Chapter Text
The first person he talks to about it is Souda.
They were on a day trip to a military museum, less for the history and more because Souda loved geeking out over tanks and fighter jets. Once the older gentleman in the hall headed back down the elevator and there weren’t any other people around to be annoyed by their chatter, Hinata decided to broach the topic.
“Maybe you could be my assistant!” Souda suggested.
Hinata just stared at him. “What?”
“You know, whenever I have a job that requires an extra set of hands I could ask you. And whenever I need a new tool, you could go get it for me,” he explained. “Stuff like that!”
“I’m not going to be your errand boy!” Hinata said, an exasperated smile tugging up the corners of his lips. “Besides, I don’t know anything about machines.” Or most other things, really, which was sort of the problem.
“Huh… Then what about like, a pro athlete?”
Hinata snorted. “I haven’t been on any teams since grade school.”
“Then...” Souda visibly racked his brains. “Maybe you could be a body builder instead,” was what he came up with. “Hey, it wasn’t a joke!” he complained when Hinata started laughing. “I’ve seen you in the locker room. You’re pretty ripped.”
“There’s no way,” Hinata said, though his cheeks darkened at the compliment.
“I don’t know, dude.” Souda turned away from him and went back to inspecting the suits of armor on display. But after a minute or so, he did offer another suggestion, this time in a quiet tone of voice tinged with uncertainty.
“Maybe you could be like… a counselor, or something.”
“A counselor?” Hinata repeated, surprised.
“Yeah… you do know what a counselor is, right? They like, listen to you talk about your problems. And then they ask, ‘How do you feel about that?’” With a grimace, Souda lowered his tone of voice and confided, “My mom made me go to one back when I lost all my friends and stuff.”
“Ah,” Hinata said quietly. He hadn’t known, but when he remembered what Souda had told him about his middle school years, he guessed that made sense.
“Don’t tell anyone about that, though,” Souda said hastily. “Especially not Sonia-san!”
Hinata shook his head. “I won’t tell. And I already knew what a counselor was. What I want to know is, why do you think I should be one?” Because, really – the idea had never occurred to him.
But Souda just said, “Isn’t it obvious?”
Hinata’s skeptical expression must have made it clear that no, it was not obvious to him, because Souda quickly went on to explain his reasoning.
“When I told you about my old friends, and my dad and stuff like that, you listened really well,” he said. “Like, you listened better than my actual counselor. And I know it’s not just me. You’re like that with everyone. You even got Tsumiki to open up to you. And Komaeda, too… I still don’t understand how you got through to that guy.”
“That’s not…”
Hinata struggled. His first instinct was to argue. But then, he remembered what Nanami had said about how everyone in her class had become more open thanks to him.
Still, there was something that didn’t sit right with him.
“It’s not like listening to people is a talent,” Hinata said slowly. “I mean, anyone can do that.”
“I didn’t say it was your talent. If you were asking me to figure out your talent, that’d be a whole different conversation! But... you’re wrong about that.”
“How am I wrong?” Hinata asked, frowning.
“Not anyone can listen,” Souda corrected him. “Plenty of people can’t. Or they just don’t bother…” His voice trailed off. He seemed to be remembering something from the past. Roughly, he shook his head as if to clear his thoughts.
“It might not be something only you can do, like a talent. But it’s still something you do better than loads of other people.”
“That’s… well…”
Hinata tried, but in the end, he couldn’t come up with any more objections. He decided that maybe he should just accept the compliment.
“…thanks.”
“No problem.” Souda turned away from the display and gestured towards the elevator. “Wanna go back and look at the tanks again?”
The second person he talks to is Nanami.
After graduating from Hope’s Peak, Hinata’s living situation became unclear. His parents were willing to help him with the initial fee, but he didn’t have enough money to pay rent for his own apartment. And with no special skills and no employers scouting him, he hadn’t found a job yet. He was just stuck sitting around his parents’ house.
Hinata really wanted to move out. The atmosphere at home wasn’t too comfortable. Although he never fought with his parents or anything like that, throughout most of his life, he’d felt like a disappointment to them. Getting a diploma from Hope’s Peak should have made some of those feelings go away, but in truth, it seemed to make things even worse. Hinata’s parents hadn’t made peace with their son’s lack of talent. They hadn’t learned what he had learned: that talent wasn’t the goal. All they knew was that they’d spent all this money so their son could go to Hope’s Peak and have his talent discovered, only for nothing like that to happen. He hadn’t become someone special. He was still the same old Hinata Hajime.
He didn’t regret going to Hope’s Peak. Not when he’d learned so many important things, met so many good friends, and made so many precious memories. But now that all was said and done, he could see that his parents regarded the whole expenditure as a waste of tuition.
So Hinata spent as much time as possible out of the house, which included hanging out at Nanami’s apartment. Her place was small and homey and comfortable, if a little quiet, since she lived alone.
