Darkness. Again. A part of me knew what was going on, and I could hear distant voices echoing in the background. I stood up and turned around, looking for the origin of the voices.
After disappointing results I examined my surroundings. I was in a box, brick walls containing me in a cube shaped room. The room started getting smaller as the walls started coming towards each other.
I backed myself into a shifting corner and slid down to the floor, and felt a weird sensation in my mouth. I put my fingers in to figure out what was happening, and several teeth came out.
The teeth vanished, and after looking down at them in my hand, I looked up and saw the walls had disappeared, and a beam of light shot into my face as I gasped and sat up in a hospital bed.
I'd woken up. But I had no recollection of what had happened. The last thing I remembered was that I had been fighting All For One. Obviously if I was here, they'd won. I sighed in relief and hoped everyone was alright.
Vaguely remembering the dream I'd had, I thought about the tooth loss part. A few of my dreams the past few months had included scenes like that, which I'd looked up online to discover what it meant.
Stress. I was stressed out. I mean, of course I was, how many days of actual schooling did we have this semester? How many times had we been attacked and almost killed? That would be stressful for anyone, let alone a group of fifteen year olds.
There was no one in my room with me. Honestly, I wasn't surprised. Looking around in the dark room, I saw my phone on a table next to my bed. Grabbing it, I saw that two days had passed.
My eyes widened and I almost fell out of the bed getting out as fast as possible, dragging the IV line with me and trudging down the hospital corridors.
To put it shortly, I met up with some nurses and was discharged the next morning. All For One had destroyed my mask and made me inhale sleeping gas that was meant to down a superhuman, not a regular human.
Being the first time anyone had ever inhaled that much sleeping gas, and being completely unconscious for more than a few hours, I was hospitalised and kept, just to be safe.
One thing was for sure, I was hungry. I started texting my friends and got tons of positive responses, everyone had been really worried about me. Making my way home, my dad was already gone.
This time though, he'd left a note for me on the kitchen table. Picking it up and reading it, it explained he'd be back at around noon because a few pro heroes were coming to talk about something important.
A bit more emotion than usual which I was a little surprised at, and checking my messages, I saw Tsu had sent me several hug emojis and said she wanted to meet up with me as soon as possible when we got to the dorms.
Me: The dorms?
Tsu: Yeah! Oh, you won't have heard, will you? With all the attacks that have happened, and with how angry the public are getting, a large apartment complex was designed for us to move into and was just completed today!
Me: Wow, that's amazing! I assume that's why there's a bunch of pros coming around to our houses to meet up with our parents?
Tsu: Mhm. They obviously need consent first before they pull us away from our homes and families.
Me: It'll be weird moving out and living alone... Although I'd hoped for it for ages, I never actually thought it would happen so soon.
Tsu: Hey, you won't be alone! You'll have me, and the rest of our class there hopefully. Even if I can't move in, I'll visit you every day after school.
That was a big step for her. Although we had wanted to spend more time together, Tsu had always been too busy. Maybe me being in a coma scared her?
After ending our conversation through text, I prepared the house a little for the meeting with my father and the pro heroes, and was getting increasingly anxious.
What if he said no, and I was the one who was an outcast? What if... Well, that was actually the only question I had. What if he said no? But then again, why wouldn't he? To me it seemed he despised my company, and we rarely had anything to do with each other.
It would only benefit him, and in my mind, that was enough to convince me that he'd say yes. After a while, he came home, and gave me a strange look that I couldn't quite make out.
"You're home after all. Good."
Again, more emotion than he'd shown to me in a while. Odd. Was he actually worried for me? He didn't often check up on the news but maybe he actually saw my battle? Who knows, it was weird whatever it was.
After a little while longer, our doorbell rang. All Might and Mr Aizawa were there, and I invited them to step in. They took off their shoes without request, out of respect, and came into the living room.
We got out two foldable seats to put opposite the coffee table and let the pros have the more comfortable settee. They thanked us and briefly explained the whole program to my father.
"So, do we have your permission for your son to come live on campus with the rest of the heroes and students?" Mr Aizawa asked.
My dad shrugged, and replied, "Sure, I don't care."
I sighed and shook my head, standing up. "You never do, do you?"
I quickly walked out of the room and up the stairs, ignoring All Might's plea for me to stay. I went into my room and closed the door. After the heroes left, there were footsteps coming to my room and a knock on my door.
"What do you want?" I called out.
