Hey sorry for the wait, back with another chapter.
Oh heads up I'm going to be serving in the army soon, in October.
Hopefully I would complete the story by then, if not then chapter update will take way longer.
And goodness this one was so hard, and it's very dialogue heavy, a little warning first.
Apologies if I missed out any grammar error.
Please enjoy and review.
Chapter 36: Angry in your bones
The notion that a villain had been so close to him this whole time was clouding his mind, it could have been anybody, and she still wanted Hayama Hayato.
"It would make sense wouldn't it? How else did she get in without raising any alarm? She probably just want Hayama for herself, if she's not even kidnapping him silently for ransom." Hachiman thought as he put his school shirt jacket on. "Who the hell is it?"
"Hikigaya." Shizuka called him, breaking him out of his thoughts.
"We've not had our counselling session yet." Shizuka said.
Inside Hachiman groaned tiredly. "Seriously? Now?"
"Ok?" He said instead.
Shizuka sat on the seat opposite Hachiman whom was sitting on the bed. The sunlight's orange ray shined through the window.
"Are you alright?" Shizuka started with a question.
"With what?" Hachiman asked.
"Everything that's been happening."
Hachiman's eyes drifted to the side. "I guess. Other than the fact that I am here, I'm fine."
His voice was unconvincing however, but Shizuka assumed it was the gunshot. She hoped that maybe talking about another issue would keep his mind out of the wound.
"Alright then I want to talk to you about this." Shizuka adjusted herself on the seat. Hachiman turned to her ready for whatever lecture she planned to give him.
"Be it the summer camp, the Sagami case, you did pretty good considering the results." Shizuka made another sigh, "But I cannot give any praise at all."
Hachiman turned his head away while rolling his eyes. "I'm not looking for praise."
He felt her hand his cheek turning his face to her.
"Hikigaya." Shizuka's voice had empathy and concern in it, "Helping someone out is not a justifiable reason for you getting hurt."
"This doesn't break me." Hachiman remembered what he told himself on the school roof.
Hachiman pulled his head away from her touch, "It's not like I'm actually getting hurt from those things."
"It may be true that you are used to pain. There are people who'd be hurt watching you get hurt." Shizuka continued, "You'd do well to realise that soon."
Hachiman became rigid inside reflecting on what she had just said, and it was not sitting well with him.
No one had ever seen him in the act of getting hurt, no one had truly seen Hachiman but perhaps more prominently, the Huntsman getting hurt. But in those situations Shizuka had mentioned, there were no other options delivered onto the table.
There was no time to think of something better for Tsurumi, but the animosity had stopped because Hachiman had put fear into the students whom were treating her badly. And for Minami's case, Minami's request was to grow as a person. Yukino and Shizuka had specifically said they needed Minami to do the closing ceremony, and she did not move no matter what her friends or Hayato said.
And telling Hachiman that helping someone was not a reason to hurt himself did not work on him when he thought back on every single time he ventured out as the Huntsman. He put himself in danger in protect people. And if he did not, people would have been hurt or die.
He did what he did for the right reasons.
He realised that while she may be important to him, she knew nothing of what he truly is. Only what she perceived him to be, just a loner student with rotten personality and eyes.
While she may not be aware of anything, hearing what Shizuka said, to him felt like a diminishment to all his efforts, both Hachiman and Huntsman.
And that offended him.
"You're saying that I shouldn't bother?" Hachiman asked.
Shizuka shook her head. "No Hikigaya. Look you're a nice guy. And I may not look it, but I'm rather prone to favouritism."
"And you're supposed to be a teacher?"
"My policy is to praise students to help them grow. But that doesn't mean I don't give the needed lectures. And Hikigaya, if you stick to your ways you won't be able to help somebody when you most want to."
"Example." Hachiman said.
Shizuka was silent for a second, stuck on that question.
Before she could speak however Hachiman cut in, "Nah scratch that. Let me ask, do you say the same thing to Captain Yin?"
"W-What? What do you mean?" Shizuka was not expecting this.
"You say helping someone is not justifiable reason to get yourself hurt. Do you say that to Captain Yin, a cop, your cousin who have may have to get hurt and risk her life to help people? Do you say the same thing?" Hachiman leaned forward on his seat on the bed.
"She's a police officer Hikigaya, you're still a student. It's not the same." Shizuka pointed out, this was definitely not the counselling session she was expecting, but she will continue if it gets Hachiman talking, to open up.
"You keep telling me that I'm just a student, is not going to fly with me but whatever. All those cases you've pointed out, you saying I should have not have helped?" Hachiman asked.
"Hikigaya you're not listening, you should not get yourself hurt to help others, because there are people who will hurt by seeing it." Shizuka stressed again.
"Did anyone really see it then?" He frowned at her. Now Hachiman's mouth was scowling. "And what other way was there then?"
"You could have talked to them better." Shizuka suggested.
"The service club tried that and that didn't work. So I had to do what I did." Hachiman said, his tone was slowly getting colder. "Hiratsuka-sensei, you say that I should not get myself hurt to help people."
Hachiman looked at her with tense eyes, "Are you saying that sacrifices are meaningless? Just because someone else don't like it?"
