He paces his room the next morning. He's already dressed and ready to get to school. There's no reason to miss school. Nothing changed. This is normal.

He had already been doing this his whole life. The only difference was that now everyone knew.

Yeah, okay.

He's going to school.

He hadn't dared look at his messages yesterday. Or last night when he stayed up the entire time wondering who knew and what they were thinking. And he didn't check again this morning when he finally decided to get up.

Kaminari walks downstairs without his backpack since he left it at school.

He left so many people waiting on him and it's all his fault that this got out.

If he had been more careful and cleaned up thoroughly then Mineta would never have seen the blood and gotten to the conclusion that his dad was-

Oh god.

His dad.

His mom.

Fuck.

His breath catches in his throat, but he keeps walking, forcing himself to act normal.

In the living room is his mom.

Dinner from last night was set aside and she'd made breakfast.

Kaminari wasn't hungry, though.

"Hey, can you take me to school? I'll get there late either way so it's fine if you don't want to," Kaminari says, shoving his hands in his pockets.

He fiddles with the phone in his pocket, clicking the volume button to distract himself.

His mom looks at him and nods. "Yeah, I'll drive you."

She's been crying. Her eyes are red and puffy, and even now, there are still tears falling from her eyes.

Kaminari feels nothing but guilt. He wants to apologize a million times over.

I'm sorry.

God it's right there. He should just say it.

His mom grabs the car keys and they head outside, neither one of them saying a word.

The car drive is really not even a whole ten minutes but the silence makes Kaminari feel like it's been hours. The entire time he just bit the inside of his cheek as he mustered up the courage to say he was sorry.

Once they got outside the gates, Yukako stopped the car and Kaminari unbuckled his seatbelt.

"Bye, Ma," he says quietly and then gives his mom a quick peck on the cheek before he psyched himself out of doing it because he was probably disgusting to his mom now.

He gets out quickly before his mom can day anything and closes the door without looking at her.

Kaminari walks quickly to the dorms.

It's about five minutes until homeroom, so he'll be late, but he's pretty sure one of his friends took his stuff back to his room.

He still has to convince himself to go and get all of his nerves out.

Once he's in his room, thankfully not running into anyone cause they were at school, he sees his backpack on his bed.

It doesn't look like it was thrown.

He goes over to where it is on the bed and grabs the pillow next to it instead of the backpack.

He yells into it with so much power that it hurts his chest.

After that, he turns and walks to class, fiddling with his tie. Everything is fine.

Oh god, it's really not.

He gets more and more nervous with every step. He's sure at least Aizawa knows already. Shit. And the rest of his teachers, too, but he only really cares about what Aizawa would think. Him and Present Mic.

He fixes the tie around his neck. Maybe he tied it too tight. It's hot, too.

It's like this the whole way to the classroom along with fumbling with his bag every now and then, making sure it doesn't slide off his shoulder.

Homeroom started about fifteen minutes ago now. Hopefully Aizawa is actually making them do something.

He takes a deep breath and pushes the door open, smiling widely as he'd usually enter. He waves at Midoriya who's one of the people looking at him. Mr. Aizawa is not teaching, but Kaminari notices that he gives him a concerned look.

"Sorry I'm late," he calls and sits down at his desk.

As his friends start to make their way towards his desk, among other people, Mr. Aizawa calls for everyone's attention.

"Alright. We're going to talk about recent hero and crime cases that HeroNews has covered recently," he announces.

People shuffle in a hurry, going back to their once empty desks.

A few hands shoot up and Kaminari racks his brain thinking of some that he'd heard about recently. God it's so scrambled.

"Midoriya," Aizawa calls.

"That case with Hawks where he ended up uncovering a mob organization."

Aizawa nods in confirmation before he can even start on his rant.

"Asui."

"There was that one with a new villain arising and the news was saying that she could be far more dangerous in the future, ribbit."

A nod from Aizawa makes other people's hands shoot up and Kaminari finds himself among those people. Yes, seem normal. Everything is fine.

"Kaminari."

"This one is connected to Asui's, but there was a hero debut in that villain attack. I think they'll end up being rivals," he says.

Aizawa nods. Once again, hands shoot up.

"Mineta."

He doesn't have a weird reaction to the blond. Maybe that means no one knows yet and he has one more day before everything is fucked.

"Not hero, but Kaminari is familiar with the one about his dad-"

"Mineta," Aizawa yells and the sudden tension and feeling in the room makes Kaminari want to burst out in tears as he looks down at his hands.

Never mind about that day then.

