Darkest Before Dawn - 115

Chapter 115 “So that’s why you’ve looked so down, huh?” he heard Toru mumble, but he was too busy sulking and draping his body all over his

Chapter 115 “So that’s why you’ve looked so down, huh?” he heard Toru mumble, but he was too busy sulking and draping his body all over his

Chapter 115

“So that’s why you’ve looked so down, huh?” he heard Toru mumble, but he was too busy sulking and draping his body all over his desk to bother replying. Most he could manage was a shrug and a half-hum half-groan. He wanted to blame his Quirk for how bad he was feeling, but he knew it was mostly his own doing. That and the fact that his emotions weren’t really helping his mitigation of the effect of his Quirk.

That really sucked.

When he was happy, his Quirk would dampen or downright ruin his good mood. When he wasn’t, his Quirk would amplify the bad to new levels. There was just no winning with the thing, Kazuki supposed.

Just like with life.

Was that dramatic of him? A little bit. But he was really sad that the school trip had been swapped for a training trip. He was all for getting better and such, but he’d so been looking forward to that…

“Come on, it won’t be that bad,” the invisible girl said, poking his side and making him groan louder. “We’ll still be together, right? We can still have fun. It’s just that we’ll be working on some stuff too. I’m sure it won’t be as bad as just… you know, regular school.”

“Thanks for jinxing us, Toru,” Minoru groaned from somewhere behind him and Kazuki wholeheartedly agreed. Although, he did find the way the girl squeaked in protest kind of funny. He hoped the invisible girl was right though.

He’d been feeling like he was stretched thin for a while already, so he could really use some time to do nothing at all. With some luck, he supposed the training trip wouldn’t be as intensive as Nemuri and Aizawa had made it sound. He wasn’t betting on that though, hence his mood.

“It could be interesting. I might finally get better at making ice constructs with more professional help,” Shoto commented, flat and straightforward as usual. “And you might get better with your shadows. You said you wanted to, right?”

“I want to work on a lot of things,” Kazuki replied dryly.

“Yes, but the shadows aren’t as heavy to deal with as the Grimm, right? They don’t require too much negativity manipulation,” Shoto pointed out and he had to give him that. Alas, that was a rather optimistic way to look at it.

“They might not give us much choice regarding what to work on,” Jiro said, joining the conversation by taking the now empty seat in front of Kazuki. Momo joined a moment later by his side too. Almost all of them were around by then. “They might decide that on their own.”

Kazuki groaned, further pressing himself against the top of his desk, with his face now hidden between his arms.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Momo said softly, patting his back awkwardly. He appreciated it all the same. “Toru wasn’t wrong. It shouldn’t be as bad as regular classes. We are already used to working on things all the time. If we take out regular classes, the toll should lessen.”

“Exactly!”

“I guess,” he mumbled, his voice probably barely understandable. “It still sucks though. I wanted to have fun.”

“We’re students. The world conspires to ruin our fun as much as possible. It’s what it does,” Minoru commented, somehow managing to match his dramatics. The guy wasn’t nearly as disappointed as he was though, but he appreciated the “support”, as it were.

“So, on a slightly related note,” Mina started, the upbeat tinge in her voice making Kazuki look up. Maybe his pink-skinned friend would have some silver lining for him? “You guys doing anything fun this weekend. Should make the most of it before training hell, right?” she said, although she seemed fairly happy. Probably something to do with the fact that she got to go on the trip at all. She had been one of those that failed during the midterms, after all, but they were given the chance to come along too.

“I’ll be busy for most of it,” Kazuki grumbled, knowing full well that he had to go back to working on his scenes for the movie. With yet more time away from it all for the training trip, he couldn’t afford to have a free weekend. Hell, he was going to have to travel there for two of the weekdays too, according to the schedule he’d been given.

‘I have way too much shit on my plate,’ he thought despondently.

“Might not even be in the city,” he added dejectedly. “So, have fun for me?”