Shizuka's jaw hanged a little, eyes widened a bit.
"Sensei, take a look at today. I saved you from the criminal, and this happened." Hachiman pointed at his wounded arm. "I got hurt, it didn't end well for me, and let me guess you don't like it right? But you're alive. That's more important."
Shizuka looked at him stupefied.
"What if this," He pointed at his injury again, "Was on you? Or worse."
She stared the bandaged arm, imagining if she got it instead.
"It has to be me because I can't let it be you or…whoever else that could get it." Hachiman then crossed his arms, "So you tell me that protecting you and Hayama was not a justifiable reason that I got hurt? At first you were thankful and now you're saying otherwise?"
"Hikigaya. You're taking this to the extreme." Shizuka's voice gotten a stern, not that Hachiman would back down from that. "Hikigaya, I'm not talking about those kind of situations. I'm not talking about sacrifices. I'm talking about you continuously making yourself the scapegoat and victim in school."
Hachiman drew a long breath. He said apathetically and flat. "Because what? The student body won't like me? Oh no what a nightmare."
"What do you mean?" Shizuka looked confused, then turned annoyed, "It doesn't matter to you? Because you think it won't last?"
Hachiman did not answer, leaving it to silence.
There was a short pause so that both could calm down. Shizuka decided to ask, "Hikigaya, what do you think of the Service Club?"
"A waste of time." Hachiman thought. "A club that I have to go to because it would help me apparently, and Yukinoshita and I could help each other out so to say." Hachiman said instead.
"How are you with Yukinoshita and Yuigahama?" She asked.
"They're fine, they just don't know what I really am." Hachiman thought.
"They're ok I guess, don't know how they're dealing with that request in that Kyoto trip." He said instead.
"And do you think this club is helping you?" Shizuka asked.
"You tell me." Hachiman shrugged.
"Hikigaya. First I want you to understand that I'm just trying to help you, ok? So that it's worth it for you." Shizuka said.
He tilted his head down, he knew her concern regardless. Hachiman had a husky whisper, "I know."
"Back to the question. I think there's improvement." Shizuka said. "But there's still those pointers earlier, it's still showing your rottenness."
"Ok." Hachiman nodded, but his eyes also looked to the side aloof. He was not going to bother arguing anymore, since she did not really know much to him.
Seeing his eyes, Shizuka's mouth frowned a little at the corner.
"Are you thinking that I'm missing something? Or that I'm not understanding something?" She asked him.
"No." Hachiman said, but Shizuka was not convinced.
"The way your face is now says otherwise." Shizuka crossed her arms.
Hachiman did not answer but he turned to look her in the eye. "If you say so."
"Hikigaya, I have asked this multiple times." Shizuka said. "That you might share one day. I can only guess that something happened."
Hachiman remained silent.
"I can only just say what I understand so far. And what I understand at first is that while your personality is rotten, you still help people." She said, but then she remembered she saw something shocking when he turned up sick, the eyes of a pained and raged cornered predator.
"But then you are also angry with something." Shizuka added.
Hachiman's eyes looking at the side made a slow blink and he eyed her again. That slow blink showed Shizuka that he was getting really guarded with this talk.
It had almost become frustrating to Shizuka at this point, Hachiman was not opening to anyone at all. But she still kept in control.
"Is there a reason why you can't or won't tell me? Do you think it shows weakness? It doesn't. It helps me, help you. And how? Talking about it is the first step."
Hachiman was still keeping silent and his guard up, but his eyes showed he was thinking deeply.
"Tell her? What can she understand?"
Hachiman was considering the options. He was not going to tell her what he truly is. But if she needed to know something, then perhaps she could know what had made him…worse than a loner student with a lousy personality and eyes.
"I can't tell you." Hachiman said, "But if you need to know, maybe I can show you."
Shizuka looked stunned hearing, that Hachiman was finally giving way.
"Show me what?" Shizuka leaned forward on her seat.
The door suddenly opened, and the two stood up to see who came into the room.
"Hey kid," Etsudo said, "I've been trying to reach your folks." She held up her phone.
"But they're not picking up." Etusdo said.
"Never mind, I'll text them that I'll be home late." Hachiman said to her.
"Kid, they need to know what happened. We still need to inform them." Etsudo said.
"Ok but I want to leave already." Hachiman went for the door. "Hiratsuka-sensei."
"Kid you're seriously going out in that state?" She pointed at his arm.
Shizuka then said, "Etsudo, it's important."
Etsudo contemplated for a moment, before she got out her name card and handed it to him.
"Call me when you get home and when your parents know about your arm. I want to make sure they know." The captain instructed the teen.
"Okay." He accepted her name card, and greeted her goodbye.
As he was walking down the corridor, Shizuka and her cousin stood side by side.
"What's going on?" Captain Yin asked her cousin.
"He agreed to tell me more so I could help him with his guidance counselling." Shizuka said, a hopeful look on her face.
"Kid's opening up?"
"Yeah, he said he wants to show me something."
"What?"
"I don't know. Maybe a playground where he got picked on when he was younger, or his middle school." Shizuka shrugged. "Or an arcade or shopping mall where people laughed at him for something."
