Chapter Text
The world, you think, is really full of shit.
From the walls of your crowded classroom, it dangles the spring scenery of Musutafu just outside your junior high school, a cruel reminder that you could be anywhere else, doing anything else besides sitting stuck to this worn wooden chair, trapped in this prison of a building with people you’ve long since stopped trying to befriend.
Your cheek aches as it rests against your fist, eyes skimming the high school application your teacher had haphazardly thrown at you all. In the ten minutes you’ve stared at this piece of paper, you’ve spent more time memorizing the questions instead of actually answering them.
It’s your supposed future to-be, an outline for the next few years that will essentially determine the rest of your life—which is cool and all, except for the fact that you’ve been a bumbling buffoon for as long as you can remember, and a future hasn’t ever been something you’ve really considered.
The world is really full of shit, with the way it has constantly been in motion, has always moved to the next big thing, and you’ve never been anything but still and stagnant, useless as you watch everything carry on without you.
Your lips pull into a frown. Why is it so difficult to write a few words, to form a few ideas you’ll never pursue and get one more assignment over with? Why does your chest swell with dread at the thought of uttering what you want to become? You aren’t sure, but you guess you’ve always been filled with more questions than answers.
A raucous laugh cuts through your thoughts, bringing you back to the surroundings of your classroom. You don’t need to look to know who it is—mainly because he’s so impossibly huge that he manages to fill your peripheral vision—yet your gaze still shifts from the application to your seatmate.
All broad shoulders and bright eyes, Yoarashi Inasa carries himself as if even the skies above wouldn’t be enough to stop him from reaching the stars.
A part of you is certain they couldn’t; another part of you doesn’t think you’ll have to wait long before that statement is proven right. Because, since you’ve met him, you’ve learned that he aims for nothing but the sun.
Because he’s going to become a hero.
“Would you guys care for a spicy child?”
Eventually, anyway.
Yoarashi extends an open bag of Sour Strip Children to Imai (your classmate of three awful years straight) Naonobu, who’s leaning on an adjacent desk, hands shoved into his pockets.
His eyes are trained on an eraser floating aimlessly in front of him—a result of his gravity quirk that he rarely stops talking about—before looking to his friend.
“No thanks, I think I’m good,” he begins solemnly. “I’m just not looking for anything right now, you know?”
Shaking her head, Kaneyashi Hinako—a girl whose expression never borders on anything other than sheer apathy and mild disinterest—tosses a plastic wrapper at his head, and the eraser falls to the floor. All she earns is a side-eye.
Yoarashi laughs again before turning to you. “You should have one, [NAME]!”
Imai and Kaneyashi's gazes land on you.
You would, in fact, like to pass away now. Those two are not people you need to have the attention of.
“Oh, I’m fine,” you mutter.
“Okay then—teacher!” Yoarashi practically leaps from his seat, his arm shooting up in the air; a few specks of sugar land on your desk. “For all your vigorous and passionate teaching, you should have some of this candy!”
Your teacher glances up from her own desk. “You know what, why not?” She extends her hand as Yoarashi approaches, his face forever stuck in that weirdly optimistic grin. But when he reaches into the plastic bag, he finds that it’s completely empty.
One moment he’s bowing and apologizing profusely, and the next he’s barreling out of the classroom.
Disappointment falls across your teacher’s expression as she lets out a weary sigh. “He’s going to blow up the vending machine again, isn’t he?”
Imai and Kaneyashi nod their heads in unison; it’s not long before your teacher is trudging out the doors and down the halls, leaving your classmates to basically do whatever they want.
But without your seatmate to act as your buffer against Imai and Kaneyashi, you become hyper aware of the fact that they haven’t made any attempt at moving away from you.
And that’s concerning because one, you’re pretty sure you’re about to contract whatever disease pretentious asshole teenagers carry, and two, you really don’t feel like being subjected to said assholes’ assholery.
Is not wanting to be humiliated for existing too much to ask?
“Hey, you know you’ve been staring at that paper for the last ten minutes?”
It is, apparently.
Before you can raise your head, Imai’s deft hand swipes the application from off of your desk; his amber eyes rake across its contents, before he makes a show of raising it above his head, holding it beneath the light of the sun. Once he finishes, he turns to you, lips rising into a coy smile.
“You’re going for UA, too?”
It would be much appreciated if you happened to suddenly not exist anymore.
“I, uh… I don’t think you read that right,” you eventually conclude. Imai hums to himself, feigning ignorance; he spares the paper a glance before looking back to you.
“No, I’m pretty sure I did.”
Oh, well look at you: Someone learned how to read!
“Oh,” you breathe instead, because that’s apparently the more intelligent response. Blinking, your mind fumbles for any excuse to get away from this guy, but not one that would get you a life-long irreversible nickname and most certainly not an excuse that would just make you look stupid and utterly incapable of normal social interaction—
“Nao,” Kaneyashi warns, though her tone isn’t far from mocking, either. “Leave them alone. You’re scaring them.” Imai laughs. You hate how genuine it sounds.
“Relax, we’re practically best friends, anyways”—his gaze returns to your own—“right?”
He says it casually, easily, as if he doesn’t hardly remember your name; despite every muscle in your body going taut, you manage a slight shrug. “Sure, I guess.”