That apparently was enough of a response to warrant entry into my room, as my father opened the door and walked in, slowly walking over and sitting on the edge of the bed.
He breathed in and out, sighing. "I... Don't really know what to say. I'm not very good at this."
"Oh believe me, I know. Come on, I fought one of the deadliest humans on the planet and was in a coma for two days.
I was all over the news and all I get is a little note and a greeting that honestly seemed more like I was an annoyance than anything. What do I have to do to impress you?!"
He looked blankly at me for a moment before there was a glimmer in his eyes. "Alex... Of course I'm proud of you. I've never been prouder. I saw you live on the television, risking your life to protect those heroes.
I know, I haven't been the most supportive parent in the world, but your mother was able to do that stuff way better than I could, so I left it up to her.
When she died, I had the responsibility to be caring, too, and I failed. Every day it got harder to be the supportive parent you deserved, until I stopped trying.
I'm... I'm sorry. I've said a lot of terrible things to you over the years, none of which are true. You're not an idiot. Your not retarded. You're a hero. Can... You ever forgive me?"
I was shocked, it took me a short while to even respond. I was so stunned. Never in a million years did I expect him to say something so heartfelt. But at the time... I didn't appreciate it.
"You think a little speech makes up for fifteen years? I know it took a lot for you to say that, but an 'I'm sorry' doesn't cut it. I'll forgive you one day, but today is not that day. A bit of time alone will help me process what just happened."
He nodded and got up, leaving the room just as slowly as he came in, leaving without a word. As soon as he left, I started packing as I did what I'd promised, and tried to process what just happened.
It didn't take me more than a few hours to pack everything I had, and after a couple of days and a quick goodbye to my father, I officially left home. My suitcases and duffel bag with my belongings had been taken to my new room for me to unpack later.
The hardest part of packing was actually my computer, and all I had to do for that was dismantle it. At least I'd have an excuse to rebuild a computer, too,, so that would likely occupy my evening. As I walked along the pathway, several people looked at me as I walked by.
Was there something on my face? My suspicions were proven to be wrong as a few people started coming up to me and asking if I was the boy on the news. Then they all thanked me for my service and requested selfies and the likes.
I guess I was popular now. At least until the hype died down. I put on a smile for the photos, and then made my way to campus. I saw the huge red brick buildings, and my class standing outside it. Mr Aizawa was there to give us a brief explanation of the building, but also a few other things.
He called out to Todoroki, Kirishima, Midoriya, Iida, Yaoyorozu, and I. He told us he knew that the six of us were there at the hideout to rescue Bakugo, shocking the rest of the class that we actually went through with it.
He also knew that most of the rest of the class knew about our plan and did nothing to stop it, and that our actions were covered up. However, if All Might hadn't retired afterwards, he'd have expelled us all, except for Hagakure, Jirou, and Bakugo obviously.
We all felt a bit uncomfortable for a while, and our mood dropped a lot. Bakugo noticed this, and dragged Kaminari away briefly before returning with a dopey looking Kaminari who'd just used his quirk. Jirou and Sero laughed, which lightened the mood slightly. Kirishima also apologised to the class for convincing us to do what we did and promised he'd treat us all to a barbecue sometime.
Now that our mood had become sufficiently lightened, Mr Aizawa showed us our new dormitory. Heights Alliance had one dorm per class and Mr Aizawa took us to the Class 1-A dormitory. Mr Aizawa explained that our dorm was separated by gender, the right wing for females and left wing for males.
However, the first floor was common space and contained the dining area, baths, and laundry facilities. We took a look at our new dorm and became excited about living here. Mr Aizawa then explained that our bedrooms were on floors two, three, four and five, every student got their own private bedroom with each room having an air conditioning unit, bathroom, refrigerator and wardrobe.
Mr Aizawa gave us a map of our room allocations and said that our luggage had already been sent into our allocated rooms. Mr Aizawa ended his explanation by telling us to spend the rest of the day unpacking and organising our rooms. Tomorrow, he would explain the operations of our new lifestyle.
The fifth floor had one extra room for the males, to compensate for my being there, and I quickly called dibs on the first floor. I ran into the room furthest from the stairwell closing the door behind me fast and locking it so no one could steal the room from me.
I started unpacking all my belongings, and started decorating my room neatly, glad to have a new space to reorganise things. The room was relatively large, but I wanted a little extra space on my desk so drilled my computer and monitor into the wall after warning Aoyama, and telling him it wouldn't take long.