"Or it's something else." Captain Yin suggested.
"I'll have to follow him and see." Shizuka said, "And you understand that I can't tell you."
"Wasn't interested in knowing." Captain Yin shook her head.
"I'll see you soon." Shizuka bid her farewell.
"We'll nail that asshole hitting the school." Etsudo said her final piece.
Leaving the hospital Hachiman was moving down the streets with cold steeled face, and his shoulders tense with austerity.
Shizuka followed behind him, wondering where he was taking her.
She knew the path they were on was not to any playground that she knew of, or shopping mall. The streets were getting dimmer on where they were going. They were not in any school areas that she was aware of.
"Oi Hikigaya where are you taking me?" Shizuka asked him, caution was stirring in her a little for she was not expecting this, going somewhere a high school kid would not really go to.
"Where I could show you." Hachiman answered, his voice was not revealing any emotion. Now Shizuka getting confused.
They passed by a couple of convenience stores that had closed early for unexplained reasons. Hachiman turned his head, seeing the pawnshop he went past it as well.
He made a turn and went in, into the alley. Shizuka looked up to the building roofs, perplexed as to what this place was. She finally went in following Hachiman.
The two walked in further into the alley. Until Hachiman stopped at what appeared to be a crossroad. A soft whistle of a wind blew through the alley.
"What is this Hachiman?" Shizuka looked around the glim surroundings.
"Hiratsuka-sensei." Hachiman said. "You know anything about this place?"
"Nothing." She answered.
His voice suddenly an icy hostility. "Sensei you tell anyone about this, I swear to God-"
"Nothing leaves here." Shizuka assured him, "I promise you that."
Hachiman turned around and got out his phone, showing her a webpage.
"Three years ago, there was a crime that has taken place here. Smugglers who were bringing in drugs and guns here, to this alley." Hachiman showed her the news webpage on his phone.
Shizuka read the news page, telling her about the men from local gangs, Black Mask's False Face Society, the drugs, the weapons, and the Batman taking them all down.
"A crime occurred in this alley." Hachiman said. "This Crime Alley."
"And there were no witnesses?" Shizuka asked and handed the phone back to him.
"There was one." He grimly said.
His silence after that told her who that witness was.
"Hikigaya what happened?" Shizuka took a step forward.
"I was trying to head back after getting a drink from a convenience store, cutting through here. But instead I stumbled upon those smugglers, they spotted me and caught me. 'Waste him and put him in the van' they said. And one put a gun on my head."
Shizuka's eyes turned shocked.
Hachiman was standing on the exact same spot where he had a gun on his head three years ago. "Just before he shot me in the head, the Batman came. He's real, he saved me from that incident."
Hachiman had given his story.
"I doubt that you or any high schooler would know what it's like to have a gun on your head." Hachiman pointed two fingers on Shizuka's forehead. "To have death right on your face so fast, just dead and gone with no one knowing."
Hachiman then said, "I don't know if you know what's it is like. To be angry down to the soul, to be angry in your bones."
Shizuka was about to protest, but in truth she never had anything that would send anger in so deeply. She never had anger this deep rooted like.
"When these things happen to you, and then some," Hachiman pulled his hand away from her. "You see more things."
Shizuka was about to speak but Hachiman cut her off.
"Sorry sensei but I'm not done." Hachiman said, "You once said that I don't know what the world out there is like. I'll tell you what I've seen so far on what the world out there like."
Hachiman stood in front of Shizuka face to face.
He said, "In the real world people die. Like I nearly did."
His mind flashed back to the Killer Croc killing innocent people with no one taking action.
"People being cruel to each other, because they can." He said.
He thought on the Firefly street racer and the venom user.
"People will do any terrible thing to make a buck."
His mind went back to the crime three years ago, the animal smugglers in the port, and the Man-Owl who wanted to kill the Huntsman for a cut.
"And someone would do horrid things with no logic nor care."
Lady Comedy.
Hachiman then said, "So when you tell me that I should be bothered with school matters, I couldn't give a damn when there are worse things to be concerned of than just trivial school matters of students not liking me because I did something. I don't give a shit. School gossip, school crushes, school drama. It's all white noise. Do you think getting hated in school is anything compared to this place?"
Shizuka's jaws hanged down a little.
"To me, what's truly important is keeping the people around me safe, because I wasn't back then. So when you tell me that helping someone was not a justifiable reason to get hurt, I'd say better me than you. If it's for the people around me, that's what matters." Hachiman explained.
It took a good moment for Shizuka to take in what he said, knowing now that Hachiman would never be burdened by trivial school matters, because his heart was already burdened by such a more horrid pain.
"I've shown you already sensei, you can take away whatever you want from this. I need to go back already." Hachiman said moving past her.
"Hikigaya." She stopped him and turned, "I don't have the answer to your problem right now, but just remember."
She said, "Whatever choices you make and action you take. Make sure it's worth it, and you don't regret it."
Hachiman remained silent to that, he turned to walk away with Shizuka following behind him.
"Worth it? No regret?"
Hope you've enjoyed it, hope to see you in the next chapter.