"Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't so."
― Lemony Snicket, The Blank Book
-ooo-
DAY THREE
-continued-
The rain continued to fall.
It had been falling for a long time and no time at all.
But this was not how his story began.
When he'd been young, no more than four or five, he'd been caught out in a storm.
He didn't remember much about it and very little about what happened before.
He'd been caught in the storm because he'd found a puppy trapped in a drain and had stayed behind to fish it out.
This is what he remembers:
- It had taken a really, really long time.
- It was a tiny pale thing with damp, matted fur.
- He'd clutched it tight against his chest, sheltering it as best he could from the bitter fall of rain.
- It had shivered against him as he ran for home.
- It had been very cold that day.
- He'd been shivering too.
It had been cold and wet and the wind had been blowing hard enough that it would have whipped his hair and clothes around him if they hadn't already been soaked through, made heavy with dirt and filthy water, and plastered against his skin.
This is what he remembers:
- He'd run as fast as he could, but he'd always been a clumsy child.
- He'd slipped a few times, dashing his knees painfully against the rough sidewalk, but he hadn't ever quite fallen all the way down.
- He'd managed to keep his tight grip on the puppy the whole time, so he hadn't really minded too much.
- His skinned knees ached, but they would heal.
- The rain was cold and the wind was colder, but eventually he'd stopped shivering.
A few cars had driven past him as he ran, most were going far too fast on drowning roads, and once or twice he'd thought he might be washed away as they sent waves of water spilling over him.
Still, somehow, he always managed to keep his feet, to emerge gasping on the other side relatively unscathed.
He had gotten all the way home and collapsed across the shelter of the front porch before he'd realized the puppy had stopped shivering at some point.
This is what he remembers:
- He'd wondered if it had ever really been alive at all.
- He sat shivering on the dark porch with the limp body clutched is lap and waited for someone to come and let him in.
- No one had.
He woke up in the hospital.
This is what he knows:
- A week had passed.
- Maybe more.
- He couldn't remember.
- That part wasn't particularly important.
- He was lucky to be alive.
- Or that was what they had told him anyway.
People at the hospital made a point of telling him that they were sorry about his dog.
Constantly.
Every day it seemed someone new had been knocking on his door and poking their head into the room to tell him how sorry they were about his dog.
This is what he knows:
- He had spent a lot of time wondering about why that was.
- Whether there was some sort of mandate in place that forced them to do so.
- Or if they just really liked dogs.
- Or if they got gold stars for every time they offered the boy in room 213 their sympathies.
- Or if it was actually some sort of sly, subtle form of bullying.
- Or if maybe they were just curious how long he would take it before he started throwing things at them.
- He had never actually thrown anything at them.
- He had also never stopped forcing a smile and thanking them for their kindness whenever it was offered.
- He had, however, eventually stopped bothering to tell them that it wasn't his dog.
- No one had seemed to hear him anyway.
When he'd first woken up they'd given him jello.
This is what he knows:
- The jello had been red and tasted like cough syrup.
- The woman who had brought him the jello had sat beside his bed as he ate, staring at him expectantly.
- When he'd finished eating, she'd asked him dozens of questions.
- He hadn't known the answers to most of them.
- In the days that followed, lots of other people had come to his room and asked him those same questions again and again.
- He's still not sure what they had expected him to say differently.
- He still doesn't think that one cup of cough syrup jello was fair compensation for all the bother.
"What's your name, sweetie? The people whose house you collapsed at didn't know so we haven't been able to call anyone for you."
"Oh," he'd replied, soft and discomforted. "Um. Hajime."
"No, your family name, dear."
"Oh," he'd answered again, but this time it was a lie that had tripped off his tongue. "I don't know."
The woman had looked both sad and pained, but she'd patted his arm in what he thought was meant to be a comforting manner. "Don't worry, dear, I'm sure your parents will come for you."
This is what he knows:
- They hadn't.
- He'd known they wouldn't.
- He'd always been a troublesome child.
- That they'd probably just forgotten him.
- Whoever they were.
- Just like he'd forgotten about them.
He'd recovered and been transferred to a place filled with other children, not quite like him, but close enough. They slept in small cramped rooms and ate bland food and were mostly left to their own devices.
It was a cheerful, perfectly benign sort of neglect.
Eventually a couple came and took him home with them.
This is what he knows:
- They were not his parents, but they wanted to be.
- Or at least they wanted a son and that was good enough.
- A child that was young, but not too young.
- They hadn't wanted the hassle of a baby.
- Too much work.
- They lived in a big house on a big hill in the middle of town.
- But they did not live there forever.
- Or even for very long.
- The next house had been yellow and small.
- The one after that was blue and far too large.
