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Darkest Before Dawn - 88
🕑 Added 2024-11-28 17:51:51 +0000 UTCChapter 88
[Toru Hagakure]
She was a coward.
She was getting increasingly aware of this fact, as the days passed too, which wasn’t at all a nice thing to go through. It was even less so those days, considering all the stress the term finals were causing them all. Toru in particular… wasn’t too worried about those though. Obviously she wanted to do well, but at least she was sure she wouldn’t do badly after all their study sessions and such.
… Still though, exams couldn't be over soon enough.
This just left her with more time to think and realize how much of a coward she was though.
“What song is that one?” Kyoka asked and Toru grimaced a little in the privacy generated by her Quirk. She did hope she hadn’t felt bad enough for Kazuki to pick up on that though. That was quite worrying on occasion.
Toru really appreciated that he could notice that kind of thing, of course. As much as her clothes often took away some of the sting that being literally invisible meant, the fact that nobody could ever see her face, her expression, meant that unless something was very obvious through her voice or body language, nobody could pick up on how she felt. Not Kazuki though, he could tell right away when something upset her and Toru liked that…
But it could be a little annoying at times, when she actually wanted her emotions to go unnoticed.
Fortunately, Kyoka talking about music seemed to have him fairly distracted… or he decided not to mention the slight worry that had gotten to her at that moment. Toru wasn’t the only one, at least, so there was that… even if that was another of her worries, she mused glancing towards Momo. Still, while the distraction was appreciated, it was also the cause of her emotions.
Because Kyoka was the only one that could keep up with Kazuki’s passion for music. They could try, of course, especially when it came to more “normal” music, even the brand of rock that they liked, whatever it was called. However, none of them could stay in a conversation when they went into the music that Kazuki played with the violin.
“Zigeunerweisen,” the boy answered with a smile that he always had when talking about something that he was passionate about. It was a very cute smile, Toru would admit without hesitation… in the privacy of her mind, of course.
Because she was a coward.
“Bless you,” Minoru said jokingly, getting a roll of Kazuki’s eyes in response.
“Gypsy Airs, in English,” the boy explained, stretching a little after setting down the instrument he’d just been playing. He usually looked a little stiff, tired after playing. Not that they blamed him, of course. “That’s about the last one I remember well enough to even try to play, I think,” he commented, eyes locked on the violin, looking thoughtful. “I guess it’s gonna be repeats from now on. I don’t think you guys wanna hear me practicing new songs. That can be painful for the ears,” he said with a half-smile.
Toru didn’t think there was a way for her not to sit through one of those if it meant spending more time with him.
Because there was no point denying things, at least not to herself.
Toru Hagakure liked Kazuki Endo.
She’d somewhat realized not too long before then, but she’d probably liked him for a while. The thing was that having that knowledge didn’t really help her much. Instead, it was more of a problem, because now she had to deal with those emotions and she didn’t really know what to do.
The obvious answer was confessing, of course, but… That just brought her back to the thought that plagued her mind and that was that she was coward. Try as she might, she couldn’t seem to gather the courage to do something about her feelings. Instead, she kept putting that off for later, as if a few more days, or weeks, or months would change things.
She knew it wouldn’t, but she still held onto the hope that maybe there’d be a perfect moment, or she’d feel more courageous one day…
Or something.
As much as she was afraid of what’d happen if she confessed though, be it rejection or a number of other terrible scenarios that her mind tortured her with. Toru was also afraid of other things. Things such as Momo, or Togeike, or Hatsume, or… Well, the thing was that Kazuki had several sets of eyes on him and that wasn’t making things easier for Toru, at all.
Sure, she was pretty sure that most of them didn’t really like Kazuki, or at least not as much as her… With the exception of Momo. That one was a true rival, if one wanted to use that word. Toru didn’t like it, but it was the best descriptor, she supposed.
The rich girl was about as obvious as Toru herself would have been if she weren’t invisible.
“So, do we go somewhere now? A cafe, maybe?” Kazuki suggested, breaking her from her thoughts a little bit. Right, relationship worries were for her to stay awake at night with. That was bad enough already, Toru thought. She didn’t need them ruining what little time she had with Kazuki… and her other friends.