“A counselor, huh?” Nanami asked, cocking her head to the side. For once, she’d paused her game and was actually looking at him while she spoke.
“Yeah,” he said. “It was just some random idea he had, though. He was tossing off all sorts of weird ideas. Before that, he said I should be a pro athlete.”
Actually, Souda’s suggestion about counseling wasn’t a silly off-the-cuff sort of thing. He’d sounded more serious when he made that suggestion than he had when he made all his other ones.
But for some reason, Hinata felt like he had to downplay the whole thing. Just bringing it up at all made him feel self-conscious. He was afraid he sounded presumptuous, talking like he could just go off and become a counselor, when he had no talent and no experience. And no real idea what the job was like, in all honesty. He was afraid of someone telling him that he was getting ahead of himself.
Although he knew, of course, that Nanami would never tell him that. Not in a million years. If anything, Nanami always went too far in the other direction.
“I don’t think those ideas are silly,” she said, just as he expected her to. “Hinata-kun can do anything he puts his mind to… I think.”
You think, huh? Hinata had to laugh at how her verbal tic undercut the point she was trying to make.
“Thanks,” he said, smiling at her wryly. “I don’t think I can do anything, though. No matter what, there’s still some stuff I’m not qualified to do.”
“Then you’ll just have to become qualified, right?” Nanami replied, like it was the easiest thing in the world. And to her, it probably was. Hinata had to admire her straightforward way of looking at the world.
“It’s too late for me to do something like become an athlete,” he said gently. “I can’t go and pick up the ‘qualifications’ for that.”
“It shouldn’t be too late to become a counselor, though,” Nanami pointed out. “You’d just need to go to university for that.”
So she wasn’t going to be distracted from the point…
Hinata looked away self-consciously. Now that they were talking about something that might not be totally out-of-reach for him, he felt nervous again. “I guess, but who’s to say I’d even get in?”
As soon as the words left his mouth, he realized how feeble he sounded. He knew what Nanami’s response would be before she even spoke.
“You’ll never get anywhere if you don’t try.”
Yeah. Those were the words he expected to hear.
“You just have to study for exams, right?” she asked him.
“I mean, yeah… but…” Hinata grimaced to himself as he admitted, “I don’t even know for sure if it’s what I want to do yet.”
“Then, why don’t you think about it?” Nanami suggested. “Just think about what kinds of things you enjoy doing.”
“What things I enjoy, huh…” Hinata repeated.
“Mm.” Nanami nodded. “For example, I really like games, so I always knew I wanted to be a gamer.”
“Right.” Hinata couldn’t help but laugh a little at that. There were plenty of people out there who liked playing games, but only someone blessed with Nanami’s talents could possibly consider it as a career path.
He wasn’t even sure how that worked, honestly, so he decided to ask. “How’s that been going? Your, uh, gaming?”
“Well, I’m not playing my game right now, because you sounded like you had something serious to say,” she told him. “And I learned from the girls in my class that it’s rude to keep playing when someone is trying to tell you something serious.”
“Alright, Alright, you can go back to playing,” Hinata said, holding up his hands in surrender. Nanami immediately turned her game back on, and the chirpy music from Kururin Paradise filled the air once again. “What I meant was, what’s it like being a professional gamer?” he clarified.
“It’s been going well,” Nanami said without looking up from her screen. “So far I’ve won five tournaments since.”
“Five?!” he repeated, amazed. Since they only graduated a month ago, five tournaments seemed like a lot.
“Mm. There was a cash prize for three of them, so I don’t need to worry about money, I think,” she said. “Though, I have been spending some of the prize money on games, so maybe I should try to save up more.”
Hinata laughed a little at that. “I see. Have you ever thought about… doing something else with your talent?”
“Something else?” Nanami asked curiously.
“Like, I don’t know…” Hinata rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously. “Designing your own game, or something?”
“Oh. I talked about that with Fujisaki-kun once.”
“You did?”
“Mm.” Nanami nodded. “We thought about making our own game together. He was going to do the programming, I was going to design the gameplay, and his classmate Yamada-kun was going to design the characters. He said there was a girl in his class who might be able to write the scenario, too.”
“Really?” Hinata was impressed. She’d never mentioned any of that to him before. “That’s great!”
“There was just one problem, though. Fukawa-san said that she wasn’t interested in getting involved with a ‘nerd project’ like that. She said she didn’t consider games to be art. Isn’t that horrible?” Nanami sounded personally offended. Hinata hadn’t seen her look annoyed very many times in the past. It was kind of cute.
“Ah, well… you could just find another writer, couldn’t you?”
“Maybe. I also thought about showing her some amazing games with great stories, so she could see that video games are art,” Nanami said. “But then final exams started, so we were all too busy to meet again.”
“Well,” Hinata said, “if you ever do get around to finishing it, I’d love to play it.”
“Really?” Nanami perked up. She paused her game to face him excitedly. “You’ll really play it?”
“Y-Yeah, of course,” Hinata replied, a little taken aback.
