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Kaminari Denki is a happy person. You could ask anyone and they’d agree.
His general attitude towards everything was positive. He was friends with everyone. He made people laugh.
His classmates had even deemed his smile second best in the entire class of 1-A. (Never number one. Never the best.)
He was friendly and loud. He would laugh until he fell. He would smile until his jaw ached. He would joke even if it was at his own expense.
All in all, Kaminari Denki was a happy person.
Except he isn’t. But no one needs to know that. No one has to know about the hurt that curls in his stomach when he’s called stupid. No one has to know about the thin white scars that decorate his skin. The ones cause by his own quirk when the anxiety mounts to unbearable levels.
Because really he’s fine. It isn’t that bad. (It isn’t, it isn’titisn’ti-)
The Kaminari family is very similar to Denki. They are happy, easy-going people. Always known to go out on family trips. Those were always fun. If only it wasn’t an apology for keeping their kids up past midnight to yell at each other. But no one has to know about that.
The trips had stopped though. With the loss of their oldest child. They were still a happy family. Everyone can see that. Just a smaller family that no longer went on family trips.
They smiled at everyone the same, they made friendly conversation if you bumped into them, they still loved their youngest just as much. Everything was the same. (Maybe that was the problem.)
When Denki got his acceptance letter to UA he was ecstatic. It is the best hero school is Japan! On top of that it’s a boarding school. Denki doesn’t think about why that makes him so relieved. He’ll miss his parents. He will.
When told his mother she had looked at it skeptically. Made sure it was really his name on the paper. Then, with a low ‘huh’, she had given him back the letter and looked back at her phone.
The bright joy in his chest had abated a little, but he carried on with a smile. Because Kaminari Denki was a happy person.
He had shown his dad too. Who had at least shown some emotion; his eyebrows furrowed as he read it.
“Do you understand how expensive this school is? What, do you think we have all the money in the world? With your mother blowing it all on her bloody wine?” Denki looked down at the floor. “If you screw up at this school I’m sending you to the least expensive public school I can find.”
He had said it with a tone of resignation, as if Denki has already screwed up his chance.
Denki had burnt the letter with a spark of electricity and stared at the wall for the rest of the day, in hopes of finding that pride he felt when the letter had arrived.
He didn’t find it.
Every year on October 16th Denki disappears. It isn’t like anyone would be trying to find him anyways.
But October 16th is an important date. It’s the day his brother died. The day his bestfriend, his protector, his main source of comfort was taken from him. (And it’s all his fault).
He visits his brother’s grave only once every year. He can’t find it in himself to go more. He’s tried but he never gets past the cemetery gate unless it’s that day.
And then he sits there, alone, and tries to muster up any memory he can.
He thinks about eating omurice on the sofa next to Haru, he thinks of the smiley face drawn in ketchup and of his brother’s bright smile.
All the Kaminari’s know how to fake a smile. It’s in their blood.
Sometimes it rains when Kaminari visits the grave. On those occasions the memories of fights come easier.
It’s easy to remember how they had both been sat at the sofa with their mom standing, how her tears had spilt down her face and her eyes avoided her children.
It’s easy to remember the open and close of the front door. The start of the fight is always blurry, but he remembers that they screamed. He remembers his brother shook. He remembers the resonating sound of his father slapping his mother.
The blur comes back when they get more physical. He thinks his father was was slamming his mother against the wall when Haru had run to the kitchen though he can’t be sure. His brother had gone to hide only the sharpest knives.
Denki bore the responsibility of hiding knives after October 16th.
That day was the first time his quirk manifested. A jolt of electricity had cut the power of their home, and had cut his awareness of reality. It was also the day he realised he could use his quirk to escape.
To detach.
The memories all eventually lead up to the day of Haru’s death.
He was in school, sitting on the bench and waiting for his brother. Haru wasn’t always on time, he had school and friends and other stuff to do. But when he’d been there, waiting on the bench for forty minutes, he decided enough was enough.
He had walked home alone. The first time of many.
It took a little while for him to understand once he got home. With his father screaming and his mother crying he had been so confused. Why wasn’t Haru home?