“That sounds good,” Momo readily agreed, which was no surprise to anyone. She’d agree to pretty much anything Kazuki suggested. Not that Toru was much better in that regard. Then again, that was how most of their afternoons hanging out went. They’d always end up somewhere drinking something and eating snacks at some point.
“Sure, I could go for something extra sweet,” Toru said, feeling some of her usual cheer coming back. Which was good, because she thought that was about the only thing she had going for her.
“So it’s a day that ends in Y, huh?” Kazuki commented, jokingly rolling his eyes. “Let’s get going then. We can’t stay out as much as usual, after all.”
“Man, there’s no need to remind us that we gotta study after this,” Minoru grumbled, and she could certainly agree with that.
And then off they were.
Walking a little behind everyone else, Toru couldn’t help but wonder how long she’d be able to wait. If only she’d been able to ask him out on a date – even if she wasn’t going to outright say it was a date – that day… Well, at least the study session had been a good enough replacement, she supposed.
Still though, she would stop being a coward at least for a little bit at some point, right?
God, she hoped so.
[}-o-{]
[Kazuki Endo]
The apartment was fairly quiet as he studied, other than the quiet hum of the aquarium’s filter and odd sound from Midnight’s cooking.
He’d have offered – read, strongly insisted – to help her, but he’d done that with breakfast and the woman hadn’t wanted another argument. So, he’d been sent off to study instead and he hadn’t had it in him to argue much. She was his teacher, after all, so of course she’d have him focus on his studies. Furthermore, every adult in his life was insisting that he didn’t distract himself too much from what was truly important, which was school.
He didn’t disagree, of course, but Kazuki found it odd, to be told not to worry about anything other than that one thing. Like his only worry in the world should be his free time activities and studying. ‘... I guess that’d be the case with someone normal?’ he wondered, blinking at the page of the book he’d read a few times already and couldn’t remember anything from.
Frustrated, he pushed the book away for a moment, rubbing his tired eyelids and taking a deep breath in.
Hearing the sounds from the kitchen again, he turned to look and saw… Well, Kayama cooking. It was an odd sight, to see someone else cooking for him in his own place. Sure, he’d been to his friends’ places a few times, but those felt like isolated cases and such. Now though, it’d been a few days since his teacher had taken over cooking duties from him and he still wasn’t getting used to it.
If anything, it felt weirder with every day that passed. ‘When’s the last time someone cooked for me like this?’ he thought, unable to remember all that clearly. Of course, his parents had been awful, but they had fed him and all back in the day, when he was younger.
Going through memory lane a bit, he remembered when his Quirk manifested, back then being “only sensing”. But then life had been more of the same, just more shitty with the extra baggage from other people. Then his mother had left, but his father did cook meals himself. He wasn’t great, but he did do it.
Except, at some point, the man had stopped bothering quite as much, putting less effort, buying take out and… Eventually, he started coming up with excuses to not be at the house, either to not see Kazuki or for some other reason. That’d been when he started cooking for himself, he supposed.
And then… Well, juvie.
“You don’t look very studious,” a voice interrupted his thoughts and it took him that split second to remember that there was only one person it could belong to. Turning again, he saw Kayama looking at him from where she’d been working on the food. Apparently, either she was allowing herself to be distracted, or she was just waiting for something while cooking. “I don’t need to scold you, do I?”
“I got distracted, yeah, sorry,” he said, bringing a hand up to rub his face. “Was just… trying to remember something. It doesn’t really matter,” he added as an explanation, even though he didn’t say anything. As he did though, he put to work all his acting skills, which were getting better by the day, if he did say so himself.
Between reporters and proper acting practice for the movie, he sure hoped he was getting better.
“You won’t mind telling me then, right?” Kayama asked and he grimaced.
“Was my acting bad? I kinda want to improve,” he replied with. It was an honest question, but it was also to try and deflect from that line of conversation. He felt like he did enough self-pitying most days. Surely it had to be bothersome for others, right?
Which was why he was applying his acting skills more and more, to try and curb that a little. Sure, it went against Hina’s advice to find moments to be himself. But surely he could be himself without having to show the world how messed up he was, right? There was more to him than broken glass pieces from years in the past, right?