Everyone is quiet. So quiet you can practically hear the wind outside.

"Outside the class now. You will wait there until homeroom is over and then we will go to Nezu's office," Aizawa says so sternly that it makes everyone want to apologize and do what Aizawa instructed Mineta to do.

There's a huff, scrape of a chair, and footsteps. Mineta makes it a point to walk right behind Kaminari's desk.

"Whore."

The word makes Kaminari look up at Aizawa, wondering if he heard the small boy say it, praying no one did.

He hears the people in the desks close to his move abruptly and sees Mina squeeze her fists.

So they heard. Great.

Once the door closes, Kaminari laughs. "Awkward huh."

Then he raises his hand again.

"I have another one," he says, referring to articles on HeroNews.

Aizawa, sort of taken aback by the behavior blinks before quickly snapping out of the sudden change of mood. He nods.

"This one was a smaller story, maybe just for laughs or fun, but there was that one with the cat. The one who saved a boy from a villain by distracting him. Pretty epic. Agh, I forgot what they called the cat," Kaminari groans, trying his hardest to remember.

"Mr. Fancatstic," Bakugo huffs in annoyance, "Stupid ass pun."

A few people laugh in spite of the tension in the air because of Kaminari.

It's his fault they're acting all weird and tense.

~~~~~

Mr. Aizawa had left as soon the the next teacher came in, which had been after a while so Mineta was out there for a long time.

Throughout the day, people kept shooting weird and worried glances at him. They're probably weirded out by him because they think he's disgusting or something. Maybe they can't focus because he's just that gross.

Mic doesn't even call on him.

It's almost as if they were waiting for him to fall apart. He did last night, so he's okay right now. Plus, everything is fine. It's not like anything happened, he lied to himself.

By the time lunch comes around and before his friends get a chance to talk to him, Aizawa walks in and tells him to stay after class.

Mr. Aizawa sees that Kaminari's friends linger, so he shoos them away. They leave with hesitation and Kaminari nervously walks up to his homeroom teacher.

"Yeah, teach?"

Mr. Aizawa sighs at him, Kaminari's smile faltering just a bit, but he fixes that quickly. Everything is fine. "Did I fail something? God, I thought I was getting better. Can I make up whatever i-"

"Kaminari."

The blond quiets. "Why are you here today?"

He's taken aback. "I- Uh, isn't it a school day?" He trails off.

Mr. Aizawa face-palms. "No, yesterday was a lot. I saw you. You looked pretty," he pauses, not wanting to continue, "You looked pretty out of it."

Kaminari bites the inside of his cheek. "It's whatever. It's happened and it got out. I wasn't going to suddenly fall apart and miss school. I've done that already. There's no use."

He doesn't look at his teacher, but he does hear the intake of breath. "You know your classmates know, right? I think the whole school does. We couldn't stop the story from spreading."

The blond nods. "Yeah." It's almost a whisper, but he clears his throat and looks at his teacher in the eye, who obviously wasn't expecting that. He was taken by surprise. "Yeah, I know. I'll hang out with them as much as I can for now. Just until..." he trails of. "Until they get tired or something."

With that, he takes a deep breath and turns on his heel, making his way to the cafeteria, hoping that his friends still won't shut him out just yet.

"Kaminari."

He stops in his tracks.

"I'm sorry about what happened. I'm here if you need anything."

Kaminari gets choked up, eyes watering instantly. "Yeah," he says, voice wavering, "Thank you."

After his chat with Aizawa, he walks to the cafeteria. He has the same smile as always, but he feels the entire cafeteria staring at him as he walks over to the lunch line, which is pretty much gone, to get some food.

He gets the suggested meal of the day and walks over to his group excitedly, hoping they don't immediately push him away, sitting next to Sero. "Hey guys! Ya miss me?" He laughs as he sits down.

They all look at him, staring for a while. "What? Did I already get food on my face?" He asks, grabbing his napkin to clean his face.

"Kaminari," Mina says seriously.

"Hm?" He asks, shoving his food down like always.

"Why are you acting like that?" She asks.

He gets a questioning look on his face and cocks his head sideways. "Whaddya mean? I'm always like this," he says. He grabs his soda and drinks some. He scarfs down more of his food and waits for anyone to respond. He sees that no one is eating even though they have their food in front of them and he looks at all of them as they look back at him. All the staring makes him anxious.

They don't want him here. They can't even eat with him around.

He puts his chopsticks down and puts his hands on either side of his tray, getting ready to say he's sorry and bolt. "Oh I get it. Must be pretty gross now. Sorry about that, heh," he laughs as usual and he gets up, practically running out of the cafeteria and throwing away his tray.