Then his father left. His mother opened a new bottle of wine and sat at the table in silence. He had gone up to her, hesitantly, and asked where his brother was.
What his mother said that night, he will never forget. Even after six years.
“Haru is dead.” Her eyes looked dead too. “He was on his way to your school and there was a villain attack.” There were tears streaming down her face once again. “Maybe if you’d come home alone. If you had gone to another school..”if you weren’t alive, she didn’t say. But he heard it loud and clear.
It’s all his fault.
He sat by the grave and let his thoughts consume him. He let himself feel every emotion. He swam in mounds of self hate and repeated to himself, over and over: if only you weren’t alive.
It’s the only day in the year Denki lets himself cry freely. The only day he doesn’t restrain his sobs, the only day he doesn’t have to cry silently, the only day his breathing is allowed to turn erratic.
Kaminari Denki cries a lot but he rarely cries freely.
Haru’s grave is one of the new ones in the cemetery but it’s got mould growing up from the bottom and grime in every crevice. Denki cleans around his brother’s engraved name, to preserve at least that much in his memory, but other than that leaves the headstone to the mercy of mother nature. Like his brother is now.
He asks her to take care of him every year.
Sometimes he focuses so much on the look in his mother’s eyes he feels sick. He shoves his fingers down his throat to rid himself of the feeling. It helps.
He knows he’s ungrateful. His parents give him so much, they pay for his school and his food and his belongings, they buy him the new games he wants and they love him. He knows they do but sometimes he feels like he’s so so alone.
He longs for Haru, for the one he killed.
Does he even feel guilty at all?
He’s a monster.
He sits at the grave until the sun is gone and then he returns home to his too-small family.
Denki learnt a lot about responsibility after October 16th. He started walking home from school alone. He learnt how to sow and stitch up clothes (sometimes he didn’t get to the knives in time and wrestling them from his mother often ended up with little cuts and holes in his clothes).
He also learnt how to cook. Somewhat. He could make some basic recipes, most often including noodles and a little meat. He never made omurice. The thought often sent him retching into a toilet bowl.
The volatility of his quirk was an issue at first, their gas stove caught on little sparks and earned him more that a few burns on his arms.
He tells himself he deserves them. He does.
He learned rather quickly to keep it in. Or rather let it out on himself. He could let little bolts of electricity run down his arm and create thin zig zagging lined up his skin. Never to close to his wrist in case his shirt is dragged up and someone sees. Sometimes across his chest or back too.
People did see the scarring on occasion, but he assured them it was just because his quirk was a little hard to control.
They didn’t need to know he did it on purpose. (Because he is fine, why would they need to know?)
It also became quickly apparent that one of his quirk’s side effects was short-circuiting. A state in which he could barely see, everything blurred together. Sounds and images became confused and everything was so loud and dark and yet deafeningly silent at the same time.
It was empty. He felt the heaviness of his limbs and the fear constricting his body but also felt nothing at all. When he recovered he felt hollow.
But he smiled dumbly nonetheless, because it would be fine. He was fine. (Right?)
What’s a little more nothingness in an empty world anyways?
It’s comforting to know there’s an escape, that if his parents brings the knives out to threaten each other with, or if school work is piled onto him like there’s no tomorrow and all he can do is shake in front of mountain of paper and not absorb anything; there’s always an escape.
When the shouting starts to ring in his ears and his thought are whirring in his mind like a beehive, he finds solace in that limbo between conscious and not.
He learned that a smile can hide just about anything if you do it bright enough. His parents taught him that early on.
Smile at the neighbours so they don’t notice how tired you look.
Smile at your teachers when they mention scars.
Smile at your friends when they ask if something’s bothering you.
They don’t deserve to have to carry you and all your problems, said the voice in his head that sounded like mom. There’s nothing to complain about, so be a good child and copy mommy. See how she smiles? Smile like that. Smile brighter. Smile stupider.
Hurting children don’t smile, do they?
No one questions him anymore. With a smile he’s perfected since he was a toddler he can throw away any and every worry about him. Deflection works like a charm. Act too stupid and they’ll leave you alone.