… Right?
“Your acting is fine. It’s the face you were making before that gave you away,” Kayama pointed out for him, which he noted with a nod. “Now, I’m no Inui, and I won’t force you to tell me either, but I have two perfectly fine ears if you need them,” she offered him with a kind smile, glancing towards something cooking in a pan.
“It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it, it’s just…” he started, before just trailing off as he failed to get the right words.
“Don’t want to talk about it?” Kayama finished before he could, making him deflate.
“I don’t like to just… spill my pitiful stories to everyone. Makes me feel like I’m throwing my burdens on others. It makes everyone feel bad and while I appreciate it most of the time, sometimes it just makes me feel like shit for putting that on them,” he explained, before chuckling bitterly. “Like I’m doing right now. God, I’m a mess.”
“Did you feel like me coming here when I felt bad was wrong?” Kayama asked him, and he turned to look at her with slightly widened eyes. He hadn’t- “Because I did. You are a kid, a student, a charge almost. We are supposed to take care of you, not the other way around.”
Kazuki opened his mouth to say something, but she just continued.
“And I know you didn’t mind. I talked with Inui, about more than just that, but still. You talking about yourself shouldn’t be something to be ashamed of. If you are looking for pity, that’d be… questionable, but you are not,” Kayama explained to him softly, turning and stirring something in the pan before adding something else. He couldn’t quite tell what any of it was from where he was, but it smelled delicious, so he was looking forward to it. “You’re allowed to talk about the things you enjoy just as much as the things you don’t. Just like how I’m allowed to talk about the cute cat I came across on the way here as much as I’m allowed to talk about how shit the other day was.”
There was silence after that, at least in regards to conversation, and Kazuki appreciated it. It allowed him to process that speech and go over it in his mind. He knew she wasn’t wrong, he just… couldn’t help how he felt. Emotions and their illogical ways, he supposed.
“... I was just trying to remember the last time someone prepared a meal for me at home,” Kazuki admitted in the end, looking up at the cream-colored ceiling instead of at Kayama. “That’s all,” he added, trying to play it off and wave the topic away. He’d said it, so that was enough, right?
As if.
Just judging by the way Kayama’s emotions spiked, he knew it wouldn’t be the end of it.
“And how long ago was that?” she asked, and he felt the hurt and anger in her at her own question. He wondered why she bothered asking, if she’d just feel bad. Did she think it’d help him to speak about it? Was she just that curious? Was it something else he didn’t know about?
“A little under a decade, I guess. I don’t remember all that well,” he answered with a shrug, leaning forward and pulling his book back into place. Although, he didn’t think he had it in him to just switch back to studying, honestly. “About a year or two before the Rampage, if you were curious,” he added… not quite sure why. He could have left it at that and Kayama likely wouldn’t have pushed for more. He’d said plenty already, right?
“Your father…?” Kayama went to ask but seemed to stop herself.
“He didn’t like being home, so he did his best to stay out as much as he could. He wouldn’t come back for dinner often and he’d be out before I woke up every morning unless I did so very early,” he explained, idly drawing random lines at the edge of his notebook as he spoke. “He’d leave me money to buy something in a convenience store nearby… Sometimes. Sometimes he’d forget.”
He’d always wondered if he really did forget or if he just didn’t care or… if he did it on purpose.
Kazuki would never get an answer to that, he supposed.
“At some point, I just got tired of that and started trying to cook,” he continued, the words just coming out on their own by then. He didn’t know why, but he just couldn’t shut up, as if a damn had broken and now there was nothing holding him back anymore. “I sucked, by the way, but I started getting better with time. That’s when I thought that maybe I could get him to like me with a good meal. Everyone’s got to eat, right? And everyone loves tasty food. So, surely that’ll help.”
He chuckled bitterly at that, still resolutely not looking at Kayama. He could feel all her sadness, her hurt, her anger and her pity. And he felt bad for that, for throwing all that at her when he knew it was too much. She obviously hadn’t meant for him to just spill his heart out to her when she told him to speak about himself.
His dumb mouth wouldn’t shut up though.
