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Kou doesn't have the best control over his electricity yet.
And that's fine! He was only 10 years old, so there was still plenty of time for him to learn, according to his older brother. The words were strangely meaningless, considering Teru-nii had been twice as good as he was 10, but his older brother wouldn't lie to him, right?
He just needs a little more practice. Kou just needed to be shocked a few more times, to do his best to smile through the pain a little while longer, to work just a little bit harder. It wasn't impossible, and even if it was impossible, then he would learn to get used to it in time anyway.
That should've been it. It should've just been a painful sting in his hands, bandages being wrapped by Teru or his parents (though he's learning how to do it as well), maybe even some cool-looking scars at the very most.
But it wasn't.
Kou was no stranger to getting electrocuted. He'd been training for almost a year now, with at least a few burns from his staff every day for those 10 months.
He had never considered it would end up like this.
The thing about his hands was that they kept going all numb. Or tingly. Sometimes they skipped both of those, and just went straight to plain old painfulness.
In an 11 year old's best description, it sucked.
It was also extremely inconvenient, rendering him useless for a few minutes.
(Well, at least he thought they were minutes. Kou didn't really have the best sense of time. Sometimes, it felt like hours, but he was probably just imagining it. It was probably just a few minutes, right?)
Kou wasn't the smartest, strongest, fastest, or the most talented. Not compared to his parents, his brother, or even most of his classmates. The only thing he could do to try and make up for it was to just push through, to never give up, to give it his all and then some.
And that's what he did.
His hands went numb, until he couldn't even move them properly.
His hands went all tingly, until even just trying to sleep was a pain because his hands kept touching the mattress, hurting like hundred tiny ninjas were stabbing the palms of his hands with their blades.
The worst of the three was when his hands just hurt.
It felt like they were being burned all over again, leaving him nothing but a shaky mess of tears on the floor of his room, not even strong enough to get up and try to laugh the pain away.
At least Kou learned how to deal with those little episodes with time.
By the time he reached 15 years old, he was able to push through the numbness, the pins-and-needles feeling, and at least avoid being seen in pain.
Sure, his handwriting was atrocious, trying to avoid touching anything was inconvenient, and he had to excuse himself to go away from others until his hands stopped shaking and he himself could keep his pain off of his expression, but it was fine.
He was a Minamoto. He was strong. He could push through it. He would push through. He had to. It was only right that he make up for everything he lacked, even if he could only do that through sheer determination and nothing else.
Kou was certain he was right, especially when no one corrected him.
Yokoo and Satou knew his hands weren't in the best condition. They had seen him with numb hands, seen him wincing when he touched something. They knew something was wrong, though they hadn't brought it up directly. The two of them probably didn't know what to say.
Teru knew his hands weren't completely right. He had helped Kou through a couple of his little episodes, managing to stay calm and comfort him. He was worried about his hands, but Kou said he would get better, that the episodes were becoming less frequent, but it wasn't like he could stop Kou from training.
Even his parents knew, and they weren't stopping him. Even if they weren't home most of the time, they had heard him crying over his stupid burns. His parents just said he needed more practice, and since they had been working for so long, they had to be right.
So why?
That day on the roof, when Hanako had seen his hands, why had he sealed his staff?
He hadn't seemed like he'd been lying when he said it was because he couldn't handle its power well yet. Hanako probably could've knocked him out or even killed him no matter how many times Kou shocked him. They had been on a rooftop, and Hanako couldn't be killed from falling, not like Kou.
Wouldn't that have been easier?
Wouldn't it have been easier to just kill him or knock him out? Or to even take his staff away entirely? Wouldn't it have been easier to just walk away and let him get burnt?
He never got a chance to ask Hanako for an explanation.
Not with Teru and Kou's big fight in the way.
Not with Mitsuba's human ghost being killed.
Not with Yashiro-senpai's lifespan.
Not with the fake, picture perfect world.
Not with watching Mitsuba disappear.
Not with learning about Hanako's severance and not even being there to see.
There were no new burns on his hands then.
Still, maybe that would've hurt less than the painful sting in his heart throughout all of it.