COntRol

Epilogue

⚡COntRol⚡
Epilogue

Months later...
[Kaminari's POV]

UA high school. The very school, in Japan, that has the most intelligent people in the country. The very school that has the lowest acceptancy rate. The very school where every person who went in came out as either a professional hero or a sidekick.

And I got in.

It's still hard to accept that, even after two whole years of being there and accepting their support, but I'm still here.

And I'm working my way back up.

It was strange, to be honest, after all that had happened before. I remember, less than a year ago, my second-year self dreaming about me being in a position where I could laugh about the past and brush it off, pick up the smile that I'd abandoned for so long, and walk on unscathed, like a soldier walking from a battlefield with his head held high.

Although that's the thing.

I can't brush those events off so easily. It will always be a shadow that looms over my shoulder, scars that will never fade, both figuratively and literally - there are strain marks that permanently mar my skin, mostly from the times where I'd shocked myself as a method of self-harm. Nothing about the past was something to be laughed at, because it wasn't meant to be funny. It was a huge mountain I had to climb, and it was a milestone for me, where I had both lost and found myself.

Faith and fear are both very similar - and I've never truly understood that, until now.

For the entirety of those seven months, I'd always learnt to fear myself. Then I enter a vortex of negativity, spiralling downwards and through the floor and, every time I tried to fight against the current, I find myself outnumbered, only sinking further. 

And I wish I'd looked around. Now, I know people back then weren't pitying me - that was just the delusion of fear. Now, I wish that I'd reached out to Aizawa or even Kirishima, once the abuse had started. But another fear - a fear of being judged - bounded me from speaking.

Faith and fear both make you believe in something you can't see - the only difference is one pushes you to success, whilst the other pushes you to failure.

And that's something I couldn't not forgive my past self for, because I let my fear overrule me, and lose sight of my faith. I could concoct a million reasons as to why I should stop believing in myself and give up, but only a few when thinking of ones that I shouldn't. And that fear manipulates me, making me feel and appear and seem so much less than I was.

And then five months.

Even now, I still have my lows and my smile isn't as bright as it used to be, with my gain in maturity, but it took that long for me to breach through the clasp of fear and start holding onto the faith the old me had plenty of. The faith that made me believe I deserved to be here, and that my position was strong, and that I'm not weak, or pathetic, or useless.

Just like Kirishima had said.

I'm still working on seeing myself as 'strong' or 'amazing' or 'selfless', but progress is progress.

I had no memory of what had happen on that day. I've been passively told by nurses that we were completely passed out when a helicopter had cast its searchlight on us, and doctors had rushed in to drag us to the ICU. I wasn't exactly sure about the science behind it, but they had to leave me on the roof and wait for a special jacket that would stop the electricity from affecting the doctors, because the voltage that my body could emit if it were touched by another person would've killed them. They took me to hospital and, after thorough examination once I was safe enough to touch, they'd discovered the abuse marks.