Chapter Text
Y/N wasn't sure just how she had managed to survive the final exams of her hero course without going insane. Sure, it wasn't a course as demanding as U.A. or some of those high class high schools that specifically focussed on making people heroes, but that didn't mean that it wasn't hard anywhere else. Especially when it was about someone like her, who was just... really good at all this shit. She didn't want to brag or anything, but as a matter of fact she had been flying through the first and second year of the hero course without much effort, but all of that bit her in the ass once she got to her third year. She had completely miscalculated some things.
Things had gotten a lot harder in the third year and the big problem was that she had been doing so good that everyone had certain expectations of her. And she had certain expectations of herself as well. So she really just put an immense amount of pressure on herself and it paid. She did incredibly well, she finished top of her class and she made it look like she did it with ease. But now that she was completely done with school she found that she was completely exhausted. And that exhaustion showed whenever she hung out with her friends or tried doing anything remotely fun. Slowly, but surely, Y/N was starting to think she might be getting depressed.
And it wasn't just her that was noticing it. Her friends from school were noticing it, too. A lot of them had signed up for college, some had found jobs in hero agencies. Y/N had been doing fuckall. She just didn't feel up to doing anything. Instead she was lying in bed wondering whether she was wasting her life, wasting her potential and why she couldn't have just been really bad at the hero thing and gone into... farming or something like that. Anything.
She was isolating herself from her friends and from her family until her mother one day had called an end to it and had told her in not so unclear terms that she would either go out for some food with her classmates this evening or she would be kicked out of the house and be forced to find a job or do anything to become a productive member of society. And since going out for "food" (her mother of course wasn't aware that they'd be sneaking into some bar with a fake ID and get drunk) was the way of less resistance, that was what Y/N was going with.
And now here she was, feeling miserable among all her friends that were chatting as if everything was normal, but that were looking at her with this odd worry in their eyes while she was staring into the void, not sure what the hell she was supposed to do with the remainder of her life. What was even worse was that there was so much left of it and Y/N had no clue what the hell she wanted to do. She felt like she had spent all the energy she had on that last year of high school and now she just didn't have anything left for the rest of her life.
"Okay, since no one else is willing to say it, I'll bring it up. Y/N, what the actual hell is wrong with you? You're not yourself." a girl with fiery red hair asked. Her name was Akiko Suzuki and she and Y/N had been hanging out almost every single day back in high school. But now it all just seemed meaningless. Akiko had gone off to college and was working in a hero agency part-time. She wasn't even doing hero work, she was working on the front desk. What a waste of talent.
"There's nothing wrong with me." Y/N protested. She could see her other friends around her looking at each other with shocked expressions on their faces. Apparently she had said something out of pocket. Oops.
"Y/N... you know, back in high school you were always kind of like some sort of eternal candle. Like you were just always shining, shining, shining and burning and it was like nothing could stop you. And now you're just... not."
"We're all worried about you."
"Your family is worried about you."
Y/N looked at all her friends, one after the other, a weirded out expression on her face. Why were they suddenly talking to her about feelings? They had never talked about feelings with her. What the hell were they trying to achieve? Y/N sat up straight, confusion still plainly visible in her eyes.
"Is this... is this some sort of intervention?" she asked, raising her eyebrow at her group of friends. They all looked at each other and answered at the same time, but slightly out of sync.
"Yes."
"No."
"Not exactly."
Y/N sighed and shook her head. So this was an intervention. Great. Why did she deserve this? She wondered whether her mother had been in on this all this time - thinking about it, she probably had instigated it. Fuck that. Y/N didn't want to do anything, she just wanted to lie in bed and do nothing all day. It was the only thing she was motivated for. She wanted to be a proper waster.
"Okay, what the actual fuck do you want from me?" she wanted to know. Akiko sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.
"Look, Y/N... you're not the same anymore. We all looked up to you, but... you're not the same brightly shining candle anymore and we just want to know what happened." she said to her.
"Well, maybe I just burnt out, okay? And also, who would be stupid enough to look up to me?" Y/N replied.
"Well, we did, okay? You were doing so great, you were going places and now you've just been lying around, doing nothing for almost a year. Y/N, you're 18, you're going to be 19 later this year and you're not doing anything. I get wanting to take some time out, especially after you pushed yourself this hard, but you have to get up and do things at some point. Isn't there anything you'd like to do with your life?" Akiko wanted to know. Y/N sighed, but then a smile started spreading over her face. There was in fact something she had regretted not doing after the school year was over.
"You know what I'd like? Repeat my last year of school but just completely waste it. See how much it takes for me to get kicked out. Be an absolute fucking nightmare and have a good time doing it. That's what I'd like to do. Not like someone who was going places. I hated that everyone expected me to go places. It was really annoying. But unfortunately I missed that chance." she answered.
"Well, I mean... you can still do it." Kenta Yamaji piped up.
"How?"
"You definitely still pass as 17. You can just enrol again and do another year. Like, under a different name or something."
"Everyone here knows me, you dumbass. This isn't exactly the biggest city, you know?" Y/N replied. Kenta was usually full of good ideas, but today it seemed like he was lacking. And by good ideas, Y/N meant objectively bad ideas that would probably not end well, but would still be a lot of fun.
"Well, I didn't say that you had to enrol here. Of course you shouldn't enrol here, that would be really dumb. But I mean... surely there is a place that you always just really wanted to fuck up, right?" Kenta said. Y/N thought for a second, but there was really only one place that came to mind immediately. And that probably wouldn't be a good idea, because it probably wouldn't work, but...
"There is. There is a place I'd really like to see... but it's impossible. We'd have to fake so many documents and the student fees are outrageous... there's no way in hell I can pay for all that. Just getting fake IDs almost bankrupted all of us last year, but I'd need a whole bunch of fake documents." she answered.
"What place are you thinking of?" Kumiko chimed in. Honestly, how Kumiko ended up with the rest of the group was a mystery to Y/N, because she was the sweetest girl in existence and that just wasn't the vibe of Y/N's friend group. But she seemed to be getting along well with everyone.
"U.A." Y/N said matter-of-factly.
"No way! I mean, you're good, but... do you really think you'd get in?" Kumiko asked. Y/N rolled her eyes and grinned.
"Yeah, of course I'd get in. I could have gotten in much sooner if I wanted to, I just didn't see the point. But now it might be fun. If you can manage to get the money together to make it happen, I'll do it." Y/N told them. She wasn't really sure whether she actually wanted to do this. It just seemed like a lot of hassle and she wasn't really in the mood to do anything, let alone causing problems on purpose. But she was 98% sure that they wouldn't be able to pull it off.
"We can probably get you in there for one semester. Your mother is financing us to get you to do something - anything - so that could actually work." Kenta replied. Y/N's eyes widened. Of fucking course. She hadn't thought her mother would actually get involved in any of this, that's where she went wrong. Damn it.
"Sounds fun, but nah. What do I get out of it?" she wanted to know. Akiko rolled her eyes at her.
"Look, let's make it a bet. I don't think you can get in, so the first half of the bet will be about that. 10 000 Yen." she suggested.
"And I bet that you're going to enjoy it and that you're too much of a good girl to get kicked out on purpose during the first semester, so I bet 10 000 Yen that you won't manage to get kicked out before the first semester ends. What do you think?" Kenta asked her. Y/N wasn't really sure about not wanting to do this anymore. She'd get to have a wild high school experience and she'd get her mother off her back and she'd get the validation of making it into U.A. Less than one semester couldn't be so bad. And she'd definitely manage to get the money on top of that. She smiled at them.
"Sounds like we have a deal..."