Oh god, his life is over. His friends are done with him.

Even thought he knew this would happen, he did have this small piece of hope in him, thinking they would comfort him. They're not bad people for doing this. He knows that.

They just weren't comfortable with being his friend anymore. That's okay. Friendships die off and people leave other people. It's just life, and he knew that this getting out would mean the end of their friendship, no matter how much he tried to stall it.

He runs to class, knowing Aizawa wasn't there since he gets lunch with Mic every day at the teacher's lounge. He closes the door and paces back and forth, down the rows of desks.

What do I do? I have no friends now. They couldn't even eat with me around. Hell, I bet Sero wanted to push me out of the booth next to him so that he didn't touch me.

He stays there in the classroom until a few minutes before the bell rings. He doesn't want to be alone in the class with someone, so he'll stake out in the bathrooms until the late bell rings so that he avoids the fake apologies of people. His classmates are nice, they wouldn't not say sorry about what was happening to him.

They'd say something like 'you can talk to me', but in all honesty, they knew he wouldn't want to talk about it. It was just something people said.

No one wants to hear his weird family thing where his dad bad-touched him and now it's out for everyone to know.

What would they even want to talk about?

How it happened?

What he did?

That's fucking weird. So it's all fake. It's all a lie and no one wants to know about it, like, come on. It's just not acceptable.

So, he hurries to the restrooms to hide.

Then once classes are officially over, he can run to the dorms and shut everyone and everything out.

Shit. Shinso.

He's face-to-face with him.

Both are caught by surprise, and Shinso is out of breath as if he ran to the classroom. "Kaminari."

Said blond swallows nervously. "Hey," he smiles.

Shinso frowns and looks a little sad. Pity?

"I know you're not okay. I'm sorry. You know, about what you were going through. I'm really glad it's over for you, but you still need time to heal. You should've taken the day off. It would have been excused."

Kaminari shakes his head. "It's fine. Just, if you're going to stop being my friend, do it now. I- um, I don't want to be disappointed when you leave later. It'll be worse," the blond says, not wanting to look at his friend. Well, maybe ex-friend.

"Shit, I sound like a pick-me, huh," Kaminari realizes, and just start laughing. "Holy shit, I'm fucking funny," he practically wheezes, barely able to say the sentence.

Shinso stands there, laughing a bit with him. "I'm not gonna not be your friend anymore over this. If you stab me in the back or something, then maybe, but damn, it's not gonna be this easy to get rid of me."

"This easy? What?" Kaminari laughs.

Shinso laughs, too, shoving him slightly.

"Seriously, though, this isn't gonna make anyone stop being your friend. Kind a dick move thinking that we would," Shinso says, sounding offended.

"Oh," Kaminari says, a little shocked.

Shinso nods, flicking his forehead. "God, it made me so nervous. I needed to laugh," Kaminari says.

There's still that weird tension about what happened, but everything was still fresh. The weird tension could go away after a while. Man, he hopes so.

"The squad is pretty mad at you. Get ready for some hesitant yelling. They're probably gonna start off crying. I mean, it's terrible what you went through. Bakugo is really pissed, mostly at your dad, but also at you for not telling anyone. There was a whole crying session yesterday just for you. It's a shame you missed it," Shinso laughs.

Kaminari exhales heavily. He's not ready for that. And this was really not how he expected this to go. It was too easy. It's kind of weird how easy it was to keep talking to his friend like this.

"What actually happened yesterday?" The blond asks.

"Cops were here so everyone freaked cause you had left not even thirty minutes before. Some were mad that you were taking long cause you were helping them with the essay. Uh, then we didn't hear anything until lunch because Mineta had spread the information about what happened. Then we went on with the day and at the dorms later, the news confirmed everything."

Kaminari nods. Mineta.

"Oh."

"Yeah, oh. Anyway, I feel really terrible as your bestest friend in the whole world for not knowing," Shinso admits.

"Sorry."

"Just so you know, we're actually here for you. Just say the word and we'll go kill your-"

"Shut up," he laughs.

***
Word Count: 2,722
tbh when i told my cousin about what my dad had done we just kept making jokes 😭😭 like😭😭😭. Don't worry, though, Kaminari will get a better "what happened to you sucks but you can get through this" speech later ☝😋. Maybe from Mic idk that would be cute ANYWAY. i hope yall liked this chapter:)). The next one will be posted next Sunday at 8pm central time. I love you all and tysm for reading<3