“It makes me happy to hear that.” Nanami closed her eyes and smiled at him. Her cheeks looked a little pink. “Thank you.”
Staring back at her, Hinata felt himself blush. Seeing that pure smile of hers, aimed straight at him and only him… it was almost too much for his heart to take. He was almost thankful when she went back at her game.
“Y-You’re welcome.”
That night, Hinata lay awake, turning Nanami’s words over in his head.
What kind of things I enjoy doing, huh…
It sounded like an incredibly easy question. And yet, no answer was coming to him.
During his time at Hope’s Peak, he hadn’t had a favorite class. Some classes were better than others – anything beat English class, for example – but most lessons blended together into one amorphous blob. He hadn’t been involved in any clubs, and there hadn’t been any particular school activities that stood out to him. Home economics had been okay, not great. Music lessons were fine, nothing special. The athletic festivals were fun, but there wasn’t any one event he enjoyed more than all the others.
When Hinata recalled his fondest memories of Hope’s Peak, they were never about the classes or activities; they were always about the people he’d met.
If he had to say what he enjoyed the most, in all honesty, the answer was probably just “talking to people.”
In the end, what gave Hinata the most pride hadn’t been his grades, or any other kind of academic accomplishment. Instead, what he prided himself in was the bonds he’d formed with his friends.
A flood of different memories hit him all at once.
Kuzuryuu, looking away from him with his hands stuffed down the pockets of his suit, gruffly admitting that he liked being a part of his class. Souda clapping him on the back, saying how glad he was to finally have a friend he could believe in again. Tsumiki wringing her hands together in front of her chest, stammering out an invitation to hang out to together. Saionji wiping her tears away, declaring that she was going to become stronger so she could protect her dad. Komaeda slowly breaking into a smile, the first real smile Hinata had ever seen on him, after he finally agreed to be friends.
Those were the memories that made him feel most proud. Those memories were the reason he was so sure his decision to attend Hope’s Peak had been the right one, even though he hadn’t discovered a talent.
Hinata hadn’t thought any of it was unusual. He’d never thought that talking to people and forming bonds with them could be considered a skill. Anyone could do that. Anyone could be a good listener. That was what he’d always assumed.
But it wouldn’t be the first time he’d been wrong about that sort of thing.
Okay, so, maybe it was worth pursuing this whole counseling… thing.
But first, there was someone else he wanted to talk to: someone who, if nothing else, always offered him a unique perspective.
He and Komaeda ended up sequestered together in a quiet corner of the public library a few towns over. Why Komaeda had suggested that library instead of the one in town, Hinata didn’t know. But it wasn’t a huge hassle to take the bus, so he just went along with it.
Even though there was nobody around, Komaeda took his library etiquette very seriously. Hinata had to use a very quiet tone of voice as he told him about his new idea for a future career.
When he was done speaking, he folded his hands over the table, and waited for the other boy to respond. And eventually, he did.
“Isn’t that a bit presumptuous?” Komaeda said.
Hinata… pretty much saw that coming.
It didn’t really hurt. In a weird way, it was almost comforting to hear such a predictable response.
“Presumptuous? Why do you say that?” he asked. Though honestly, he could probably guess.
“Thinking that you can understand what’s going on in someone else’s head better than they can is the definition of presumptuous,” Komaeda said simply. “Especially since you don’t have a background in Psychology, or a unique ability for it… aren’t you just getting ahead of yourself?”
It was funny. Those were the exact words he’d been afraid of hearing the other day, when he told Nanami about his plans. But for whatever reason, hearing the exact thing he’d been so afraid of hearing from Komaeda didn’t bother him very much.
Maybe it was because he felt more firm in his convictions now… or maybe it was simply because he expected the other boy to argue with him. Maybe he’d even been seeking out that sort of response.
What Hinata sought out of conversations with Komaeda was different from what he sought out of conversations with Nanami. If he could rely on Nanami for optimism and encouragement, then he could just as easily rely on Komaeda to remind him of the many things that could go wrong. As someone whose Ultimate Luck caused things to go wrong all the time, that was Komaeda’s area of expertise.
So instead of going on the defensive, Hinata leveled with him.
“Maybe you have a point,” he allowed. “Maybe I am getting ahead of myself. But I already know I don’t have any kind of ‘unique ability.’ I know I don’t have a talent. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to just resign myself to doing nothing for the rest of my life. I’m going to do something to contribute to society. So it might as well be something I like, and something I’m better at than other things.”
After he finished, he expected Komaeda to try to argue with him some more. But that didn’t end up happening.
Instead, he just went back to his normal, cheerful expression and said, “Well, that’s just what I’d expect of Hinata-kun. You’ve always been so stubborn that you won’t give up, even if the odds are just impossible.”
He sure was good at making his compliments sound like insults. Hinata smiled wryly. “You really don’t think I can do it, huh?”
“I didn’t say that,” Komaeda said. “What I want to know is, what made you think you can do it?”