“Another visit to Uwabami?” Momo asked and he found it odd that there was no disappointment or anything. She usually reacted with something when he had to go away. Instead, she sounded and looked… Excited? “I’ll be in that city this weekend too. On that note, you won’t have any time at all? Remember when I mentioned the possibility of you playing in one of my parents’ parties?”

“You want me to do that?” Kazuki asked, immediately sitting straight and looking at her with wide eyes. He wasn’t sure if he was more surprised or scared by the idea. She had mentioned that, but he didn’t even remember how he’d reacted at the time, but he sure hadn’t expected the “opportunity” to come so quickly.

“My parents and I,” she corrected, which wasn’t much better. He was barely getting in her parent’s good books. That could really ruin all the progress he’d made on that. “And my father said he wouldn’t have any problem so long as you were good enough. They want to listen to you before confirming anything,” she explained and that was much more reassuring.

‘Ok, I guess that can work?’ he thought, gulping down his sudden bout of nerves. ‘They hear me, decide I’m not good enough and that’s that, right? No problem.’

“I guess I can do that,” he commented with a nervous smile that made the girl beam at him.

He did feel a bit bad about leaving everyone out of his weekend plans, but it wasn’t like he could have included them even before the party thing Momo had added in. Maybe he could make it up to them during the week? Toru in particular seemed very bummed, so maybe he could try to cheer her up.

[}-o-{]

“Straight here from your classes. Must not be a good day,” Inui accurately guessed as soon as Kazuki took his seat across from him in his office. He was feeling better after having some time to brood and generally being a bit of… an ass, admittedly.

“I just… I can’t seem to shake this off and it’s stupid. Not as stupid as the dance thing, admittedly, but still,” he said, dragging a frustrated hand over his face. “I just… it sucks and I don’t know why I can’t let it go. I should be used to things taking a turn for the shitty by now,” he added, and maybe that was part of the reason why he was more bothered. Because he was used to dealing with bad things, but somehow this one thing was sticking to him more than usual.

“Because you were looking forward to it,” Inui replied and he blinked. “This is the first time in a while you had good hopes for something in the future and it didn’t go well,” the counselor started explaining. “You’re barely allowing yourself to hope in general and this was the one thing you were specifically looking forward to at the moment. So, right this moment, this hits you harder than it would have at any other point. It’s understandable to feel angry, sad, disappointed or whatever else you’re feeling.”

“... I guess,” he mumbled, feeling so very small where he sat. “What do I do though?”

“You process your feelings, that’s all,” Inui said and Kazuki took heart in the fact that he seemed fairly calm, barely feeling anything that he could pick up on. “You take the time to let the emotions run their course. Just remember that this is a set back, nothing else. You know this is small, so that’s great in that regard. You’re allowed to be disappointed and angry about this.”

“That simple, huh?”

“Emotional matters can be simple, but they are rarely easy,” Inui said in that sage voice he often used. “If you need any help-”

“I can call, I know,” Kazuki finished with a slight smile. “Nemuri’s probably gonna be around if I need someone to talk to, but I always know I can call you, or any of the others,” he added. It wasn’t often, but he did sometimes give a call to his other guardians. Most of the time it was to know if it was ok for him to do something, or just needing an ear to vent on. None of them seemed to mind any of the times he did, which only encouraged him.

Kazuki did wonder if he was pushing the boundaries of his guardianship thing, but he was too afraid of the answer to ask.

“Anything else you need to talk about now or was it just about that?” Inui asked, leaning forward and resting his chin on his interlocked fingers. “I’m fine with either, by the way.”

“I know. Your patience knows no bounds,” he replied with a slight smile. Kazuki was already feeling better, actually. Inui’s calm was contagious, which was what he gathered after so many sessions with the man. He didn’t know what he’d do once he graduated and he stopped being able to come to the man just to talk. “I do have some other things to talk about if it’s all the same to you.”

