Darkest Before Dawn - 53 (Patreon)

Chapter 53

“So, you’ve all decided?” Kazuki asked, still looking over his list. He was fairly sure that he’d decided already too, but… Well, his choice could be seen as questionable. Even he himself was very unsure and a little… Yeah. He really hoped that his friends wouldn’t ask him where he was going.

“I’ll go with Crust,” Yaoyorozu said, clearly very pleased to announce that she was going with a Top 10 hero… and probably not realizing that she was making everyone else feel kind of bad. Everyone but Todoroki, but that was no surprise, really.

“Rock Lock,” Mineta mumbled, scratching the back of his neck. He was clearly embarrassed, but Kazuki didn’t know why. He honestly didn’t get it. What was the big deal about Top heroes anyway? Sure, they were great, but that didn’t immediately translate to them being great teachers or being able to help with their problems.

Few Quirks were ever similar enough to be called the “same”, so every person was unique, every hero was different. That wasn’t even taking into account personalities and such. So, even on that front it didn’t make much sense to go for top heroes just because they were at the Top of the charts.

There was only one problem with non-Top heroes as far as Kazuki was concerned…

“Who’s that one?” he asked, feeling bad for making his friend feel worse, but he was curious. “Come on, man. Don’t give me that. I don’t know lots of heroes.”

“I know, it’s just…” Mineta started before sighing. Then he moved to pull out Midoriya’s analysis and pass it to Kazuki when he locked on Rock Lock.

“Costume doesn’t look terrible,” Hagakure commented, looking over his shoulder. “Looks like a serious guy.”

“I honestly thought you’d go for a woman,” Jiro pointed out, making Mineta grimace in annoyance and embarrassment.

“Good on you, man. If you give your all to be a great hero, the fans will come, I’m sure,” Kazuki said, trying to cheer his friend up. Not that he was lying, that was how he imagined it could go for his friend. Not that he cared, but Mineta clearly did. “He does look like he could know a thing or two about how to use your Quirk better.”

“Yeah, was the best option from the list,” Mineta said with a shrug. He was feeling better, at least, if not completely. Kazuki would take that as a win, he supposed. “So, what Top 10 are you picking?” he asked, and Kazuki suddenly felt everyone’s eyes on him.

“I’m not,” he answered, gulping nervously even as he tried to continue eating lunch like everything was fine. The silence that followed his words was expected, but it only made him feel even less sure of his choice.

“What do you mean you’re not?” Hagakure asked, clearly very confused.

“I picked someone else from my list.”

“Who’d you even pick over Top 10 heroes?” Jiro asked and he looked down at his list once more, where he’d circled the name of the hero’s agency. With a shrug, Kazuki pushed the paper towards her, making her incredulously look down and read… before her expression turned even more incredulous. “You chose her? Creepy, what the fuck?!” she exclaimed, making him grimace.

“Language.”

“No, don’t you “language” me, Yaoyorozu. Look at this shit!” Jiro exclaimed, picking the paper up and presenting the list to the rich girl. She looked like she was about to scold Jiro once more, before her eyes moved towards the page. Then she took the page with a frown before scowling towards Kazuki.

“Have you been affected by the Tiny Madness, Endo?” she asked him, concerned. “We can help you.”

“Hey, the fuck?!”

“I’m fine,” Kazuki answered, almost going to smile but only managing a grimace. “I just… I think it’s my best option,” he explained with a shrug.

“Why would you go for… her? Especially with that analysis from Midoriya?” Yaoyorozu continued questioning, reading over the page more thoroughly as if she’d find some kind of mistake.

“Because even if she’s not a great hero, she can help me with what I need and that’s what’s important for me right now,” he explained further. “I don’t need to be stronger. I don’t need to be better. I just need… I need her help,” he said, swallowing what he was going to say. It was silly and unrealistic anyway.