- The next house was green and a medium size with a tidy yard, a yellow mailbox and a maple tree out front.
- The next was white with brown shutters and doors that slid back and forth throughout with a soft whoosh and snapped shut with a quiet click-clack.
- The next was larger than all the rest; a sprawling monster of a house with big windows and a brass doorknocker with a scary face.
On and on it went, a dozen different houses in a dozen different places in less than half as many years.
Each day was much as the last, only the view changed.
And he stayed much the same throughout.
He woke and slept and woke again.
Everything about his life seemed grey, featureless.
They'd moved constantly and eventually he'd learned that forming attachments came at a price, the price of losing, of forgetting. What seemed important one day might mean nothing the next. Friends were pleasant, but never something he longed for, never something he couldn't do without. He lingered on the idea when he'd been small, but time and experience had taught him how little it mattered over and over again.
They'd forget him soon enough and he'd forget them and that would be the end of it, come what may.
In the end, he'd concluded, it was probably because he wasn't actually a terribly memorable person.
He was... ordinary.
Boring.
He remembered one of his parents' friends saying so once at a dinner party.
"Well, he's a boring little guy, isn't he?"
"He's quiet at least," his father had replied, ruffling his hair before sending him off to get them more of long-necked bottles from the pantry.
He'd heard that assessment again in the unenthusiastic response of childhood playmates, the children of his parents' friends. Heard it over and over again in the voices of sympathetic mothers who asked 'who?' in response to his name when he called the few friends he'd thought he'd made over the years.
It was the same everywhere they went.
Again and again.
He was… ordinary.
Boring.
Unremarkable.
Eminently forgettable.
Eventually it occurred to him that ordinary people were not so very different from one another at all, that they might in fact be wholly interchangeable. That Hinata Hajime, being as ordinary and unremarkable as they came, would almost certainly never be special to anyone.
It was the sort of idea that festered, rotted away bits and pieces of who he thought he was, of who he thought he should be until he could barely look at himself in the mirror to fix his hair in the morning. He began keeping it short, tidy, to avoid having to spend too long, because he knew his face, his body, his mind, his soul were no different, no more interesting than any other.
He was boring.
He was just like all the rest.
He had no doubts about that, none at all.
But he wasn't content with his lot in life.
He was nine when he first heard about it.
That school.
That place that had been specifically reserved for the extraordinary, the talented; a special place reserved for only the most special people.
For those precious few who were the very best the world had to offer, those who inspired the whole of the world to hope, to dream, to aspire towards a horizon they would never glimpse through their own efforts, towards a goal they could never reach, towards a tomorrow far beyond the imaginings of the ordinary.
And from that moment, it was all he wanted.
The world was flat and grey, featureless, boring, but that place... that place was beautiful.
How could it be anything else?
That place was everything he had ever dreamed of, he couldn't imagine a life in which he did not attend.
If he could be accepted there, if he could be special... he'd never be forgotten, he'd be...
He'd be...
"It is a very special school isn't it, darling?"
"It is. Even being a student in the reserve program has a degree of merit. It's possible that even you might be able to excel in such a program and you certainly wouldn't have to tell them you were in the reserve program when you eventually apply for university. Why I'm quite certain that the name alone would be enough to open doors that would otherwise be closed to you. Why you could be anything, couldn't you? Anything at all."
Yes, anything... Anything, but that, anything but the one thing he most wanted to be anything but special.
Talented.
Unique.
Memorable.
Still... he could hope it would be better there at least.
That he would be better there.
That there he would finally be able to find a place he could belong, a place where he fit.
It didn't matter if he wasn't talented.
If it was there, if it was at Hope's Peak, maybe he could find a way to change himself.
To become someone... better.
Either way it was the most he could do and he couldn't help admiring them, those extraordinary people who were nothing at all like him.
Those talented people who had the stars at their fingertips, those who were gifted in ways he never would be.
Nurse, Traditional Dancer, Photographer, Mechanic… the list went on and on.
They all seemed so extraordinary.
Well.
Most of them seemed extraordinary, at any rate.
He worried at the end of his pen as he looked over this year's list of extraordinary people, as his gaze lingered on the puff of pale hair and the apologetic smile of Komaeda Nagito.
Lucky student?
How was luck a talent?
That night he fell asleep dreaming about the possibility of acceptance, the hope of a brighter future.
His name was Hinata Hajime.
And this was not how his story began.
But it was, more or less, how it continued.
END NOTES:
This (and the chapters that follow) are part of one long narrative piece, so if they don't make a tremendous amount of sense on their own, that's why. Hopefully, you'll stick with me until the end. Also, I'll be updating with new chapters ever day this week, so please keep that in mind so you can find the proper place. Thanks for reading.