“It’s what I’m here for,” Inui told him, not an ounce of annoyance or anything of the sort coming from him. Yeah, the man was just a saint, as far as Kazuki was concerned. He really was just there for them, all of them. He’d once felt bad about going to the counselor at juvie, not because they weren’t good, but because sometimes the job was a little much for the poor guy. Sometimes, Kazuki would go and pick up emotions that made it clear the man wasn’t doing so well and that just made him feel bad for going and making it all worse.

Not Inui though, he was always… Well, Kazuki didn’t know about happy, but he never felt bad when they dropped by. It made it all the easier to turn to him when they needed him. Or, at least, it did for him. He imagined the others didn’t really know about that, admittedly.

“So, Momo seems to have talked to her parents and now they want to see if I could play in one of their parties,” he commented, and wasn’t that a concerning possibility. “And that’s… crazy, isn’t it? Is it just a me thing again? Those parties are… An amateur like me shouldn’t be playing in one of those.”

“You’re not wrong,” Inui conceded, but Kazuki could almost hear the following part coming before he opened his mouth. “But I imagine they know what’d be appropriate and what wouldn’t be, right? And you’ll be able to tell if they lie to you, wouldn’t you?”

“I hate when you use logic that bluntly,” he replied, drawing a barked laugh from the man. Was that offensive of him to think? “I’m trying to be insecure and emotionally unstable here, Inui. Have some consideration.”

“I’m sorry,” he replied dryly, but his lips were pulling into a smile. “I know you have your confidence issues, and I can’t speak on this matter since I haven’t had the pleasure to hear you play the violin in person yet-” That made Kazuki think he could bring his violin to the school one day and do so, maybe play for the entire staff, since they were always looking out for him. “-, but I’ve heard plenty of people comment on how good you are. And, as I said, I imagine the Yaoyorozu wouldn’t set you up for embarrassment, and you’d be able to tell if they did. So, go and do your best. I imagine it’ll be great for your connections to be involved in such a party and I know you love playing.”

“... I guess you’re not wrong,” he mumbled, leaning back on his seat. “So, on less heavy topics, I picked up a tinkerer from outside the school for my club and I guess I should discuss that with you? Maybe Nezu too, you see…”

[}-o-{]

Kazuki sat on the ground, in the middle of a mostly empty spot in the training facilities of UA. The only things close by were some random objects created by Momo and ice spikes made by Shoto. His eyes were closed at the moment though, and he didn’t even know where any of those things were, since they’d been placed around him after he had closed them.

He was trying out a new exercise, after all, inspired by his forced experimentation back in I-Island. His shadow extended and he explored the area around him with it. He needed to get better at creating Grimm from blindspots, after all. One never knew when that might come in handy again.

‘This is as weird as I remember,’ he thought idly as he commanded his shadow to move around. It was odd because his shadow couldn’t really feel anything. It wasn’t like he was moving the shadows around like pseudo-hands, tapping to see what was around. They had no feedback… sort of. The only thing he could pick up was when the shadow crashed against something, but even that was odd. Like the reverse of pulling on a string until reel ran out, simultaneously falling limply to the floor but also the hard resistance of the string being attached to something that didn’t give at the end.

Very weird feeling, but he was trying to understand how that worked so that he could try and maneuver around the obstacles. That and covering said obstacles, but the flat surface of the floor was much more manageable than the uneven one of the objects. ‘One thing at a time, let’s do the flat surface and then tackle the more complicated things,’ he told himself as he took a deep breath in and went at it again.

He didn’t know how long he spent on that, his shadows moving around, tapping against objects and pulling away, forming shapes and covering everything. He didn’t really feel any better at it than when he started, but eventually he did take the step to trying to cover the obstacles he’d been provided. Might as well, if he wasn’t going to get any progress done anyway. Maybe he’d just need to keep at it until it started clicking with him, persevere until he got used to it.

That’d suck, but nothing related to his Quirk was ever easy, he supposed.

