MANIA - Katsuki Bakugou

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chapter 43

1 MONTH LATER

Shimamura bit down on a pencil, swiveling in a spinny chair at a desk. Her eyebrows creased as she tried to concentrate on her math homework, trying to envision the 2D figure in 3D for no apparent reason. Maybe it'd help her solve the problem! She severely doubted it... but it didn't hurt to try.

She leaned back in the chair and sighed heavily. She held the pencil in her mouth with her teeth but brought her hand away from the hilt of it. Her eyes closed as she listened to the distant music playing behind her. Some sort of rock band she assumed with how loud it was, but muffled. Screaming at the top of their lungs on the track. She smiled a bit and scoffed at the music. It wasn't exactly her tastes, but she didn't mind.

That was why he was wearing headphones, after all. He knew she didn't like it as much as he did.

"Focus, Whitey," Bakugou said from behind her.

She spun around in the chair to face him as he was sitting on his bed. She glared at him playfully and took the pencil from her teeth. "I am oh-so focused."

Bakugou raised an unamused eyebrow at her. He had one hand on one of his headphones, pulling it away from his ear so he could hear her. She could hear the rock music blaring even louder now. Somehow, with all that noise, he had a comic book open in his lap which he was apparently reading.

"You're not. If you were focused you would've finished your work an hour ago."

Shimamura puffed out her lip, shrinking in her seat. "You know I'm no good at math."

He glared at her, not even twitching at her cute reaction. Ah, but she spoke too soon. The corner of his mouth twitched up into a half smile and he looked away, smiling with a shaking of his head.

"I know. You're a dumbass."

Shimamura giggled and swiveled back around in her chair so she was facing her work again. She bit down on the pencil, trying to think.

It had been a month since she'd confronted her aunt, but only a week (give or take a few days) off of her meds completely. She wasn't an idiot when it came to quitting her medication. Rather than cutting it off completely like she did accidentally when she was kidnapped, she went to Recovery Girl for assistance.

It would be an understatement to say that Recovery Girl was elated to hear that Shimamura was cutting herself off from Irisa Arima. She thought she'd never see the day.

Recovery Girl advised Shimamura with waning herself off of the lithium carbonate pills slowly but surely—taking less and less of the dosage until it was finally a healthy time for her to stop taking it all together. This was to limit withdrawal symptoms and ensure that Shimamura didn't get too sick after dramatically stopping her pill intake twice within the same two month period.

Since she's been off her meds, she's felt better... as "better" as she can be in any case.

It became clear after a few days of being off of the lithium carbonate that the pills weren't the sole cause of her bipolar disorder, which made sense. But it also didn't limit the number of times she switched mental states from manic to depression in a day. In actuality, it just affected to what state she was shifting to periodically.

Rather than remaining in low states most of the day like she was on the lithium carbonate, she was now shifting more fluidly from high states to low states. Most days she stretched within the range of a 3 to an 8–covering all the bases rather than only the 1-4 range. This was manageable. More manageable than before anyway.