“The violin thing with my mother clearly didn’t teach me anything,” he said then, holding back a sigh.
“... He didn’t like it?” Kayama asked, almost like she didn’t dread asking but couldn’t help herself. Maybe she had a case of dumbness like he did? Was it something in the air?
“Never tried it,” Kazuki answered with a shrug he wasn’t sure she saw, but he didn’t care. “By the time I was good enough I’d actually try to prepare him something, I’d have been lucky to see him a few times a week, if you can call that luck. When I offered, he always had an excuse. Maybe he’d already eaten, or he was going to go with coworkers or he wasn’t feeling well or… Eventually I got the hint,” he explained before chuckling. “Shouldn’t have encouraged me to speak, eh?” he joked.
He didn’t expect the response he got though.
His eyes widened when a pair of arms wrapped around him from the side and pulled him into a firm hug.
She didn’t say anything and he was too shocked to speak himself. So, instead, he just sat there, frozen in place. He was getting better at dealing with physical affection, but this had been so out of the blue that he’d defaulted back to his old self. Besides, nobody had been quite so blatant and so overt. It was usually a quick hug at most or a more casual thing.
“Your food was delicious, Endo,” Kayama told him and he blinked repeatedly because… “Absolutely delicious. Lunch Rush should be wary.”
“Now you are just exaggerating,” he somehow managed to say through the knot that had formed in his throat.
“A little,” she admitted, and he could hear the smile on her face. “But it was really good all the same,” she added, squeezing him a little more. “You should be proud.”
Unable to do much else, Kazuki just nodded and hummed.
“... Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
[}-o-{]
“I knew I liked Nemuri for a reason,” Hina said later that night, when Kayama had already gone back to her place and he’d gotten done telling her about his day. He wasn’t sure when that’d become sort of a ritual of his day – whenever Hina did have time to call, that is –, but he couldn’t say he minded.
It was nice to have someone that just… listened, even when he didn’t have anything important to say. Sure, he tried not to spill everything on her, like how he had with Kayama, but it happened sometimes. She never seemed to mind when it did though, at least from what he knew.
“You know Midnight?”
“We’ve worked together once or twice. Most of the hero community teams up with one another at some point. Doesn’t hurt that she’s a good looking heroine. We kind of get called for shows and such on occasion, even for those heroes and heroines that aren’t… Well, show-oriented like me,” Hina explained and he suddenly felt like he needed his notebook once more. Not an unusual event, admittedly. “So, yeah, we know each other.”
“Huh, good to know, I guess,” he replied simply. He wasn’t sure why that had struck him as odd or curious, but it had. “So, you don’t think I messed up?”
“You need to open up to people, Kazuki. Bottling things up isn’t good. So, if someone offers to listen, talk. I agree that there’s a time and place to do such things, but there’s nothing wrong with this instance. You are allowed to talk about yourself, even if your past is… what it is,” she reassured him, much like Kayama had, he noticed. Maybe there was something to what they were telling him? “And if anyone mocks you or has a problem with you talking about yourself, just don’t bother with them. And tell me their names. I’ll send someone to smack them.”
“Not gonna do it yourself?” he asked jokingly with a smile.
“Well, I could, but I know people that can hit much harder and some of them owe me some favors,” Hina answered, entirely too seriously. He wondered if she was acting or if she actually meant what she said. He was too afraid to ask, for some reason, despite not being the target of her supposed intentions.
“Well… That’s all that happened in my day. How about you? Anything interesting?” he asked, leaning forward where he sat in front of his aquarium, watching the fish, the shrimp and the snails go about their lives. He’d just gotten done adjusting a few things here and there so that the water level was lower and there was a fountain effect with the water of the filter.
He found that the sound of water falling into the… Well, water was rather calming.
“Mostly a boring day for me, not gonna lie,” she told him, but she sounded fairly happy despite what her words conveyed. “I did do a little something though, but that’s a secret.”
“Why mention it at all then?” Kazuki asked, a little amused.
“Because it involves you, silly,” she answered, to which he blinked. “On that note, I want you to promise that you won’t do anything too significant without telling me, alright? Could you do that?” she added, which only caught him even more off guard and left him even more confused than he already was.
“Significant how?”
