Chapter Text
“This is your…?“
“Third time.“
The other’s lips purse, a humming sound catching in his throat. He gives you this look –this look – where his eyes draw a line up, and down your body, assessing you, and you just know what kind of thoughts might be building inside his head.
This isn’t new. You know exactly where you’re at, and you’re tired of the same old condescension threading through the crack of a smile, flashing at you as if that was what you need.
You don’t. You turn your head, ending the conversation by looking back at your notes, and for a minute, it seems like you succeeded. Scribbling of ink pens on paper, and the toned down chatter of your peers fill the classroom full with ambition, and desire for more; this is the air you breathe every day.
But you haven’t succeeded: your partner, pen twirling in one hand while his chin rests on the other, decides to interrupt you again.
“I admire that,” he says.
This is unexpected.
The hand of your watch ticks down the seconds: one, two, and three until you can raise your head again, and answer. “What?”
You peer into a pale green shade of irises, confused, and lips parted. He’s looking at you with mouth corners curving upwards. Genuine, you ask.
Then his gaze turns apologetic, conciliatory. He flaps his hands as if he’s trying to swat away your invisible anger (“you’re looking scary! Did I say something wrong?”) But you’re not angry. You want to hear more. Chest leaning forward, your tongue licks over your lips. “No, I’m just… surprised, I guess. What do you admire?”
This time, his eyes turn wide. A puzzled sound escapes the cave of his throat. You can’t help but feel like he expected you to know what he meant. Confidence ebbing away, your torso mirrors the action, and you distance yourself again.
“Your willpower.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Your willpower to keep on grasping for something you cannot reach. No matter how often you’ll try, you’re destined to fail, and still you do. It’s kind of silly if you ask me, but what can I say… your endurance is kind of touching.”
Shut-down.
A whirring is heard behind the blank stare you’re casting. Your gears are grinding. Did you just hear that right?
Twiddling thumbs, parched lips, opened mouth. You smoke a dry puff of air.
“What?”
It doesn’t match.
Your sensory functions are the few things you trust in. But in the current moment, the pictures you receive aren’t matching the audio snippet replaying with the drumming beat of anxiety against your heart. It doesn’t match the feeling it’s causing. He looks so pleasant, and friendly, and yet there’s a vibe exuded from his pores you cannot describe.
Disappointment marks his features. Your confusion seems to unnerve him. He clicks his tongue, then smiles again.
Oh, you really don’t understand.
“See, I think you’re dumb. It’s really useless to keep doing what you’re doing. But then again, it’s so refreshing! I’d love to see what you come up with in the future, even when I think I’ve got most of it down.”
A giggle passes his lips, and you’re waiting for the joke to reveal itself so you can, maybe, laugh, too.
But there is no joke.
He isn’t kidding.
From summer until winter, and from winter until summer, Hope’s Peak Academy holds extracurricular classes to encourage talents yet to be found.
It isn’t mandatory. But if you entered the school through a generous donation rather than your abilities, then this is your ticket out of the reserve course student dorms.
The classes are occupying the whole day. Students are spending their time exploring territories they never stepped a foot on in hope this is their calling. Desks, paper, and ground is blotched with their sweat, and blood: the person who spends a lifetime’s money, and his free time on seeking out his own piece of specialness isn’t fooling around. You take the classes if you truly want to. You don’t take them to waste your time, and fortune.
You have four attempts at hand until you graduate. Two years. If you haven’t found anything by the time the clinking coins of your entrance fee are dying in sound, then you’re truly talentless.
Then you’re cast out back into the sea of ordinary people, because this is where you belong.
“Hinata-kun!”
You stop in your tracks; the hallway losing the sound of a pair of shoes while the other’s steps still click clack behind your back.
How does he know your name?
When your upper body pivots his way for you to face him, the question shows in your expression, and he seems to understand in a flash.
“It’s written on your notebook. I read it when you put it in your bag.”
“What,” you begin, “do you want?” There’s a sharp edge with which your tongue forms the words, an accusatory tint in which you snap at him; it takes the wind off your sails. While he’s been hurtful to you before, you’re more confused than anything. He seems like a nice guy after all, as contrary as it may sound, and you don’t have it in you to give him the cold shoulder just yet.