He’s learned to smile at his parents too. Smile the day after they have a big fight or they’ll talk to you and tell you that they care, and they’re sorry, that it won’t happen again. Sometimes his dad will treat him to something sweet, but it always tastes like sour, broken promises and dry, flaking love.
Or his mother will tell him to stop being childish, that all parents fight sometimes. Just be quiet and go do your homework.
So he’s learned to hide himself behind a smile in front of his parents too. They don’t need to know. What if they feel guilty? (They wouldn’t, but that’s hard to admit. So instead he smiles and hides from himself too.)
When those thoughts get too loud he retreats to his empty place.
Another thing he had learned to repress where the sounds. His father always got snappy when he made too much sound. If he walks by the office door when his father’s on a call too loudly he earns an angry look and a “shhh”.
Haru didn’t like it either. On occasion he would be let into his older brother’s room, to do homework or play ‘try not to blink’. But when Denki accidentally let out ‘pop’ or ‘click’, Haru would tell him to be quiet.
He still isn’t sure if it annoyed him or if he just didn’t want the parents to come in. He’ll never know, either.
He doesn’t mean to. His mouth just moves. It isn’t for attention, like his mother used to say. It isn’t because he wants to distract his dad and make him lose his job, like his father says.
He doesn’t know why he used to do it. Why he’ll make noises when he’s alone in his room. Often he pointedly stops, even when he’s alone.
They just irritate people. They’re bad. They get him in trouble.
That why his stomach drop when he realises what he just did, in the presence of company. Kirishima and Bakugou sit with him on the floor of Kirishima’s room. They were all working on some worksheets for maths.
He didn’t freeze up or flinch. He learned that could lead to questions. He hated questions. Instead he closed his mouth, let his pencil continue along the page.
He wasn’t sure what he was writing but it wasn’t correct. It didn’t matter. His friends hadn’t realised his slip up. They hadn’t head the way he let his tongue form a ‘click’.
So he didn’t make a sound the rest of the evening. He didn’t ask Bakugou for help or ask Kirishima if he could stay and hang out longer. He wasn’t going to be a nuisance, not after that.
He shooed away Kirishima’s concerned glance with that smile. That godawful, perfect fucking smile that he wished would break. It never did.
He kept a skip in his step all the way to his room. Then he let his knees give out and laid on his dirty floor as he struggled to breathe properly.
He dug his fingernails into his calves and tried to breathe out, breathe out, please just breathe-
But he needed more oxygen so his body just kept sucking in air, no time to let it out, because he needed more, more, more. Until he had nothing but the stillness of unconsciousness.
The morning after he was late to class, his back hurt from sleeping on the floor and he did so badly on the work sheet he’d had to redo it.
His panic attacks are the opposite of his public persona. With his friends he’s loud and bubbly and makes jokes no one likes; his panic attacks are silent and oppressive. They carry silent tears that slide down his cheeks and rest sloppily on his chin, stuttering breaths where he can’t just breathe out and a throbbing headache.
It’s summer, his sheets are sticky with sweat and his mouth is perpetually dry. Just two more weeks of school. Then it’s the training camp. But now it’s the weekend, two days to his birthday.
It’s not a day that holds much importance. Just marks another year he’s been alive. Another year older than Haru will ever be.
He’s home for the weekend. He doesn’t want to avoid it. What if that’s suspicious? Why would he avoid it anyways? There’s nothing wrong.
He sits on his bed, sifting through old drawings. He has cards too, and a couple of photos. He keeps them all in a cloth pouch in his closet.
Coloured drawings that he and Haru did (Haru was always so much better at drawing), birthday and Christmas cards, a photo of him, Haru and Haru’s friend – he doesn’t remember his name – in a booth one time. It used to be pinned up on Haru’s wall but it’s his now.
There’s also a photo of Haru from the school photos. He’s wearing his uniform, his smile creases his eyes and shows a missing tooth in his top row. He can’t have been older than seven it in.
All of them are spread over his bed messily. He’ll pick one up, run his fingers over letters and squiggly lines. He hums to the music gently. These are some of his most prized possessions. He only brings them out when he’s alone.
And then suddenly he isn’t alone anymore. The front door is ripped open downstairs, the argument is muddled by the distance and then becomes louder as soon as the door closes.
