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As the stadium’s chatter slowly faded to silence, Momo couldn’t help but look around almost frantically. Just to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. But as Principal Nezu called for her from the stage, she knew it was all true. She was finally graduating.
“And now for a speech from class 3-A’s Momo Yaoyorozu,” he shouted, his beady eyes staring into her soul.
She got up off her seat and began to walk, only to feel someone take her hand. She looked back to see Ojiro. He tried to open his mouth, to try and give her any sort of final wisdom, of which he has been so known for. But he couldn’t bring himself to.
“Good luck…”, he said, barely above a whisper.
Momo silently nodded and continued to make her way to the stage. Here she was, her uniform following short drafts of the wind. It was really happening. But why like this? With each step she took, the last 3 years of her life flashed before her eyes.
Right.
Was she going to die? The stone wall against their backs caught even the most minute vibrations of All for One’s hellish voice. She needed to get her friends out of here, but how?!
Left.
Momo took a second to catch her breath only to hear the uncomfortably familiar tone of Mina’s sobbing. She turned and saw her, Kirishima, and Sato crowded around something. And then she saw the mask.
Right.
Momo took no more than three steps before seeing exactly what had made that noise. She crouched down to see Iida bleeding out, wounds in his side. “I’m so sorry,” he said. She held him. And Momo swore she could hear him calling for his mother as her heart was ripped out of her chest.
Left.
Momo walked into the classroom to only see 7 other seats filled. She took a spot next to Jirou and looked at the board. She had made an effort to write everyone’s names on the board, only to cross them out once they had passed. She stood back up and crossed three more names off the board, the screech of the chalk hitting the board. That noise would haunt her until the end of her life.
Right.
All for One had at last been defeated, but the students were not celebrating. They sobbed over the three corpses that had lain there, three more kids who put their barely-beginning lives on the line. The last holder of One for All was dead, as were the two teammates and friends he held closest to him.
Left.
Momo finally reached the stage, her eyes already beginning to water. Looking out at her fellow students, her mind kept flickering between the moment she was in, and every single funeral she had prepared for her classmates, her friends. The stage’s quiet creaking only made her remember reading eulogies for someone she had loved. The silence of the crowd only made her thoughts louder and louder.
Why did I survive?
Why did he die?
Am I a hero?
Do I still want to be a hero?
As Momo finally reached for the microphone, she pulled out the cards for what she had written for this moment. Prepared so long ago, just after she staked highest grades overall for the hero course in her first year. She took one look at them and couldn’t bear the sight. Her neat handwriting, the pristinely-white paper. The absolute hope she had when she wrote this years ago.
But she realized now, would it be more fitting to read a eulogy? Another one? For all she cared, this was just another funeral to her.
It was like her heart shattered. Each death, each horrific memory, it all came flooding back. Momo barely felt herself falling to her knees. She could hardly hear how her erratic and painful sobs echoed through the microphone. She couldn’t feel Aoyoma and Jirou and Ojiro trying to shake her out of it or trying to comfort her. What came over her was the untamed beast of pain that had sat caged in her for the last three years.