Heels circling, you fully turn around, your upper teeth biting on your lip. He’s still smiling, but the usual cheerfulness doesn’t quite reach his eyes, and you’re unsure whether he’s affected by your prior bark or not.
Light is reflected in a focused glint as if he’s concentrating, his mouth pressed into an according thin line. He shakes his head then, and laughs it off: a quiet coughing fit.
“Would you like me to show you around?”
“What do you mean?”
“The school outside the west district.”
It takes a minute until the information reaches your ear. “But that’s—”
“Only for talents, and scientists, I know.”
Silence. A knit forms between your eyebrows, and in response he raises his.
“That part of the school is prohibited for us, usually. I don’t understand how you would know your way, much less show me around, when you’re not a…” Click!
Realization hits.
You see him capture it, see him raising his arms in a wide gesture like he’s welcoming something: welcoming you, and your realization.
“Komaeda Nagito. Super High School Level Good Luck,” he says.
And then he adds with a chuckle, “it’s a pleasure to meet you, Hajime Hinata.”
You entered the school when a new system had been freshly regulated. Research was in dire need of sponsors, and so it happened that people like you, common, and without any extraordinary skills to speak of, could attend Hope’s Peak Academy. A school, as its name implies, which is a shining beacon of hope worldwide through the outstanding prodigies it held under its wings.
You couldn’t stop smiling for weeks straight, so in disbelief that a door opened for you, which granted a way to your highest dreams. How lucky you were.
Of course, back then, chaos reigned. It was disorganized, and messy. You could just see how they didn’t know what to do with you, but had to deal you a seat, because you financed their survival. You understood. You didn’t care. You were sparking full of exhilaration. Talents, and the so called reserve course students were mingled together, sharing a class.
You thought it would be nice.
It wasn’t nice.
The air was swelling with the refusal to accept the dirt marks you and your peers imprinted on their polished floors. Loaded with contempt, and incomprehension it had you coughing, and suffocating on powdery anxiety. You didn’t want to be an outsider, like they made you feel.
Complaints filed in.
Teachers, students, talented or not, parents: everyone complained.
The solution was to distinct, to create west district, and main district. The dream you thought had finally become reality was ripped from your hands: you became an outsider, again.
But you didn’t lose hope. Not yet.
What hurt you the most of Komaeda’s words was that he’s right. You agree. It might be foolish to continue what you’re doing.
After he so nonchalantly confronted you with it, you couldn’t do anything but swallow back the upcoming vomit crawling up your esophagus, a burning sensation like battery acid making you gag. You didn’t gift him another word. But even if you had wanted to, you would’ve been unable to.
You’d like to believe there’s something you’re good in. You’re more than aware what you seek most likely doesn’t exist. But if you pass the extracurricular classes, if you find it, what you’re looking for, then the heaven which they denied you would open its gates again, and permit you access. And then, you hope, the angels’ eyes would glimmer with acceptance (‘you deserve to be here.’)
There’s nothing left for you but to keep on trying.
Komaeda comments everything you pass. He has a way of complimenting, and insulting things at the same time, almost like he’s holding back an opinion of his own. Sometimes he’s not complimenting at all, but the tone of his voice lulls you into thinking he is (“be careful under these ceilings, once in a while part of it loosens, and falls on your head. I guess it would be a fun sight to see, and I certainly find the unexpected to be exciting, but I prefer them fixing it. Whenever they have time of course! Having so many independent talents at their disposal, overlooking these busy minds, yes, it must be difficult.”)
You have the feeling he’s hiding the person he revealed to you before, and it’s strange you think, strange that he would do it now.
At one point of his school tour, his admittedly calming voice turns into background music. Your attention, now, have the students roaming the plaza, then the halls. When accepting Komaeda’s offer you had wondered whether they would remember you: Hajime Hinata, the boy who bought his way into the school.
They don’t. (There are thousand others of you.)
It stings, an explosion of countless prickling needles at your core, to have attention not returned. And it stings even harder because this feeling you experience has you puzzling about its meaning.
The time when you’re the shining hero, returning from the war – soldier uniform, and boots clad in the mud from fields you have conquered – it hasn’t come yet.