“Well…” Hinata rested his chin in his hand. “I was talking with some people. I talked to Souda, and he said he thought I was a good listener. At first, I didn’t buy it, but… when I thought about it some more… I thought that maybe he might have a point. Then I talked to Nanami, and she got me thinking about what I enjoy doing the most.”
“What you enjoy?”
“Yeah. And after that, I guess…” Hinata hesitated. He had to choose his next words carefully; he didn’t want to sound like he was full of himself, or like he had some kind of weird savior complex.
“I realized that what I enjoy the most is helping people,” he said slowly. “I like watching people become more confident and stop doubting themselves so much. Having someone who makes you realize that you’re not powerless, and that you can reach out and take control of your own future… I think that’s important. I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere if I hadn’t had people who did that for me,” he explained, thinking not just of Nanami, but of several other people as well: Yukizome-sensei, Monomi, even Maizono that one time… he’d had a lot of good influences.
Komaeda didn’t say anything in response. He just stared at Hinata, a small frown on his face. It wasn’t exactly encouraging.
“What’s the matter?” Hinata asked. “Still don’t have any confidence in me?”
“It’s not that. It’s just...” Komaeda brought a hand up to his chin, looking conflicted. “I don’t know how I feel about ‘counseling.’”
“Really?” Hinata asked, surprised. That hadn’t been what he’d expected to hear. “Why?”
“I have some doubts about whether it’s really necessary, and whether it’s a real profession. Ah,” he said quickly, putting up his hands, “not that I’d doubt someone who has a talent for it, of course.”
Hinata wrinkled his nose. “Seriously, that’s your problem?” he asked. “I thought you’d love that sort of thing. Seeing people grow to the point where they can overcome challenges… isn’t that what you’re always going on about? Isn’t that ‘hope’?”
“That’s definitely something to inspire hope,” Komaeda agreed. “However, isn’t it more impressive when people use their own strength, rather than relying on others? To me, it’s even more amazing when people can muster the strength to pull themselves out of despair.”
Something about those words really didn’t sit right with him. There was a time when Hinata might have agreed, but nowadays, he didn’t feel that way. His time at Hope’s Peak had taught him that relying on others was normal. Trying to do everything yourself was recklessness, not strength.
It also sounded really lonely to him: having no one to rely on besides yourself. But Hinata knew exactly why Komaeda admired self-reliance; when he’d been struggling with the absurd and tragic events in his past, there hadn’t been anyone he could rely on, since everyone who cared about him was dead.
Hinata hoped that he knew better now; that he knew he wasn’t alone any more.
But just in case, it couldn’t hurt to remind him.
“Maybe some people are so amazing that they can do everything themselves,” he said carefully, “but I think most people need help at some point. And sometimes, having someone to talk to can be really useful. Talking to someone else can make you see things differently, or realize something you wouldn’t have realized on your own. You know what I mean… right, Komaeda?” he asked. He was thinking about all their strange conversations over the last three years. Often, it had been frustrating to talk to Komaeda, since they so seldom saw eye-to-eye. But nowadays, he definitely regarded those talks as worthwhile.
“Having another person to talk to…” Komaeda’s murmured. His voice trailed off. It seemed like he was recalling something in the past. Then, eventually, he nodded.
“Mm. I guess that can make a difference,” he agreed.
Hinata opened his mouth to respond, but before he could say anything, the topic was changed.
“So,” Komaeda asked abruptly, “how are your studies coming along so far?”
“Uh.” Hinata stared at him blankly. “I… haven’t started,” he admitted.
The look Komaeda sent him was so judgmental, it was almost comical.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Hinata groaned, slumping forward in his seat. “I hadn’t even decided for sure that this is something I want to do, or which college to aim for, so of course I haven’t started studying.” Though listening to himself speak, it sounded like he was just making excuses.
“Plus, I wanted to talk to some more people first. That’s why I called you out here,” he added.
“Wait.” Komaeda stared at him, uncomprehending. “Are you saying that… you care about my opinion?”
Hinata blinked. “Uh… yeah?” he said, bewildered. “I mean, otherwise I wouldn’t have asked.”
For some reason, this apparently came as a surprise. For a moment, Komaeda just looked shocked. But soon enough, his expression of shock melted into an overjoyed smile.
“I see… I’m so happy!” Komaeda laughed breathily, throwing his hands up in the air. “No one has ever wanted to hear what I have to say before!”
That… was just sort of depressing. Komaeda was also acting so differently from how he had been acting before that it gave Hinata whiplash. But that was nothing new when it came to their interactions, Hinata supposed.
“A-Anyway,” Hinata said, clearing his throat, “I didn’t just want to ask you about the whole counseling thing. I also just wanted to… catch up and stuff.”
“Catch up?” Komaeda asked.
“Like, with what you’ve been doing since graduation.”
“There’s not much to talk about,” Komaeda replied. “I’ve been spending most of my time here. Otherwise, I just stay at home.”