He didn't mind whatsoever and as promised, I was done within five minutes. I slotted my machine and screen into the brackets on the wall I'd made for them, and they held firmly in place. I plugged everything in and tidied up the cables into a neat little bunch.
My bin was old and rusted, so I threw it out, ironically, and bought a new one from the local store, teleporting most of the way there to save time. I placed my bed in the far right corner and placed my new bin to the side of it, closest to my head against the wall. I put up a large bookshelf next to my wardrobe and used the top of it as a lampstand.
The bookshelf was filled with books divided up by category and series, most of them written by American authors in English, however I kept a few educational Japanese books to help refresh my memory on the written language. I put away my clothes, did my bed, laid out my cream carpet, and flopped onto the bed when it was all done.
Later that night, I started loitering around the ground floor lounge, still trying to get over the fact I was living in a boarding school with all my closest friends and my girlfriend, when Ashido came up to us and suggested we join in on a room judging competition to see who had the best rooms.
We all agreed and the men's rooms were checked out first. Mine being the farthest on the first floor, was checked last on that floor. It was fairly average except for the whole wall-mounted computer thing. Sato asked if I did that myself and was impressed when I said yes. We moved on to the rest of the rooms, except Bakugo's.
I didn't see Tsu, and after inspecting some of the girl's rooms, discovered she was feeling under the weather so she didn't join us. I wondered if she was alright and decided that after the contest was over, I'd go see if she was alright. However, after our fun little contest was over, and cake was consumed by everyone, a small group of us were asked to go outside.
It was the group of us who had gone to rescue Bakugo. Who met us was Uraraka and Tsu. Tsu approached us and actually started crying, which I'd never seen before. She felt horrible for calling our actions villainous, which then made me feel bad after flat out telling her she was wrong to do so.
We all apologised to Tsu for making her and the rest of the class worry about us, and I hugged her tightly, not caring if it made us look suspicious together, as we'd still not told anyone about our relationship. We went back inside, tensions starting to lift, as we enjoyed ourselves. I then got an idea.
"Hey guys, I know Kirishima is gonna be hosting a barbecue at some point, but how about in a week or so after our schedules are all sorted out, we have a movie night? All of us could vote on a few movies to watch and hang out together either down here or in one of our rooms, or even a cinema!"
Ashido and Hagakure agreed immediately, saying it was a great idea, while Todoroki and Bakugo didn't seem to be interested. Kirishima urged Bakugo to join us, to which he then gave in and agreed, however, Todoroki was having none of it and decided the best use of his time was to train and study. Fair enough.
Pretty much everyone else was really interested in the majority of us getting to spend more time together and agreed to try and make arrangements. After we all had our meals in our rooms, it was lights out, and we went to sleep. I woke up a few hours later to the sound of my phone vibrating on the wooden bookshelf surface. I rolled over and picked it up, seeing I had a text from Tsu.
Tsu: Hey, you awake?
Me: I am now.
Tsu: Sorry...
Me: It's ok! What's up?
Tsu: Uhm... Is it ok if I come over to your room for a minute...?
Me: Oh? Uh, sure, of course!
She read the message, and within a few moments there was a quiet knock on my door. I jumped out of my bed and walked over in pyjamas and opened the door. She was also in loosely fitting pyjamas, and she was looking down until I opened the door. She looked at her fingers and touched them together before asking if she could come in.
I stepped aside and let her in, closing the door behind her. "What's up?" I asked.
She took a moment to respond before saying, "I had a nightmare. I... It was about you. A-And that villain. I dreamed that he didn't put you to sleep, b-but that he killed you. It was so scary, it was horrible, it looked so, so real... I just had to see you and know you were alright."
I looked at her sympathetically and hugged her, whispering, "Do you want to stay here? Just for tonight?"
She nodded, and after I climbed into bed, and threw the covers back for her to get in beside me. I leaned forward and pulled the covers over us, and I lay down beside her, wrapping my arms around her and kissing the side of her face, whispering.
"I'm never going anywhere as long as I have you to look forward to."
We both fell asleep, with her in my arms.
[A/N: I've wanted to write about this chapter for absolutely ages, and we're finally here! Both the confrontation between Alex and his father, and the cute cuddling scene! I hope you all like it as much as I did lol. We got some big things coming up, the fate of Alpha, the Provisional License Exam, meeting the Big Three, and another new villain! See you Thursday!]