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Chiaki hadn’t known how to interact with others before high school. His life was spent in and out of the hospital, and his references lay in books and movies and tv shows.
Suffice it to say that those references weren’t very helpful.
So it was in his first and second year that Chiaki learned how to interact with others, and what worked best was this:
Pretend.
If he merely asked for more tips when he was made fun of for his poor dancing, they stopped. If he obediently did what he was told when they forced more work on him, they called him a good junior. If he laughed when they broke his favorite figurine, they didn’t ask him to hand over the rest. If he didn’t respond to their insistence that he couldn’t even be an idol, much less a hero, it hurt less.
At least, he pretended it did.
Responses were ammo they could use against him. Not answering left them with nothing to tear apart, nothing to tease him with, nothing to find and take away from him.
He wasn’t stupid. Any moment alone long enough for his thoughts to wander he knew that this wasn’t the ordinary high school experience. He knew that the words hurt more than he wanted them to, and he asked himself every day if continuing forward was even worth it at all. Because they were right. He was uselessly taking up space, flailing about without a clue what he was doing.
A hero? As if. He wasn’t even brave enough to stand up for himself.
But it worked. Positivity worked. Bravado worked. Lying to himself and everyone else worked. Kind of. Everyone else left him, except Kanata. But they were in it together, probably. At the very least, Kanata promised to stay by his side. He made it through to his third year, and now he had a fresh slate to build the Ryuseitai he’d always envisioned. When preparing how he would greet first years to try and recruit them, he asked himself if at this point he was just building a persona of himself. A mask. A version that people would like, or at least like a little more than the him of the past.
Nobody liked the weak Chiaki. Not even him.
Energetic! Passionate! Always putting forth ideas, even if he was rejected! He would be the one to pull everyone along this time. Maybe it was selfish. But he was a leader now. Is that what leaders did? Everyone complained and complained, but they were happy in the end. So it was working, right?
Three people who never even wanted to become heroes were begged into Ryuseitai. They became a group of five- the perfect tokusatsu number, really! It was almost meant to be (of course, ignoring the fact that none of them really wanted to be there). Heroes this, heroes that, well. That had always been a part of him, really, so that wasn’t new. He could just talk about heroes, and they would call him silly or stupid or over excited and really, he was used to that by now. The proper response was to brush it off- not say a word. Or else it escalates and escalates and- well, he’d had enough of that by then.
On the first day after he became Red he wanted to cry. That had always been his goal, after all: Ryusei Red. And it came true. Not… quite in the way he had envisioned, not quite with the people he’d expected to do it with. Sometimes he puts on the jacket and still can’t believe it.
Chiaki Morisawa, Ryusei Red.
Heart burning bright red like the sun.
He repeated that mantra to himself, a reminder. An assurance. He was a completely different person from a year ago.
The first thing to go- well, almost- had been the glasses. He hated those stupid glasses and everything that they made him remember. It wasn’t fair to blame the glasses, and really, he wasn’t, but if he had to name a physical manifestation of the parts of himself that didn’t work (that wasn’t just… him), it was those glasses. They were pretty beat up, anyway, since when he was a second year, if there was anything easy to just take from him, it was his glasses.
Alas. He still couldn’t quite see well without them, and contacts… he couldn’t afford them yet. Yet. His vision wasn’t that bad though, so he could get away with only wearing them for class, and that was good enough. Everyone in class already knew he was faking it anyway, so did it really matter?
He was glad no one bothered to say it to his face, though.
The next were his weaknesses. Heroes weren’t afraid of the dark. Heroes weren’t afraid of ghosts. If he was uncool for not saving someone, he’d save everyone. He would smile no matter what- and he wouldn’t cry anymore. All-nighters weren’t a problem. His stupid, weak body wasn’t a problem. They couldn’t be problems. He had too much to do.
Another thing he learned in his previous years at Yumenosaki: if you want something done, do it yourself. A lesson learned by everyone he knew, it seemed. Certainly, the third years were the epitome of taking everything on, and Chiaki was no exception. Kanata… he didn’t fully understand Kanata yet, he wondered if Kanata really wanted to be a hero or if he had forced Kanata into it just like the others. At any rate, Kanata was doing his own thing. The first years needed guidance, they were growing. He couldn’t just keep relying on others, he had to learn how to do it himself. He had to do it himself. He had to lay the groundwork for them, make sure that they could shine. He had to make sure they didn’t face hardship. He was used to taking on burdens. Nothing new.
Every time he failed, and ended up needing the help of another- the transfer student, Eichi, Kuro, the list kept going- he thought to himself that he really hadn’t grown that much.
But he was moving forward. They were moving forward.
And. He really wasn’t stupid. That others, even those he wanted to consider friends, thought he was putting in useless effort. He was doing too much yet too little. He was too loud, didn’t know boundaries, marched forward and dragged everyone along with him whether or not they wanted it.
But he’d smile and laugh and not say much on it, and the comment would pass. It worked, didn’t it? Just like a charm.
Oblivious- certainly not. He just learned it was easier this way, after all. Reactions meant they’d find more things to say. Fighting back ended with broken things and crumpled notes and black markers. This was better. It only hurt when he let himself think about it, and that was less than before.
He laughs as he hugs his unit mates. This was enough. They would perform on stage in a few minutes. They all looked so good in their costumes. They’d worked hard to learn all the stunts- they grew so fast. There was his entrance- Ryusei Red, Chiaki Morisawa with a heart burning bright like the red sun!
Keep fighting! Keep going, hero! The Chiaki he didn’t like, he’d leave it behind.