angry. I’m upset because I love you. I was worried. We all were.”
“But—I broke the rules—"
“The rule is that it doesn’t matter. And the rule is that I forgive you. Knock that into your noggin, okay?”
Furrowing his brow, Tenya tries to gesture through a fog of tears. “That is not how rules work at all, nii-san.”
Somehow, that conjures an even louder laugh. Looking at Tensei, chuckling heartily with a flush in his cheeks, Tenya can almost remember the old him from before the hospital bed.
“I’m sorry, Tenya-kun. I know that ‘rules’ are important to you. I swear I’m not laughing at you, just—with you. Does that make sense?”
Tenya wipes his face with one sleeve and shuffles closer to the bed on his knees until he can rest his head on the edge of the blanket. His brother lets him and begins to card a slow hand through his short locks.
“I know. It’s hard for you, I know.”
“I’m starting to think,” Tenya mumbles into the warm heaviness that begins to settle all over him, “that there are simply too many rules to learn and never enough time to learn them.”
“Nonsense!” Tensei’s hand stills, simply resting over his temple. “There’s only really one rule you ever need to learn.”
“Really.” Tenya tries for a skeptical tone but only manages a sleepy one.
“Do you want to know what it is?”
“Hmm.”
“It’s love.”
“That makes absolutely no sense.”
“I know. It rarely does.”