‘Something had to be troublesome regarding the shadows,’ he thought wryly. There might not be any negativity involved in that, at least none that affected him other than what he had to spend to use the shadows, but it was more complex than controlling Grimm. Not as complex as making new Grimm, for sure, but certainly more than working with his Grimm normally.

“I think that’s enough for now, Kazuki,” Minoru told him, snapping him out of his focused state and making him open his eyes. Then he blinked a few times, getting used to the light once more. Maybe he’d been doing that more than he thought. “That was quite the spectacle,” his friend commented, and he turned to see him put away his phone.

Kazuki had asked if he could record his shadow exercise, since he couldn’t quite tell how much he was messing up with his eyes closed. It was… well, not fortunate, but certainly convenient that Minoru couldn’t really train his Quirk those days. After I-Island, he’d need to take a good break to try and undo the damage to his recovery that his excessive use of his Quirk had done during that attack.

‘Wonder what they’ll have him do during the training trip,’ Kazuki thought to himself, unable to stop the slight bitterness at the reminder. He was trying to move past that, but… Well, it’d take a while, he supposed. He tried not to let himself be annoyed that he was affected, trying to follow Inui’s advice.

“Maybe you can make a shadow show while playing the violin? That’d be a sight to behold,” Minoru commented and Kazuki blinked. He hadn’t thought about that, even though he had considered shadow shows back when he’d first started delving on his shadow control.

“Maybe,” he acknowledged slowly, processing that idea. Not very practical, but anything that looked cool and interesting could work to earn him points with people. He might need to discuss that with Futo later in the club. “What do you wanna do now?” Minoru asked and he managed to act fine even though there was a fair bit of frustration coming from him.

Kazuki didn’t need to be a genius to know that it was because of his Quirk situation.

So, he decided to try and cheer him up.

“Eh, I could use a break,” he answered, standing up and stretching for a bit. “What do you say we go get ourselves some drinks and then see if any of those numbers I promised you works out?” he offered and he almost laughed at the one eighty his friend pulled at that.

“You actually have some?!” Minoru asked, all excitement and no frustration. It made Kazuki feel much better to see him like that. “I thought you were just saying that!”

“No promises on if it’ll work out, but yeah, I do have some,” he commented with a grin. “Let’s go, yeah? Should we pick up drinks for everyone?”

“... Yeah, probably,” Minoru replied, suddenly a little worried and scared for some reason. “Also, don’t tell the girls we’re doing this, alright?”

“Right,” he agreed easily. He imagined Minoru might get smacked if they found out, so he completely understood. Hell, he might get some hits too, if they misunderstood. So…

Totally, the girls couldn’t find out.

[}-o-{]

“So, yeah, Nezu seemed downright excited when he called me on the way here,” Kazuki explained, happy to put his mind to use on something instead of just moping. Classes helped, but the novelty of normal schooling had worn off a while back and he found them almost as boring as his friends. “Won’t be any issue so long as you work within our budget, which is… an issue all by itself. We don’t have that much and you’re basically a support student without budget, as far as the club is concerned,” he added, and he could see almost everyone taking note of what he said.

All but Mei, of course, who was too busy working on something for Penny, if he had to guess.

“I see… I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” Melissa said, and he didn’t need her to be close enough to his range to know that she wasn’t feeling very good. “I guess I can contribute with blueprints and ideas then,” she added, but he could tell that wouldn’t be enough. If she was anything like Mei, she needed to make stuff. With their budget hitting rock bottom, their tinkerer had been plenty unhappy, after all, and Kazuki imagined that applied to Melissa too. Brainstorming and designing only went so far for them, for whatever reason.

Alas, they’d have to deal with that. Melissa could, theoretically, make stuff with her own money if she so desired and “donate” it to the club. Kind of going off on the same vein as them earning money for themselves. It could cause issues though. And besides, he’d feel bad for making her pay for her own stuff too.

“We’ll make it work,” he said, leaning back and taking a deep breath in to gather his thoughts. “We’re working on earning more money for ourselves, we’ll just add you to the mix,” he decided, glancing to Keage. He was happy to see the guy nod immediately.

