Jin stared at the ceiling of the small studio apartment he and his mother called home from the couch against the right wall, watching the ceiling fan blades spin, round, round, and round. He felt dejected, embarrassed, and disappointed in himself while waiting for the news to come. His pace had slowed down so much towards the end of the exam he had convinced himself he'd flunk out. "I should've applied to Shiketsu" he thought, his mind filled with regrets and hindsight with no path forward open yet.
He averted his gaze to a picture of him and his parents on the wall to his left, the passing glance at the smiling faces causing his disappointment and regret to soar even higher, despite being stuck in the cage of an apartment. His chance to be above it all, to achieve what his father had, disappeared like a bird flying into the sun and not appearing on the other side after the exam. Jin thought about something his father would often say to him when he was still alive. Not knowing is Buddha, bliss, but all it was doing now was tearing him up inside.
He stared to his right now, at the window, but more specifically his reflection. The bot had left him with a scar on his left cheek, and whilst one wouldn't call it disfiguring, it certainly was unpleasant. However, in Jin's mind, this wasn't the case. It was a garish scar of his failure, and whilst his father always said when you are knocked down 7 times to stand up 8, he wasn't sure this was something he could simply "stand up" from.
He looked back up at the rotating fan for a moment before sitting up and grabbing the latest issue of his favorite Sci-fi manga magazine off the crowded coffee table, trying to drown out the churning in his gut with his favorite weekly chapters. Though, a few pages into his distraction the churning feeling in his stomach became equivalent to an alligator's death roll. Jin swung himself off the couch and took small nervous steps to the door and carefully creaked it open.
He looked forward with anxiety to see nothing and gave a relenting sigh. As he was closing the door however he noticed a letter stamped with a UA wax seal. Jin let out a sigh of relief, opened the door again, and squatted down to pick up the letter. He stood up and closed the door with a weak slam and practically flew backward on the couch examining the letter with his left hand for a moment and looking at the fan blades whirling overhead once more. He lazily threw the letter on top of the manga magazine on the coffee table and sat up. Taking one last sigh he broke the seal and opened the letter, with a small gray circle immediately tumbling onto the coffee table.
"Hello!" A panting Allmight yelled as a hologram popped out of the gray device startling Nakamura. "Ok you're last on the list for some reason so let's run through this really quickly," He said in a flash, clearly tired and speeding through it. "As you may or may know I will be joining UA's staff this upcoming year and that's very exciting, and it's good for you because you will also be attending UA, so make sure you go PLUS ULTRA!" Allmight exclaimed with a half-hearted yell and taking a breath before saying "Ok say you in a few months Jin Nakamura," with the hologram suddenly cutting afterward.
Jin looked at the family picture across the room from him and the edges of his mouth peaked up a little bit, just for a moment.