Komaeda tilts his head your way, and asks if it’s exciting. You don’t know how to answer. Thirty seconds you offer nothing but a stare before you slightly shrug your shoulders, and say, “I guess so.”
You arrive at Komaeda’s door, and suddenly both of you are shifting feet.
You know he’s shifting feet, too, because your eye focus is kept on the floor, perfect view on zippered brown shoes.
Your fingertips press into the soft part of your palm when your fingers curl at your side. “Komaeda, I have a question.”
He answers with a hum, ending on a higher note; he’s waiting for you to continue.
“Why were you taking classes in the west district, when you’re already a talent?”
Obviously, he never took them before, because then you would’ve noticed. You’ve been in there ever since the beginning, so why now? He didn’t need them back then.
“Ah, that’s right,“ he says.
You peek a glance from behind your eyelashes, and see him tipping his index against his temple.
“Well, you see, you surely noticed, but ‘good luck’ is not much of a talent. Lousy, really! I never decided to come here. It’s the Academy who’s been interested in me. But I guess, they’re slowly beginning to see their mistake. I’ve been assigned in case there might be slumbering something else inside of me.” His shoulders move upwards, and although his story seems solid, the smile he shoots your way, gleaming eyes accompanying, seems outrageously fake.
Lying?
It’s save filed in your brain storage. “Okay, and so… why this? Why this offer to show me the school?”
“Huh?” His mouth is left in a round shape after a burst of surprise escapes him. “Did you forget already?”
You blink, and he blinks back.
“Because I admire you.”
You don’t understand.
Komaeda licks his lips, and with an ecstatic volume, his speech speeds forth. “Hinata-kun, you and I, I think we’re similar. But you have something I will never obtain, and I admire you for that. Yes, you could even say I’m jealous!”
You shake your head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
An audible sigh forces itself out of Komaeda’s nose. His eyes are widened as if he drank sixteen cups of coffee at once while desiring nothing but sleep. If you had to choose one word to describe him, it’d be weary. “I wonder why I can never make people understand.”
It’s said with a bitter tone, but when he directs a sideways glance your way, his mouth corner starts to twitch. “Maybe my thoughts exceed you?”
The question pulls seconds of silence from you. Several times you chew on the word, before it leaves at the end of a string: “What?”
He laughs.
A high-pitched laugh, childish, and carefree: genuinely amused. The sound he creates vibrates behind your ribcage alongside the thumping of your heart, and works like a catalyst, accelerating the speed at which it beats. The vessels of your ears are swamped by pulsating hot blood: you’re not sure whether you’re blushing because you’re embarrassed, or because you’re displeased.
This time, you’re sighing. You don’t think you have the energy to converse with him more. At least, not today.
“Komaeda, one last thing.”
“Yes?”
“I may not understand why you did it, but… thank you for taking me here.”
You say it in honesty. In actuality, you enjoyed the tour. Komaeda was like an entrance ticket in more ways than one. You question: did his presence cloak yours?
Without him, you would’ve drawn attention like the lost little kid in the mall. And while you desire it, wailing your arms and crying loudly ‘give me attention’, you know what you really would’ve got, would’ve most likely shattered the ground that is your brittle self-confidence.
Instead, you stand encouraged now. This is what you want.
“Don’t be silly, Hinata-kun. You’re not thanking me for that.”
“I’m…” you gawk. Komaeda, once again, with an unforeseen response as ammunition, throws you off the mountain of past experiences: what you expect. What you think is normal. “I’m not?” Is he serious?
“I don’t know why you would.” Irritation is written on Komaeda’s forehead, crinkling under white-haired locks. No smile. He is serious.
Somehow you find yourself backpedalling. “Uh, nevermind then.”
Komaeda seems satisfied with that. His arms cross, and a grin spreads on his pale pink lips.
“Let’s meet again. I’m looking forward to our next class.”
You tug on your lower lip, foot tip tapping on the floor. Words are scrawled across your body in inky black squiggles: restless, confused, perplexed, tired. Your answer is scarce: a nod. And then you turn around, fists tightly clenched. Out of the dorms! Out of the halls! Out of the district! Back to your cave.
Deja vu has you in its grip.