“You’re not looking for a job or anything?” Hinata asked with a frown.
“Not really.” Komaeda shrugged. “I have as much money as I’ll ever need, so I don’t need to work.”
Hinata really had to bite his tongue not to say anything about that. He knew about the terrible circumstances that led Komaeda to acquiring all that money, but it wasn’t quite enough to keep the incredulous look off his face.
“And even if I did need to work,” Komaeda continued, “there isn’t any job that’s safe for someone like me to have.”
Hinata shook his head. “That can’t be true. There has to be something.”
“There isn’t anything safe from my luck,” Komaeda argued, like it was simple and obvious. “Wherever I go, ‘it’ will always follow. Do you know why I asked to meet at this library, instead of the one in town?” he asked. When Hinata shook his head, he explained, “It’s because I can’t go back to the other one. The last time I went, there was a huge accident where several of the bookshelves got knocked over.”
“Seriously?!” Hinata asked, eyes wide.
“Mm. Nobody died, but one person did get injured: a little kid. There was some property damage as well. If you noticed that the library was temporarily closed for repairs last year, that was the reason why. Ah, I didn’t get banned or anything, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Komaeda said, holding up his hands. “In fact, the incident wasn’t traced back to me at all… but because I knew I was the cause of it, it would be wrong to continue going back there.”
Hinata just sat there, absorbing that story. The whole thing was ugly. The detail that it was a little kid who’d gotten hurt was especially disturbing. But, perhaps more than anything else… what bothered him the most was Komaeda’s casual tone of voice as he talked about it. Based on how he talked, it was clear he was resigned; like he’d just accepted that this was how things were always going to be, and that there was nothing he could do about it, other than try to stay out of the public as much as possible.
He’d probably never even considered getting a job until Hinata brought it up. Clearly, a normal life was something Komaeda considered out of reach.
“S-Still,” Hinata began, trying to shove down his feelings of helplessness. “You know you can’t just give up, right?”
“There isn’t anything to give up on,” Komaeda said. “I knew that having a job would be impossible, so I wasn’t planning on looking for one.”
Hinata shook his head. “That’s wrong. Even if something bad might happen, you can’t just… sit at home and do nothing for the rest of your life. And besides,” he pointed out, “you don’t know that your bad luck will continue forever. The future could be different.”
Rather than filling Komaeda with hope, Hinata’s words just seemed to irritate him.
“What proof do you have of that?” Komaeda frowned at him, running a hand through his hair the way he usually did when he was annoyed. “For as long as I’ve been alive, I’ve been tossed around by the cycle of good and bad luck. It’s irresponsible to say that might change when you don’t have any evidence.”
As much as he wanted to tell Komaeda in no uncertain terms that he was wrong, Hinata couldn’t do it. Truthfully, what Komaeda was saying wasn’t all wrong. It probably was somewhat irresponsible of him to suggest that Komaeda’s luck could just go away. He hadn’t lived with Komaeda’s luck; he didn’t understand how it worked as well as Komaeda did. Telling the other boy to just let go of the worries he’d carried with him all his life wasn’t realistic.
But there was one thing Komaeda had said that wasn’t true: that Hinata didn’t have any evidence. Hinata had, in fact, caught one piece of evidence that he could use as refutation.
“‘For as long as I’ve been alive…’” he repeated. “Komaeda, that’s it!”
Komaeda blinked at him. “Huh?”
“You weren’t supposed to live this long, were you?” Hinata said. “Before you came to Hope’s Peak, the doctors told you that you have six to 12 months left to live… isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” Komaeda said, clearly not sure where he was going with this.
“Then… couldn’t that be ‘proof’ that your luck is wearing off?” Hinata suggested. “That diagnosis you received didn’t even come true. It’s been way more than 12 months since then.”
“That’s…” Komaeda looked away from him, but it was too late – based on his expression, Hinata could tell that this thought had occurred to him too.
“That can’t be considered proof of anything,” Komaeda denied. But after a moment, he lowered his voice and admitted, “Though… it’s true that I didn’t expect to live this long. Or rather, I hoped I wouldn’t, so I wouldn’t have to keep dealing with all this.”
“But you’re still alive,” Hinata pressed him, trying to get him to stop talking so negatively, to see the point he was trying to make. “And you don’t know how much longer you have left to live. It’s possible that it could be a really long time. You’ve lived long enough to graduate, so… doesn’t it make sense for you to think about what’s next?”
Komaeda didn’t say anything. He just stared. But maybe that was a good sign; that he wasn’t arguing.
“Right now, you have a future. So… you shouldn’t just resign yourself to being unhappy,” Hinata finished.
For a moment, there was silence. Komaeda looked down at the table, a complicated expression on his face.
“Maybe… you have a point,” he said slowly, and Hinata felt lightheaded with relief.
“It’s true that I haven’t felt very sick recently,” Komaeda admitted. “I guess it just seemed like if I acknowledged I was doing better, it’d be like I was asking for trouble.