“See, Hinako? And, last time I checked, friends are honest with one another, aren't they?” Kaneyashi nods her head absently, twisting and untwisting the same lock of black hair around her finger.
“I’m being honest,” you say. “I just kind of… wrote UA as a joke.”
That’s your first lie, you think. Well, second, if you count being ‘friends’ with this human-sized parasite.
“Well, who knew you were a comedian,” Kaneyashi muses. If you had any semblance of confidence you’d tell her that at least your personality wasn’t made in the Sahara Desert.
But it’s no use in trying to argue with them.
“I mean, I guess I’ve sort of considered it…,” you concede. The first truth you've told. You avert your gaze. “About applying.”
It’s then that Imai spares you a look of poorly masked distaste, of pity, and suddenly your limbs ache with the urge to reach up, grasp your words—your dream—from the air. Hold them close to your chest once more.
But they’ve been spoken, and you can only watch as he leans forward slightly, his smile falling and brows furrowing in an admittedly impressive show of concern.
“You know, best friend to best friend here—and I mean this with utmost respect, don’t get it wrong—but don’t you think UA’s just kind of… out of reach for you? Just with how unimpressive that quirk is and all?”
Your gut twists, coiling itself into tight knots. But you shouldn’t be shocked. You’ve heard these things your entire life from everyone in your life—what’s so different about hearing it now?
Imai tilts his head towards Kaneyashi to exaggerate a whisper. “They do have a quirk, right?”
Fingers wrapping around the sleeve of your uniform, you swallow the ache blooming in your throat. “I do have a quirk—”
“Hey, take a joke. We’re obviously kidding.” He shrugs. “And, anyway, if we couldn’t remember, do you really expect the spectators to notice?”
The moment your lips part to shoot back some desperate retort, they shut just as quickly. Because for all his slighting smiles and sharp words, Imai isn’t wrong: If someone who’s shared the same class for three years can forget you so easily, how could professionals ever care?
You’ve got a barely functioning quirk—a quirk that you yourself can hardly understand, anyway—with little to no athletic ability to make up for it. There’s nothing setting you apart from other students, nothing impressive to prove that you are enough to be seen; you are nothing short of ordinary in a world that leaves anything less than extraordinary behind.
The blaring of the day’s final bell falls harsh and grating against your ears, urging you back to the mess of your classroom as everyone begins rushing out.
“Finally.” Kaneyashi hops off of the adjacent desk, dark locks swaying as she straightens; she grabs both her and Yoarash’s bags before walking towards the door herself. “Nao, leave them alone. It’s not like they’re going to say anything important, and we have to go find Inasa before he actually breaks the machines again.”
“I don’t see how that’s an issue. Free food for us.” Imai’s eyes suddenly brighten. “Hey, you think we’ll see that Aldera girl again?”
“For her sake and mine, I hope not.” Then Kaneyashi is striding away, shoulders straight and chin held high, and for a moment it seems as if she could carry the weight of the world without so much as wincing.
If that’s what a future UA student is supposed to look like, then yeah, no shit you’re not getting in.
Your tormenter is about to follow after her, but his steps halt. “Oh, right.” He carelessly scrunches your application into a pathetic wad before tossing it back onto your desk.
Imai offers a final smile—bright and brilliant and every bit awful.
“Hey, we only want what’s best for you, you know? Just take our advice. Better to save yourself from the disappointment when you’re rejected and all that, don’t you think?”
And, finally, he’s walking away from you, and soon your only company is the unending silence of the classroom, the empty chairs and forgotten desks, and your dream crumpled before your eyes.
Sighing, you lean forward, allowing your forehead to meet your desk with a resounding thud, ignoring the dull pain spreading throughout your skull.
Fuck your life.
You guess you should’ve expected this. You’re no stranger to being shot down so quickly, but you can’t ignore the tightness in your chest or the ache in your throat, the dread that weighs on your shoulders at the thought of what’s next.
Because you’re not ready.
You’re not ready, because with spring comes fourteen—the in-between age of holding the last pieces of childhood as you pick up the beginnings of adolescence.
You’re not ready, because life is moving a bit too fast, because all of a sudden you’re a third-year, brimming with questions for the Universe and worries for tomorrow, watching as time passes you by in your final days of junior high.
You’re nearing the end of a world you’ve yearned to leave for so long, but where will you go once you do?
Despite a lifetime of having any hopes of becoming a hero constantly destroyed, in the back of your mind, UA had always been your answer; to become a hero, to become someone extraordinary enough to be cherished—that had forever been your dream. But you guess it’s time you finally woke up.
Whether it’s seconds or minutes before you’re finally gathering your things and rising from your seat, you aren’t quite sure; as you sling your backpack on, your gaze instinctively finds the crumpled application still resting on your desk.
It’s time you woke up.
Maybe it is. Maybe it’s time for you to look towards a different career. Maybe it’s time for you to accept that you can’t keep losing yourself in what-ifs and could-bes, that holding onto an ambition so grand will surely destroy you.
And yet you don’t stop yourself as you reach for your supposed future to-be, tenderly holding it within your fist—because though you should finally open your eyes, some small part of yourself thinks it’s okay to dream for a few months more.