“I guess… I can see it?” Yaoyorozu mumbled, looking rather unsure of what she was saying. Kazuki understood. He was very much not certain that he was making the best choice but… He’d discussed it with Aizawa and Inui and both had agreed that it was certainly a good choice. Maybe not the best, but Kazuki would just have to hope that one was it and hope for the best.

“I mean, good on you, I gotta say,” Mineta commented when he was passed the page and proving that the previously made accusations weren’t unwarranted. “You have good taste, I can tell you that, Creepy.”

Hagakure huffed, taking the sheet of paper from him in annoyance. Kazuki didn’t think the boy had held onto the list for that long, but the invisible girl could be pretty impatient. And besides, she was kind of out of the loop without it.

“Really, Creepy, really?”

“Look,” he said, sighing. “I… know it’s not the most impressive choice, but I really think she’s the best at the one problem I have and she sent me an internship offer so… I’ll take that chance. I even asked Aizawa to help me ask her some questions. If the answers I get are good, then I’ll sign up with her. If not… I have somewhat of an idea of where I’ll go.”

“If you are sure, man,” Mineta commented with a shrug. “Shame she’s not one of the school options, I’d go with you.”

“You don’t have actual reasons to go there, man,” Kazuki replied flatly.

[}-o-{]

He greedily drank from his water bottle.

Kazuki had just finished a rather intense spar session, after all, and he was feeling properly drained. Todoroki sat beside him, just as tired as him after dealing with waves of Grimm by using both sides of his Quirk. Hagakure and Jiro, who had sparred Quirkless style with him while he spawned his creatures, had gone off to do Quirk training of their own now.

“You are something,” he breathed out.

“You are something yourself,” the half and half boy shot back, drawing a chuckle from him.

“I guess so,” he agreed. He wasn’t even sure if his brain was working properly, considering how tired he was. Furthermore, that wasn’t even taking into account how tired people around him were feeling, like Todoroki himself. “Good practice though,” he added, splashing the last bits of water in the bottle on his face and proceeding to rub it with his hands.

“I wanted to talk to you about something,” Todoroki said, shifting conversation gears like the blunt guy he was. Kazuki didn’t particularly mind, but it did leave him flat footed more often than not. He was too tired to react though, simply nodding. “I’ll do my internship with my father.”

Well, that was certainly not the kind of thing he’d expected to hear.

“You sure that’s a good idea?” he asked, trying not to sound like he was criticizing his choice. He didn’t think he had much of a leg to stand on considering his own choice, after all. Still, he thought Todoroki’s choice might be a little more questionable.

“I have a huge hole in my new style, seeing as I don’t have nearly as much experience using my flames as I do my ice,” his new friend explained calmly, even though his emotions told a different story. “My father can and will fill in that hole. He’ll be eager to, even.”

“Yes, but he’s… not good,” Kazuki said, which might be a rather big understatement but he wanted to keep things civil. “There has to be someone else that can help you with that, right?”

“There probably is, but not as good. He’s the best, because my flames are his. It’s his Quirk, or the closest thing I’ll get to that,” Todoroki answered, not feeling particularly pleased about that, from what Kazuki picked up. “A lot can be said about my father, but he took being a hero and training for it seriously.”

“I don’t know how seriously he could take being a hero if he’s as you said,” Kazuki said bluntly, getting a hum and a nod in acknowledgement from Todoroki. “But he has to be second place for something. Maybe he’s a shit father, but he must be a good “hero”… I suppose.”

“He is,” Todoroki agreed, and there was another spike of emotion coming from him. “I just… I wanted to talk about it with someone.”

“Well, I’m here for this or whatever else you wanna talk about,” Kazuki said with a slight, sad smile. “And I’ll be here if you need someone to talk to through the internship too. I might be busy with my own, but if you call or leave a message, I’ll reply as soon as possible.”

Todoroki nodded at that, taking a deep breath in and then letting it out.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Kazuki replied, waving him off.

“It’s strange,” Todoroki commented out of nowhere once more. Turning towards him, he raised a questioning eyebrow that the other boy didn’t catch, since he was looking forward instead of at him. Regardless, the half and half boy answered his unasked question all the same. “Having friends, people to depend on.”