So, he’d been afraid of jinxing it. Hinata had wondered if it was something like that.
“Honestly, I don’t know why I’m still alive.” Komaeda sighed a little. “Nothing too lucky or unlucky has happened to me recently. Which means that something truly horrible could be coming up… Or…”
“Or?” Hinata pressed.
“Or it just… stopped, and the cycle has ended,” Komaeda finished. “But that doesn’t seem very likely.”
“You never know,” Hinata said with a bit of a tired smile.
Komaeda went quiet after that. Hinata looked back down at the book he’d picked out, face down on the table. His real objective when meeting with Komaeda had been to talk, so he’d given no real thought to which book to pick out, and he’d already forgotten what it was about.
“You know,” Komaeda said, out of the blue, “maybe you’re my good luck charm.”
Hinata’s head jerked up.
“What?”
“I was just thinking about how long it’s been since something really lucky or unlucky has happened to me. If I had to pick a time when my luck stopped bothering me too much beyond everyday occurrences, it would have to be around the time we started talking more often,” Komaeda explained with a finger in the air. “So,” he said, lips curving into a smile, “maybe there’s something special about your presence that makes it all go away. You may possess a hidden talent after all: the Ultimate Good Luck Charm.”
Hinata had no good reply. He didn’t know if he was being flattered or mocked.
“T-That’s…” he sputtered, staring at Komaeda’s face, seeking out any sign that this was all a joke. “Y-You can drop the jokes already. We both know I don’t have a talent.”
“Well, of course not.” Komaeda laughed, high and breathy as always. “If you had a talent, they definitely would have uncovered it at Hope’s Peak. But… maybe it’s not such a bad thing that they didn’t,” he mused.
“What do you mean, ‘it’s not such a bad thing’?” Hinata repeated. He couldn’t help but sound incredulous. Komaeda hadn’t ragged on him for his lack of talent in a long time, but it was too much to accept that he’d suddenly adopted the complete opposite view. That would be too dramatic a change, even for a guy as weird as him.
“It’s kind of like… if you’d been born with a talent, you probably wouldn’t have worked as hard, you know?” Komaeda said. “But because you were a talentless person surrounded by talented people, you became the underdog who worked twice as hard as everyone else. I didn’t expect to feel this way, but, I found something attractive about that. The Hinata-kun who pushes forward with determination, despite his lack of talent: that’s the person I find really interesting. It’s like you have a unique aura, different from all the Ultimate students.”
To say that wasn’t a speech Hinata had been expecting to hear would be an understatement.
As Komaeda explained his thoughts, Hinata had to gape a little bit. Komaeda’s words conjured up a lot of conflicting feelings. He sounded condescending, but like he truly admired Hinata at the same time. Being told he had a different ‘aura’ from talented people kind of pissed him off, but Komaeda calling him “attractive” was undeniably flattering. He could feel his face starting to flush.
“Should I take that as a compliment, or an insult?” he asked, trying to keep his voice even as he fixed Komaeda with his usual look of exasperation.
“You can take it however you like,” Komaeda said cheerfully. And with another laugh, he finally returned to his book.
So, from what he could tell, Souda thought he could do it, Nanami thought he could do it, and Komaeda… probably thought he could do it. Maybe.
After talking to his friends, Hinata felt confident enough to take the next step: approaching an adult who actually knew something about careers.
Yukizome-sensei may not have been his teacher, but she’d always been supportive. Before graduation, she told him he could always come to her if he needed advice. So, he ended up going back to Hope’s Peak for the first time in two months in order to meet with her.
When he told her that he was thinking about becoming a counselor, she smiled at him and said that sounded like a wonderful idea. Then she did two things for him: she arranged for him to shadow one of the Hope’s Peak guidance counselors for a day, and she gave him the contact information for the Ultimate Therapist – who, coincidentally, had been a student in her own class at Hope’s Peak.
Shadowing the guidance counselor wasn’t quite as enlightening as he hoped it would be. Mostly, the guy just went to meetings and typed stuff at his computer. Hinata was allowed to sit in on the meetings, but he dozed off during one of them, which was pretty embarrassing.
Meeting the Ultimate Therapist, though… that was a lot more interesting.
Hinata had been a little intimidated. Although he’d already made peace with the fact he had no talent, knowing that there was somebody with an Ultimate talent for the career he wanted to pursue still dealt a blow to his self-confidence. It served as a reminder that even if he did turn out to be good at this, there was a threshold he was never going to reach.
And though he was interested in finding out what kind of person someone with the Ultimate Therapist talent would be, he was also afraid of finding out that she was nothing like him. He was afraid of finding out that he had the wrong personality for the profession, or something like that. His mental image of the Ultimate Therapist was someone extroverted and friendly, kind of like Yukizome-sensei.
