March, this year.
Kazuto keeps typing. He goes again, writing an essay. That's his extracurricular assignment. Why do I deserve to be in the Heroics Course? He asks himself that question, many times he just comes up with the same answer, but he never writes it.
Just saying that he wants to help people is simplistic, just for setting an example for people like him... idealistic. Saying that he could be a hero because of attention is childish, too. And wrong. Every reason he comes up with is wrong. In a way or another.
He stops writing. His frown deepens, and Kazuto throws away everything on his desk and screams. The sounds are heard somewhere, and it's likely that he doesn't care.
Kazuto only steps back, and sits down on his bed.
He has tried many times and the essay is always rejected. Maybe the teachers know the truth and he doesn't. Maybe they're sparing him from a dead end. Maybe they're just helping him in secret ways. Maybe they're busy and can't review it and return any essays because it's hard to review anything and help others a there's only 24 hours a day and he knows people need to sleep and they deserve it—
Kazuto goes to sleep. His head is just messing with him.
April.
Kazuto struggles to get off the bed. The reasons are unknown. His body reacts as if it had lag. Like a WiFi connection in a fighting game. Too much delay, too little reaction. He wakes up empty, like always.
When he hears that Shinsou might enter Heroics, he smiles. He's glad for him, the kid deserves it. Shinsou works hard, and Kazuto recognizes that. But... there's still a voice inside him that tells him bad things. Things he would rather forget.
("Maybe you're just too pushy, too annoying, to unrealistic, too idealistic, too childish...")
("Heroics is hard, you knew that since the beginning...")
("Maybe there was just one spot, and he took it.")
("Maybe...
He stole your spot, and there could only be one.")
He closes his eyes. He hopes he never goes to listen to that voice. It's angry, tired. Just like him.
Kazuto never argues against that voice, because he doesn't have a good reason to avoid it. He just hopes, hopes that he never listens to its suggestions, falls to its traps.
But hope is fleeting, Kazuto.
May.
Kazuto stays behind in class. Prismarine might explain something, but Kazuto doesn't listen. If she doesn't note anything weird with him, it's because Kazuto won't let her know.
Her eyes... Kazuto shudders at the thought of having to face her, or any of the teachers, for that matter. He thinks they could mock him for his foolishness. He thinks they could build him up, only to make him crash and burn like prodigies did.
He always gave up when it came to speaking to Aizawa because of that. The man is too analytical. Kazuto feels like a lab rat instead of a teenager when he even managed to spare a look in his general direction. Maybe he is like that. Maybe Kazuto is just too weak to even try being a hero. Maybe his one-track mind is just too dangerous to deal with. Maybe he's broken and they can see it.
Maybe it's written in everyone's faces that he's useless and they know it. An inside joke he can't understand because he never learned the reason behind it.
Tears fall to the desk, and Kazuto doesn't notice it. He clutches his head and weeps.
This wish... was foolish to begin with.
Maybe he shouldn't have wished to become a hero. Maybe it was written in his fate that this path would only drag him down.
June.
Maybe... If he couldn't triumph, why not try revenge?
Kazuto stays quiet the rest of the month. His birthday slips by, unnoticed. End of May, he remembers. His body loses some of its qualities, because he doesn't deserve to be fit for anything but a failure.
His mind aches for stimulation, but Kazuto doesn't want to cooperate.
Maybe it's better if he can take himself down with this boat.
He knows that either way, his life is doomed. Since the beginning, there wasn't a way out.
Maybe there isn't.