“Yeah, I know,” Kazuki said with a chuckle. “I’m still getting used to it myself.”

“It’s nice, but also…” Todoroki started, before trailing off, uncertain. He looked for the right word for a long moment before he decided to give his friend a hand.

“Terrifying?” he supplied, getting an agreeing hum. “It’s all warm and comforting most of the time, but I always have this feeling that…” It was his turn to trail off now. There was a lot to say about that, he supposed. He was nervous, because he wasn’t used to being around people even then. He was unsure, wondering if what he was doing was right or if he was messing up. He was afraid…

“That you’ll mess up and it’ll all burn in front of you?” Todoroki suggested and Kazuki laughed bitterly.

“Yeah, not the metaphor I’d have given but that’s about it,” he said, nodding. “We make one messed up pair, don’t we?”

“We might just get better though,” the half and half boy pointed out optimistically… at least in spirit, because his expression was as flat as it usually was.

“You’re not wrong about that. It kind of sucks though. We could have had this the whole time,” he commented bitterly, running his finger through his hair. “But no, instead…”

“We got a bad deal in life,” Todoroki said with a shrug.

“Yeah. Yeah, we did,” Kazuki agreed, smiling wryly.

“Nothing to do about it,” his friend commented. “I do like that at least I have what I have now. Better than before.”

“I’m not arguing that, no,” Kazuki replied with a nod. “I guess it could be worse.”

Todoroki hummed and from there neither said anything else until they felt ready to do more training. It was… strange, to not have anyone to keep normal conversation going. Both of them seemed to gravitate towards heavier topics when they were by themselves.

In a way, it made sense, Kazuki supposed. They were both kids that had grown up in less than ideal situations. The rest of their group were great, but they couldn’t quite understand. Kazuki knew they had their own stories and that they hadn’t lived perfect lives, but none of them quite reached Todoroki’s and his, so it was harder to talk about things freely at times.

Maybe it was an awful thing to think, but Kazuki was glad that there was someone as messed up as he was.

Who knew? Todoroki might even find himself thinking similar things at times too.

He’d be happy if he could bring comfort that way, if he was honest.

[}-o-{]

“Can you say it one more time?”

“Endo,” Inui said, or sighed more like. “I don’t think you are making the wrong choice here,” the counselor reassured him for the fourth time. “Did you need anything else or only for me to tell you what I told you during the last session?” the man asked then, sounding genuinely curious. Kazuki also didn’t get anything like annoyance or frustration from him so that was neat.

“It was mostly this, I think,” he answered, dropping himself on his usual seat instead of pacing like he had been before. “I just… After the Sports Festival, I thought things would go fairly well. I did the best I could. I achieved the best I could. I don’t know how I could have done things better.”

“You are saying that as if what you did wasn’t all that,” Inui pointed out and he just shrugged. For such a big moment and move, he didn’t think he’d achieved all that much. “I see,” the man said thoughtfully before turning to the computer screen to his side and clicking a few times on it. “I’m guessing you haven’t seen this?”

“Seen what?” he asked, even though Inui clearly wanted him to check for himself, considering the man turned the screen in his direction. Doing just that, he saw that it was a video about him, news about him, to be specific. Before he could make a sarcastic comment, or even an annoyed one, at Inui, however, the man scrolled down a little.

Reading the comments, it didn’t take long for Kazuki to see what the counselor was talking about. Inui had already expanded a comment section in particular and it was… It was full of people defending him. Some were the kind of thing he’d expect, if he dared to hope for people to be on his side, at least. The usual people saying that he’d been just a kid, that maybe it was just an accident, or that he’d served his time and he was trying to do good now.

As Inui scrolled though, Kazuki’s eyes found another thread of comments. This one was started with a rather long one, detailing personal experience… as a criminal. One that had been sent to prison and all. He talked about how he felt awful because he’d faced a lot of rejection once he got out and… felt bad for Kazuki and what he was facing.

