All My White Lies | bnha

four | beyond the boundary

"HERE," I jolted at my desk, sliding off the noise-proof headphones that I had gotten for Christmas from Mirio. If it hadn't been for the vibration of my bedroom door opening, I never would've noticed my mother slinking up to the side of my bed. Her hand held an envelope I didn't recognize, an addition to the piles she had been giving me this year.

I eyed it and then her, a silent question as to what school this one was for. "Saint Ann's School of Arts in the states," She muttered, brushing back a curl of her h/c hair. It lingered by her neck anyway, her movements fruitless. "They usually expect high test scores and it's private, but I managed to get you a free spot."

I didn't have the patience to tell her that it was just as fruitless as her shifting her hair back. Nonetheless, I knew what she meant. Bribe. "I'm not going," I said, already beginning to fix my headphones on my ears again. She yanked it, fingers curling over the handle in between as she tossed it back.

I swallowed hard, eyes flitting to it briefly as I let out a silent sigh of relief at the sight of it on my bed instead. "How much longer do you plan on rotting in there? At Yuuei? That school isn't meant for you!" The disdain from her eyes had dropped to the back of her throat, contorting into words of abuse.

She didn't mean to help. She didn't mean to assist me. She meant to hurt. "It is. Otherwise, they wouldn't have let me stay for a year," I retorted, tempted to just push her out of my bedroom door and swing it shut. However, I knew it wouldn't help. My mother was like a ghost; she'd always come back to haunt me.

Her lips pursed. They were lipstick stained, unlike those other times. I stared at her, my own mouth in a thin line as I fought to keep the question to myself. Did you go out? She almost never did. After my brother's death, my mother had become an utter recluse while my father was a robot.

Wake up, go to work, come back home, sleep, repeat. It was as if he had gone on autopilot, every bit of his body shredded from reality. I preferred that much over the banshee that stood at my door. "You're not meant to be a hero," Her voice was hoarse, quiet. Like explaining one more word of what she meant to say would break both of us.

And perhaps it would.

I could see the gaze in her eyes, the way they were shiny with unshed tears. How her arms curled into herself with a sense of guilt I hadn't seen in years. Maybe she had gone out and regretted it, or maybe she had her own ghost that was haunting her. "Does it scare you? To think of me dying?"

"It scares me to think of you surviving," She said. A tear dropped down, mascara pulled down with it as it left a dark streak along the side of her cheek. Words were left unsaid but tears did all the speaking. She didn't want me to be a hero. And her solution to that was to hurt me.

She wanted me to live. Even if that meant keeping herself alive to tear her remaining son into pieces. That was the most painful form of tough love. At least, that's what I assumed. "Like I said, I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing this for him and if you had taken a second to understand that—"

My words were swallowed up by her own lips parting, a voice that wasn't hers escaping her mouth. "—how? How can you live with yourself and want to become a hero?! You couldn't even save him!" My breath hitched in my throat and I said nothing, all the air was knocked out of my lungs.

I heard footsteps first and then saw my mother's figure being pulled away second. I watched her curl into a body that had been a robot for so long, his arms pulled around her as if I had wounded her. As if I had hurt both of them first. Dad said nothing, looking at me before closing the door.

I wonder when he gained the decency to become a human being again.

It felt like my body was glued to my chair. She was right. I hadn't been able to save Kioshi before, it didn't matter what I did now. Nothing would make up for it. Maybe I had gone too far along, shredding reality as my father had. After all, how does a dead person's dream hold any weight within the boundaries of real life?

My gaze was blurry, but I set it on my desk anyway, pulling out a journal and a pen that I hadn't chewed out yet. It was one of many from the kit that Tamaki had given me; he jokingly said I could use it, but we both knew I'd probably eat through half of them first. I choked up more, trying to come up with statements as to why I should leave.

As to why I should abandon my little brother's dream.

The next day was harder to get through. My mother wasn't awake when I woke up and my father, as usual, was robotically sipping his coffee. This time there was a black-wrapped book on his legs as if reality had woken him up enough for him to exchange novels. "Stay safe today," His words made me freeze on the spot.

I paused, hands poised against my bowl of cereal. I looked at him but he didn't bother staring back, his eyes glued to the stains of ink that were scrawled across the paper. It was easier to look at something he wasn't a part of; something he didn't create. And when he simply drank from his mug again, I knew he didn't know anything.

Unlike my mother who was too pained to see me survive, he was adamantly waiting. As if he knew that I was bound to die within the hero course. I nodded, but it didn't matter anyway, getting ready for the day faster than my mom could roll out of bed was a bigger priority than properly answering him. Arriving on campus was somehow a new challenge on its own.

I had never squinted so hard under Mirio's questioning gaze, the sun practically blinding me from where he stood. Tamaki faltered beside him, head tucked away from everyone's view as he shivered and muttered under his breath. And then, there was Nejire, a smile on her lips as she waved off a few girlfriends.

"What's that?"

The moon was the first to notice. Although Tamaki was always quiet and anxiety-ridden, he was more perceptive than most. The paper was folded in my hand, much neater than I typically would've done to a drawing that I abhorred. "I'm quitting," The words slipped past my mouth. "The hero course, I mean. It isn't meant for me."

My mouth felt dry and I dug my free hand into the skin of my palm, faint crescent-shaped marks already beginning to form. "But you already stuck around a year," Mirio frowned. He wasn't sure how to speak, what to say. Usually, he'd spit out a morally encouraging speech, but talking to me that way was the equivalent of kicking a dead horse.

"A year too long, I guess. It's really my final decision," I swallowed hard. "Please respect that."

"You can't," Nejire murmured, brows twisted together in both betrayal and sadness. However, I knew she wouldn't protest too much; her heart wouldn't let her fight against a friend's wishes. Mirio even shook her head at her lightly, refusing to meet my gaze as he moved to the side and let me onto campus.

We'd typically walk together, all of us. The sun and moon with their arms wrung around each other while Nejire and I stood next to them like distant planets. "Why are you quitting?" She uttered after a moment, periwinkle settled on my figure. I stopped, staring at her with a bewildered look on my face.

"I. . . what?"

"How about this," Nejire wrapped her fingers against my hand. At this point, it was as if my body had grown used to her touch. The warmth wasn't so foreign anymore and if I wasn't careful, I sometimes found myself leaning into it. "You attend class today, alright? Just like always. If you have one really good reason for quitting, you can go tell the Principal."

She wagged her finger midair and I could already tell her deal wasn't finished yet. "But, if I have like a super duper good reason for you to stay, you have to. Does that sound fair?" I could sense Mirio looking at the both of us from behind her, Tamaki sheltered under his arm.

Neither of them wanted to get involved in a personal decision but it seemed that Nejire had crossed all those boundaries. To get to me. I paused, staring at her for a moment before nodding. "Okay," My mouth felt dry again as I agreed, but the smile on her face made it all the more worth it.

There was a gleam of confidence in her eyes as she skipped away, the warmth around my hand leaving with her. Maybe Nejire and I weren't as distant as I thought.