Instantly he lunges for his phone that’s sat a few feet away on the ground.
He needs to stop the music, now, but his fingers are shaking. There are thunderous steps coming up the stairs by the time he’s shut the music up.
He whips back around to the bed and shoves as many of the papers under his bed as he can. He hears some rip but he has no time to think about it because his bedroom door is open now.
His father stomps up to him, wordlessly grabs his forearm and heaves him up from where he’s kneeling beside his bed. He doesn’t look at him as he drags Denki out into the hallway and down the stairs.
His head is spinning already and he doesn’t know what’s happening. He usually isn’t physically dragged into their fights, so what’s going on?
He barely notices as his ankle twists when he misses a step.
He’s led to his father’s office where his mother is digging through drawers of the desk, shouting furiously about something Denki can’t understand.
He’s shoved inside and barely manages to keep himself upright.
“What the hell have you been doing?! Spending-”
“I haven’t done shit! You’re the-”
“All our money on some fucking whore?!” His mother snarls.
“One who throws away all the money I make!”
“SO IT ALL JUST GOES MISSING THEN?”
“No I spend on THIS BRAT’S TUITION-”
He’s pushed into the side on the desk.
“OH how convenient, just push all your problems on some-”
“You happy now, Denki?” His father shouts. “Is this what you wanted?”
His father curls his hand back around Denki’s arm and jostles him violently.
“Don’t bring him into it!” His mother’s voice sounds raw, he notes distantly.
She rips his arm out from his dad’s grip.
(What’s happening? He can feel himself slipping.)
(Everything goes quieter as he reatreat into his own head. He always runs away.)
Both of them leaving is enough to rope him more into the present.
Oh no, no no no no, they’re going to the kitchen.
He stumbles after them, no longer hearing words, just loud, loud noise.
His father is reaching for the knives and he runs to push him back.
Denki’s saying something, he knows he is but he hears none of it.
The back of his father’s hand meets his cheek but he doesn’t let up. His hands are on his fathers chest, pushing and he’s begging. His father’s hands lock around his shoulder and squeeze.
There’s spit flying at his face and his mother his somewhere behind him but the the hands on his shoulders are getting tighter, and tighter until one snaps.
Sharp pain flies from his collarbone, down his arm, it fills his already blurry vision with flashing white light and all he knows is pain.
He can’t focus on anything, his mom has a knife but all he can de is double over and clutch his shoulder and shake. Noise blares in his ears, electricity cackles over his skin, his bone is not supposed to feel like that.
He isn’t sure how long he sits on the tile floor. Has he been unconscious? When did his parents leave? When did the screaming stop?
He doesn’t know. He does know that he needs to get himself back together and find some pain killers though.
He tries to breathe and picks himself up off the floor, using his not-broken arm to pry himself up. The walk to his room takes far longer than usual and is so hazy all remembers is the pain from his shoulder and a more distant ache in his ankle.
He can’t remember how many pills he took either. He’s sat on his bed, back to the wall, when he realises he’s holding something with his injured arm. Carefully, he unfolds his hand to uncover the scarce remnants of a photograph. All that’s left is the bottom half of a face, a smile with a tooth missing in the top row.
He breaks down in tears again.
He burnt it, he destroyed one of the only things left of Haru, it gone, its gonegonegonegonegone.
That night, after several more pills, he sneaks out of his window with a face mask and cap on. He walks towards an area of town that he knows houses a lot of small time criminals.
He doesn’t have to walk through alleys for long. Soon enough someone comes up to him, knife in hand, and demands his wallet. He roughs Denki up a little, a few punches and cuts, and then he’s off again.
With that Denki walks back home, falls into his bed and lets sleep consume him once again.
The next day he wakes up around eleven, packs his bag and slips out of the house without seeing his parents. He rides the bus in silence, and walks straight to Recovery Girl’s office.
It’s a Sunday but she’s there, and she chastises him as soon as he arrives. Tell him his collar bone is fractured and that Aizawa is on his way.
She kisses him on the forehead and gives him more painkillers. They wait for his teacher to arrive, and when he does he sends Denki a look that could kill puppies.