From there, the comments of that were varied but many joined in on the sympathy or praised him or just talked about him in a generally good light. There were lots of comments, lots of likes in the comments too. It was… People were on his side and it wasn’t just friends. People were on his side.

“I’m going to take that as a no,” Inui told him with a smile on his face. “Maybe the news are being awful and maybe your mother was awful too. Maybe people weren’t fully receptive to you during the Sports Festival either. But what you did was good Endo. You winning wasn’t useless,” the counselor told him, and he gulped.

That meant a lot to hear, if Kazuki was honest. Sure, people had said that and variations of that a lot to him, but it never quite stuck. Maybe it wouldn’t that time either, but every time it happened, it brought his mood up a little

After all, it was difficult to feel proud of what he’d achieved when everything was so… shitty afterwards.

“There’s people that are watching you, Endo. There’s people that want you to do well. THere’s people that want you to succeed,” Inui continued, his voice leaving no room for arguments. “Don’t do them a disservice by ignoring them. You are a hero, so you need to be mindful of the people that look up to you.”

You are a hero, Inui had said. Not “you are going to be a hero” or “you want to be a hero”. No, it was “you are a hero”. Kazuki felt like a weight had been placed on his shoulders, but for once, such a feeling wasn’t unwelcome.

“This is why I need to go with her,” he said, leaning back on his seat. “She can help me… deal with all of this, or so I hope.”

“And I believe she will,” Inui replied, before huffing a laugh. “I imagine there’ll be many people questioning your sanity though.”

“Don’t I know it? My friends already do,” Kazuki commented with a shake of his head. “Anyway… I think I’m okay with this,” he said, waving the list of internship offers once more. “Or as okay as I can be, I just…” he trailed off then, looking out the window once more.

The view out of Inui’s office was becoming increasingly familiar, he realized. It was also going to get even more so with time, Kazuki supposed. Not that he minded. The man had helped him a great deal and was bound to help him even more. He didn’t want to know where or how he’d be if he hadn’t had the counselor to talk to about… Well, a lot of things.

“I just want to talk about something else now, I guess,” he finished in the end, shrugging. “I just don’t know what.”

“Nothing comes to mind? Nothing at all?” Inui asked, tilting his head. For a moment, when he shook his head, Kazuki worried that the man would ask about his mother, or his past, or some other of the million things he didn’t feel like talking about at that moment. In the end, what he said was… “Can you tell me about Io? Maybe other people that you met there?”

“Sure thing,” Kazuki agreed easily, happy that it wasn’t some heavier topic. He could talk about them. Those weren’t precisely happy memories, but there was… They weren’t that bad, he supposed.

[}-o-{]

“And now I don’t get the fucking limited character, because of course I don’t,” Distressed complained, as he usually did. At least this time it was about the gacha game and not people or society or something heavy like that. “Life sucks.”

‘I mean, yeah,’ Kazuki wrote back with a half-smile. ‘But it doesn’t suck because you are an unlucky shit in games. That’s just a skill issue.’

“It’s a fucking gacha! How is it a matter of skill?!”

‘Should’ve saved more.’

“... I fucking hate you, Knight.”

‘You don’t, but whatever you say, Distressed,’ he shot back, almost chuckling. He imagined he looked like enough of a weirdo smiling at his phone though. Fortunately for him, the school was all but empty by then. Only the most determined of students remained… not that he was in that group, not really. At least not at that moment.

“When are you gonna get to that important thing you had to do?” Distressed asked then and Kazuki could almost see whoever it was on the other side pouting and feel the annoyed frustration projecting from them.

‘I’m about to. Have fun!’

“Yeah yeah, laugh it up, bastard,” his message friend replied. “Talk to you later, man.”

“Same.”

And with that, he put his phone away and ran his fingers through his hair. Letting his backpack fall on the floor, he pulled out a document he’d filled for that moment precisely and then continued on his way. Around the corner was his destination, after all.