“Just, you know, new training, or going shopping for something, or adding something to your apartment, that kind of thing. Can you?”
“Uh… Sure?” Kazuki answered, still not understanding what was going on. It was an odd request, to be sure, but he didn’t see the harm. He also wasn’t sure what one thing had to do with the other. “You know you aren’t making any sense, right?”
“I imagined it could be the case for you. You’ll realize later and hopefully you’ll like this surprise,” she told him, which didn’t really help him at all. But, he supposed he’d find out when… whatever she was doing or had done happened? This wasn’t what he’d been expecting when asking Hina about her day, that was for sure.
“You are gonna keep me guessing, aren’t you?” he asked, knowing the answer before it came. What else could she say but-?
“I have to have fun somehow,” she teased, giggling as he groaned.
“I should have gone with Hawks. He’d never torture me like this,” he grumbled, not meaning a single word. Even then, without needing Hina’s training anymore, he couldn’t say he wouldn’t hesitate to choose her over everyone else in that list anyway. He very much doubted he’d have the kind of relationship he had with her with anyone else that had offered him an internship, that was for sure.
“You take that back!” the woman gasped, and he smiled to himself. “Kazukiiiiiii!”
“You’re such a child,” he told her, grinning a little wider when she huffed.
“And you wonder why I tease you. Meanie.”
“Turnabout is fair play, isn’t it?” he commented, imagining the woman rolling her eyes on the other side of the call. “Anything else to tell me other than the mystery thing?” he asked, leaning back.
“Not really. Somewhat calm day. Same for tomorrow. Now, the day after? That’s gonna be hell. Par for the course though. If I have free days, that just means things are probably piled up for another day,” Hina told him, sounding half resigned. Which was somewhat odd, considering she just said she had a free day and had another the day after. One would think she’d be making the most of it, right?
“Well, might as well enjoy tomorrow while it lasts, right?” he told her. He thought it was somewhat obvious, but maybe it wasn’t. “Any plans for that?”
“Eh… Maybe. I’ll see what I can do. What about you? Any plans?”
“Eh… The usual. I’ll have another talk with the Management students and the others, I think.”
“The agency gathers again,” Hina joked.
“Yeah,” he agreed with a smirk and a roll of his eyes. “Gotta keep going over things.”
“Speaking off, I guess I can look over what they’ve told you and probably will tell you tomorrow,” Hina commented idly.
“Take your day off, woman. You have better things to do than working even when you don’t have to.”
“Don’t worry about little ol’ me, Kazuki. This is something I want to do,” she said and she did so very casually.
And that was what got to Kazuki.
He didn’t find his voice for a little while, which made it very fortunate that Hina went on a tangent on the kind of things she expected to see from the Management students and such.
Very fortunate indeed.
[} Chapter End {]
Hey guys! How’s it going?
Well, this was certainly a chapter of all time.
Now, the Toru part. I can’t tell you how much I’ve hesitated on if to leave it as it is, changing it or just deleting it outright. However, Toru refused to change her mind or be silenced, evidently. Here’s hoping I wrote her well enough, because god damn, it’s been a while since something has made me this nervous.
Although, last time it was leaving Bakugo out of the last event at the Sports Festival and nobody seemed to care about that. So… I’m hopeful. Not sure if that’s a good thing though.
Then there’s Midnight and Uwabami, but those parts I’m much more confident about. At least when it comes to the women themselves. I’ll admit I’m unsure – as I am most of the time – about the levels of angst in the story. Just like Kazuki, sometimes I wonder if I go too overboard. I know I hate it when a character just can’t help but rant about their sad backstory.
I do believe there’s a way for that kind of thing to be done well and I’m hoping that I’ve managed to reach that sweet spot that I see so rarely.
If not, then I guess I’ll apologize in advance and try to fix it in the future if you guys complain about it.
Notes on the longer side today, it seems, but I’ll end it – as usual – hoping that you enjoyed the chapter.
Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ
Random Question: When did you start cooking? I’m rather embarrassed to say that I didn’t really learn much until I moved out to college. Then again, cooking isn’t something I care about a whole lot. I mostly just order take out, really. Huge respect to people that do cook though.
See you.