But as it turned out, Gekkougahara Miaya wasn’t much like Yukizome-sensei. Instead of friendly and upbeat, she came across as calm and serious. Her personality reminded him a bit of Nanami’s… or, perhaps, his own.
He’d came prepared with a list of questions to ask her, from “What’s the paperwork load like?” to “What’s the most difficult part of the job?” As he went down the list, Gekkougahara calmly and thoughtfully answered all his questions. At first, he took notes, but before long he became too absorbed in what she was saying to write everything down.
“What are some common issues your clients come in to talk about?” he asked.
“That depends on the client’s age,” Gekkougahara replied. “Among people your age, there’s a lot of depression and anxiety. I see a lot of Hope’s Peak students and alumni.”
“Wait…” That caught Hinata off-guard. “Really?”
“Yes.” Gekkougahara nodded. “There are a lot of main course students who come in to talk about the pressure they feel to succeed, or to express discontent with how their future has seemingly been decided for them. Then there are numerous reserve course students who suffer from depression and low self-esteem. Although these are issues you’d observe among any student body, it would seem that an abnormally high percentage of students at Hope’s Peak Academy are struggling.”
Something about that explanation touched a nerve.
Depression and low self-esteem, huh?
What she said about reserve course students hit him really hard. Though what she said about main course students also hit him, just in a different way.
He’d never considered it much before: that it was hard to be a main course student. Pressure to succeed, and the feeling that you had no say in your own future… those were things he honestly hadn’t given much thought to. From where he’d been standing, main course students seemed immensely lucky, like they’d been handed the world on a silver platter. Obviously, he knew main course students could be dealing with some difficult things in their personal life, just like anyone else; his time with 77-B had taught him that. But overall, they seemed to have it pretty good. They didn’t have to wonder about what to do after graduation, or about whether or not they’d succeed. Being recognized by Hope’s Peak meant they should be set for life.
“Alumni, too?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied, still in that calm tone of voice. “The issues I just described aren’t always resolved during high school. Main course students who graduate and move on to be at the top of their field may experience an even more suffocating pressure than they felt during high school. Other main course students may come to realize that their talent was more of a hobby for them, and not something they wanted to do as a career. Yet after graduating, they feel locked into that path anyway. As for reserve course students, I hear from many who attended Hope’s Peak in order to be surrounded by greatness, or because they were hoping to discover a talent of their own. However, what commonly happens is that being surrounded by talented people causes them to judge themselves even more harshly and damages their self-esteem. Often, they end up regretting their decision to attend the school, feeling as though they got nothing in return for their money because no talent was discovered.”
When she finished, Hinata couldn’t say anything for a minute. He just sat there in stunned silence.
Everything she said about reserve course students, he could recognize in himself, and in the faceless people from his own class he never made any effort to talk to.
If he hadn’t met Nanami, or Monomi, or those other people who helped him realize that having talent wasn’t the goal, he probably would have ended up in a really bad place.
Helping people who currently going through the things he struggled with himself… was that something he’d be able to do? He didn’t have any experience.
But he was starting to wonder if maybe the fact he could relate so well to those feelings of failure and insecurity she just described might be an advantage, rather than a weakness. Maybe it was better to have struggled and overcome those feelings than to have always been confident in himself.
Hinata shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. There was still another question he wanted to ask.
“So, um, Gekkougahara-san…” Hinata looked at her for permission. This question was more personal, so he felt awkward asking. The look in Gekkougahara’s eyes seemed to say it was alright, though, so he went ahead.
“Were you one of those people who felt like your future had been decided for you?” he asked hesitantly. “Because of your talent, I mean.”
“No,” came Gekkougahara’s clear reply. “I won’t deny that being recognized by Hope’s Peak may have contributed to my decision, but even if I hadn’t been recognized, I’m sure I would have ended up on the same path,” she said confidently. “More than anything else, helping other people get better is what I enjoy doing. It can be challenging at times, but it’s a rewarding profession.”
Soon after that, their time was up. Gekkougahara had to go back to work, but before he left, she told him she’d be happy to answer any more questions he has at a later date.
Maybe he’d take her up on that some time. But at the moment, Hinata felt like he’d finally heard what he needed to hear.
“So… I guess I know what my plan is now,” he told Nanami.
They were hanging out at her apartment again. It had been a week since he spoke with Gekkougahara. And in that time, he’d done some more research, and become more confident in his plans.
“Really?” Nanami asked, pausing her game.
“Mm. I think I know which university I’m aiming for,” Hinata said. “I’ll study for the entrance exams, and then if I get in, I’ll be a Psychology major.”
“That’s great news.” Nanami smiled brightly, in that way that always made his heart beat faster. “I’m sure you’ll pass the entrance exams, Hinata-kun.”
“Thanks,” Hinata said, trying to convey with his own smile how grateful he was for her support. “The exams are eight months away, though, so in the meantime I need to find a job. I can tell my parents are already sick of me freeloading.” He laughed a little in self-deprecation.
“Maybe you could work at Games R Us!”