“It’ll tighten the budget, obviously, but we’ll work it in,” was the response he got from the Head of Business – Mei’s decision that they were rolling with – and he nodded back at him. “By the way, we have to run some ideas past you in regards to starting to earn money for the club.”

“Sure thing,” he replied, turning to look at Melissa in the videocall. “So, don’t worry about the budget. Just do your thing and we’ll see what we can provide you with to tinker.”

“... Okay,” was all the girl said, the single word coming out slowly, as if she were still processing what he’d told her.

“Great, so-”

“How soon do you need the data, Melissa?!” Mei called over from her workstation. To that, Kazuki blinked. That was the first time he heard about that.

“Data?”

“Take your time, Mei. I’ll be brainstorming and making rough sketches for now until I have a budget to give me a better idea of what I’m working with,” Melissa replied, getting more and more excited as she spoke. He wasn’t sure why she was so happy all of a sudden. Maybe she’d been more affected by the news he brought than he thought she would?

“Ok, so, anything else we need to discuss?” he asked, looking around at everyone.

“... If there’s nothing, we had a few ideas of things we could do, as I said before,” Ronaudo started with and Kazuki nodded to encourage him to keep going as he turned to give him his whole attention. That seemed to make the boy sit a little straighter as he started checking some paper sheets with data… or were they just notes? Maybe both. “We managed to get an offer to make the Baby Series plushies from someone. We have some ideas as to how we can better spread our name and our business with this first step,” the boy explained before passing him one of the sheets.

Checking it, he saw several things. For one, there were numbers for the plushies, several plans with different amounts of the designs they thought could work best. For two, there were the plans, that went from simple social media posts to-

“Definitely not this,” he said, trying not to sound angry but still being firm as he placed the sheet on the table and pointed at one of the marketing ideas. “I’m not using those kids for profit, I can tell you that.”

He got it, he really did. It’d be great if he could be seen giving the plushies to the kids at the hospital he’d visited with Hina back in the day, but he didn’t want to take advantage of them like that. It felt shitty on several levels. Although, that did give him an idea for later.

“I like the idea of giving them some, but maybe after we have the budget for that,” he added softly as he looked at the paper. Then he shook his head and considered the other ideas. “Some of these other things sound good,” he acknowledged. Although, sadly, most of them weren’t very effective. Alas, the one thing that could sell the most he refused to do.

“We’ll have to see how to make it work,” Komako said, joining the conversation. “The plushie manufacturing was offered by someone in second year. Apparently, word is spreading around. If this works, they said they’d think very seriously about joining the club and that’d bring resources we need to try and have a more solid foundation for the business side of things.”

“I see… have you asked Inui for advice?” he asked, raising an eyebrow and he almost grinned at the sheepish looks he got from the Management Team. “I can ask if you guys don’t feel like it. I’ll check with Uwabami too, she might have ideas to offer… Actually, I think I have an idea,” he started counting before something occurred to him. “Maybe not the hospital kids, but we could do something to have more reach than just us…” he mused as he started smiling.

Yeah, he thought it could work, now to hash out the details with the Management Team…

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

I know I keep pushing off the Forest Training arc, alright? The Muse seems intent on writing a thousand chapters before we get to that. Which is frustrating even for me, since I’ve had ideas for that since forever ago. Alas, plenty to see before then, evidently.

I hope that’s not too annoying and that you guys enjoyed the chapter.

Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: I’m gonna blatantly abuse the random question more than I’ve ever done so (just like I did in GoM)… Do you guys know any fun family friendly local co op games? I’ve set up a desktop computer on our living room as a “pseudo-console” and gotten four controllers. So, I’m on the lookout for anything good to play. Right now, we’re getting by mainly playing Horizon Chase Turbo and Pummel Party. I do have Overcooked 2, Unrailed, Brotato, Stick Fights and Inversus ready on the side too though. (I have Stardew Valley and Rocket League in my to-check list too)

See you.