Chapter Text
It is early 2009 in Japan. Many fads have come and gone. Life has been created and ended. And right now, in the grassy garden of an upper-middle class family, stands a sixteen-year old boy. He has dark blonde hair and a little tuft at the top.
A fence separates the garden from other gardens. The grass is a little overgrown due to neglect from his father - he has been bedridden for a week at this point, his mother is strangely insistent on men doing these kinds of chores, and the boy hates mowing lawns. Even knowing that it's not that bad once you get started, the idea of starting will remain daunting to him. There's a small stack of garden tiles at an edge of the garden, a reminder of a job hitherto unfinished. And in front of him, the most important thing, stands a steel pole, extending at least a whole metre above him. It has been borrowed from the remains of a broken parasol that succumbed to a particularly heavy storm. It is secured by a few stacks of stone slabs. A broken ring light is attached to it with a lot of tape. It's floppy, but works for his purposes.
In short, it's an improvised basketball hoop. And this boy, named Hajime Hinata, makes his twentieth consecutive shot from about three metres away using a football.
In his excitement, it scores. That is twenty consecutive scores. Exactly what he practised for. Exactly what he wanted to show his mom.
"See? That's twenty shots. See that I have potential?" he says, his tone mildly pleading. She looks like she's thinking something over.
"Will you finally let me go there?" he asks, "I worked very hard for this. You can't let it all go to waste!"
"You know what?" she asks with a smile, relieving him of his worst fears, "Sure. I'll tell dad and you'll be going to Hope's Peak. But that also means you won't get to see your friends."
"I don't have friends, mom!"
Her eyes widen a little, "Wait, really? I... never knew. And I told you so many times, too... But if you look on the bright side, that means you don't need to say goodbye to anyone. Hopefully you can make friends there!"
"...I'll try. Thanks, mom."
After informing dad, and over the course of many, many days, Hajime Hinata, once a boring, ordinary, talentless high schooler, is now a student of the prestigious Hope's Peak Academy! Usually, this would have been the worst mistake of his life. He would know death, loss and doom like he never has before. Loved ones will die, kill mercilessly, or both. He would undergo erasure of his very self.
This, however, is not that story. Instead, he'll go through his school days and well thereafter without any apocalypse ever happening for as long as he lives, and hopefully after. He will know love like he never has before.
Sadly, that doesn't mean that tragedies are entirely off the table. There will be plenty of those to go around for everyone, including him. There will be misery.
But there will also be great joy.