“Having second thoughts?” Kazuki asked then, walking down the hall and seeing Itsuka Kendo pacing in front of the place he was walking towards. She also had a piece of paper in her hand that looked the same as his. She was there to submit her internship choice, it seemed, just like he was.

Which was weird, because after classes he’d gone to the training facilities, he’d gone to Inui and then he’d spent some time talking with Hatsume. The last of which wasn’t really necessary but the girl seemed to live in his workshop and he’d kind of wanted to delay the submission.

And she was kind of fun, in the sense that she was very random and hardly ever felt any negativity. One of those things was interesting and the other was nice. Not always in that order and sometimes both at the same time. So, Kazuki could see himself talking with her more from then on.

He was snapped back to the present when the girl in front of him spoke.

“You could say that,” Kendo answered, looking both nervous and tired. She likely had agonized over her choice for a while and just wanted to get it over with. She just couldn’t gather the will to take that last step.

He could relate.

“Same,” he commented with a wry smile. To her surprised expression, he chuckled. “I haven’t stayed here until this hour because I wanted to. I’d rather have gone with my friends to get a drink and some snacks,” he grumbled. “Time is running out though, so I guess we both need to get it over with.”

“Easy for you to say. You were first place,” he heard her complain. Not that she seemed angry at him for that. She just seemed… sad and helpless.

“I had twenty seven offers,” he told her, and her eyes widened once more. “Why so surprised? Surely you know who I am. Baggage seems to have been too much for most heroes.”

“That’s… awful,” she said and he didn’t detect even the smallest of lies in her emotions. She genuinely felt bad for him. Then again, through what little interactions they had as class president and vice president, he’d learned that she was… not bad, maybe even good. He didn’t know her well enough to really judge, but he had a generally positive opinion of her, which was more than most could say for themselves.

“It is what it is,” he replied simply with a shrug. None of them could do anything. Well, they could, he supposed, but nothing that would change things anytime soon. He was working on that though, however slowly. “So, who are you going with that has you so nervous?”

Instead of answering, she groaned and thrust the paper in front of him. With a blink of his eyes, he took the sheet and started reading it. Then he tilted his head.

“Huh, it’s… surprising, I guess,” he commented, staring at the agency name. “Unexpected from you, at least. But it’s not a bad choice, I guess. There are worse choices for you though, I guess.”

“You think so?” the girl asked, both skeptical and hopeful at the same time, somehow. The former he definitely felt, that was for sure, but he thought he detected some of the latter in her voice and expression. He didn’t know. Kazuki wasn’t nearly as good at reading people’s emotions if they didn’t involve his Quirk.

“I do,” he confirmed with a nod and then grinning. “Certainly makes more sense than my choice, I guess,” he added with a shrug. “But there’s plenty of reasons for you to choose her,” he said, starting to walk towards where they had to present their papers.

Now that he had someone that seemed just as nervous as him, that somehow seemed to calm him down enough to get him moving. It was much easier to go for it when he saw it as helping Kendo do it instead of just doing it himself. He still had doubts, of course, but it was nice to know that he wasn’t the only one too.

“I very much doubt that,” she grumbled, following after him as he wanted. “Even if you got a few offers, they were probably awesome. I didn’t get that many myself,” she mumbled self-consciously.

“See for yourself,” he told her with a grin as he passed her his own file. She took it curious and still skeptical and then started reading. Then her eyes widened.

“You are going with Uwabami too?!”

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

Ok, so I expect some… doubts from you guys because of that choice, but I’m asking you guys to have some faith in me. I’ve tried my best to explain the why a bit through the chapters so far, but I was also trying to not have the reveal up to this point, so it might not be very clear. Well, I’ll try to explain it further as we go forward from here.

Well, there’s also the fact that I didn’t know Kazuki would throw this curve ball at me until, like, a chapter before this one, so there was that. Couldn’t he have chosen a normal hero like a normal person? Oh, right… He’s not a normal person… Still though.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the chapter, guys.

Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: What do you think Kazuki’s reasons are for this internship?

See you.