Denki offers him a wobbly smile and explains that he was mugged on his way back from the convenience store, that his wallet was taken and that he didn’t get a good look at the guy. He tells them that he was so tired and in pain so he went straight home to sleep, he says he couldn’t find his phone so decided to wait until morning.
They ask him about his parents and he tells them that they still don’t know, they were still asleep and they’ve been so exhausted from work.
They ask about his quirk and he replies that it didn’t work. Somehow his attacker wasn’t affected by lightning. Aizawa lets disappointment saturate his gaze for a minute until Kaminari feels the urge to have fingers in his throat and the taste of bile on his tongue.
Finally they turn away and let him rest. He hears Aizawa call his mother, explain the situation and assure them that he’s safe now.
He finds it funny. He doesn’t laugh.
His mother messages him some time later:
Mother: How’s the shoulder?
Me: It’s fine, I took care of it.
Mother: You’re quirk was activated, we couldn’t touch you.
Me: It’s okay mom! :))
He wonders if they would have taken him to hospital if they could. Then he slaps himself because that’s not a nice thought. Of course they would. They’re his parents. (They would right?)
He’s let out by the end of the day and is back to studying. Well, trying to study. It’s hard when his mind is filled with burnt pictures and cold tile floors.
The picture is now back in it’s place, smaller and crumbling, but it’s safe now. It’s safe from him, he can’t hurt it anymore, he can’t hurt him anymore.
His homework is on the floor, only one book is even opened, and he stares at the ceiling. People always say the count the cracks, that they stare so long they know every edge and line.
It isn’t like that for Denki. The blemishes in the ceiling seep into the picture of his brother’s smile and break it apart smaller and smaller until nothing is distinguishable. The cracks in the ceiling are there, constant in his mind’s eye, until he looks away and all of it is lost from memory.
He knows people have reason to call him stupid, but this, Denki thinks, is a new low. Or maybe not. Maybe he has never had any capacity for intelligent thought, maybe it’s only fitting how long it took him to notice.
How long has he spent staring at the ceiling? He isn’t sure.
The next day, after school lets out, he walks by himself to a big supermarket. It isn’t the closest one but he would like to avoid seeing people he knows if he can.
When he arrives he buys a cupcake with purple frosting and plenty of sprinkles. He buys a packet of three candles. They’re red.
It’s sunny on the walk back.
His cupcake and candles are in a plastic bag, they weigh more than they should.
He’s bought himself one for his birthday every year since October 16th. He hates every single one.
Back at school he puts the bag on his desk and forgets about it. Remembering to smile takes up most of his attention.
He stays down in the common room for the rest of the evening. They look over the poems they need to know for their english test tomorrow.
Mina throws her arm around his shoulders and whines “Denki and I don’t get it! Why is english so hard, ugh!”
He doesn’t say that he does understand, that he has the backstory on the author and the poem is her breaking free from the muteness her oppressors forced upon her.
He feels a guilty sort of feeling at not being the stupid person he makes himself out to be. Has he gotten it all wrong? Has he just made up everything he thinks he knows about the poem?
His smile never falters and he has to wonder if it ever will. If he’ll ever break in front of someone who will help build a new Kaminari Denki who doesn’t run and doesn’t kill and doesn’t hurt.
He wonders why none of his classmates have noticed. That thought never fails to make him feel guilty but he wishes to be seen. He wants someone to notice but he doesn’t think he could handle it if anyone did.
Loneliness threatens to close up his throat so he says he’s tired and is going to bed early. Kirishima looks at him sympathetically and suggests they wake up early to help him study.
His smile doesn’t give away his hurt. It never does. (He wishes it would; he’s happy it doesn’t.)
Later he goes to his room. He opens up the box with his cupcake and lights the candle with a spark of his quirk. He watches the red wax bleed down purple.
He doesn’t eat it this year. He wants to hang on to the empty feeling in his stomach.
His phone lights up with a message.
Mother: happy birthday
He smiles but it barely holds any happiness. She remembered it; remembered him.
He sits on his dirty floor with a cupcake covered in dry wax and lets the silent, silent tears fall.