“Maybe,” Hinata allowed. Then he asked, “So, uh, done anything interesting lately?” He felt a little bad for always dominating the conversation recently.
“Just the other day, I met up with some of the girls for lunch,” Nanami said. She was back to looking down at her Game Girl screen (Tetris, this time), but Hinata was used to that by now.
“Really? How was it?”
“It was good. We went to a fancy café, with tea and cakes. I’d never been to one of those before. Usually when I need food, I order it online, instead of taking the time to go out in public.”
Hinata laughed a little at that. For a former class rep who was so good at reaching out to others, Nanami really sounded like a shut-in sometimes.
“How are all the girls doing?” he asked.
“Well, Pekoyama-san and Sonia-san weren’t there. Pekoyama-san couldn’t afford to leave her position, apparently. And Sonia-san is back in her home country. Though, she said she’d come back and visit often, now that she has her own private jet.”
Her own private jet?!
“That’s, uh, pretty amazing,” Hinata managed to say. Royalty sure was something else.
“Mm. As for the others… I think they’ve been having fun,” Nanami said. “Mioda-san is working on a new album. Tsumiki-san is working as a nurse at the general hospital. Koizumi-san is studying at a design school. And Saionji-san is giving performances and teaching dance classes now, I think.”
“I see.” Hinata couldn’t help but notice the fact that everyone she’d talked about was doing something related to their talent. Normally, he’d just accept that as a given. But after what Gekkougahara had said, he couldn’t help but wonder about that. He hoped none of them felt like they had to keep doing what Hope’s Peak had recognized them for if they didn’t want to. But he knew all the people Nanami had just mentioned, and they all seemed pretty enthusiastic about their talents when he talked to them.
It made him a little envious, too: everyone being so sure of their talents and their own futures. But not as envious as it once would have.
“I don’t know what Owari-san is doing, because she didn’t really talk much,” Nanami continued. “Mostly she just ate cakes. But I think she’s doing well. Did you know that Koizumi-san and Saionji-san are living together now?”
“Ah, really?” Hinata asked, a little surprised. He’d kind of just assumed everyone either moved back in with their families, or got their own apartments.
“Mm. I think that sounds nice, to have someone to room with. It’s quite common to have roommates, when you’re just out of high school… or so I’ve heard.”
For a second there, Hinata wondered if Nanami was implying something. But no, that couldn’t be right. At least… he didn’t think so.
Girls rooming together wasn’t unusual. Guys rooming together wasn’t unheard of. A girl and a guy splitting an apartment together, though… that only happened when they were dating, right?
But he was probably reading way too much into it.
“Yeah, I guess that’s true,” he said, trying to sound casual.
“Tsumiki-san asked about you, by the way,” Nanami said next, without looking up from her game.
Yeah… she clearly hadn’t meant anything by that comment. He’d been getting way ahead of himself.
He couldn’t decide whether he was disappointed or relieved to know she hadn’t been suggesting they… move in together, or something.
Roughly, Hinata shook his head, trying to just focus on what she was saying.
“Tsumiki-san?” he asked.
“Mm. I think she’d like to see you again,” Nanami said. And then, as an afterthought, she added, “I’m sure everyone else would, too.”
Hinata smiled. He hadn’t forgotten the plans he’d made, with Nanami and Souda and Kuzuryuu: to get the whole class together for a New Year’s celebration. But that was, of course, many months away.
“We should all get together sometime,” he said. “Since I graduated, I’ve only seen you, Souda and Komaeda.”
“Komaeda-kun?” Nanami asked.
“Yeah.” Hinata nodded, even though Nanami wasn’t looking at him. “I told him about my plans and stuff.”
“How is he?”
“He’s…” Hinata paused. On the one hand, he didn’t want to worry her. But on the other hand, he didn’t want to lie.
“Komaeda’s the same as always, pretty much,” he admitted. “But I think he’ll be okay. Or at least… I hope so, anyway.”
“I see.” Nanami had her game on pause again, but she was staring down at the screen anyway, a small frown on her face. She sounded regretful as she said, “I tried to reach out to all my classmates, but… I never felt like I understood Komaeda-kun, no matter how hard I tried. So, I’m glad Hinata-kun is there to be his friend.”
Hinata blinked at her. Something about the way she was talking kind of worried him. Maybe it was just that she’d paused her game. But to him, it sounded like she had more on her mind than just her regrets as Komaeda’s former classmate.
“I’m glad too,” he said, a little taken aback. “But… you don’t need to worry too much. I’m sure you did your best. He’s just difficult to talk to sometimes.”
“Mm. Maybe... you’re right.”
Then, abruptly, she shut off her game and stood up from her chair.
“I’m going to play a different game now,” she announced. “Would you like to be Player 2? You brought your Game Boy today, right?”
It still didn’t quite feel right: that conversation, and how suddenly it had ended. But Hinata went along with her whims anyway.
“Sure,” he said. “Hang on, let me go get it.”