Chapter Text
Hajime Hinata knew who he was. Back in the program, facing off against her, he fought for that knowledge. He fought tooth and nail through despair unlike he had ever known for the right to be Hajime Hinata. Boring, talentless, average Hajime Hinata. Up until that moment, he had spent his entire life running away from being that. He never thought he would sacrifice so much just to be himself.
But just being himself is what saved him, and the other survivors, and the members of Future Foundation who came to help them. And hopefully, just being himself is what would eventually bring the rest of his classmates back.
For the first time, in the wake of the end of the world, Hajime knew who he was. For the first time, after being reborn into a body that had committed hundreds of unknown atrocities, he was confident in who he was. For the first time, he didn’t want to be anyone else.
He was Hajime Hinata. He knew this.
He knew this even as he climbed out of the pod, long hair that wasn’t his falling around him and obscuring his vision. He knew this even as he felt aches and wounds that were never there before. He knew this even when his friends stared at him in horror for just a few moments after getting up, scared at how different he looked.
It didn’t matter. He had fought to be Hajime Hinata, and he emerged as Hajime Hinata, and he was goddamn proud of that. He would choose to be Hajime Hinata, every moment of every day, no matter how hard it was.
He knew who he was.
Seeing the changes, though, was another matter entirely.
Hajime had cut off some of the long hair hanging around him as soon as he had the chance to, hacking it off around shoulder length with a pair of scissors he spotted in the kitchen of the hotel. He didn’t care how it looked or how his friends reacted, he just wanted it gone. It was cloying. It felt like it was suffocating him.
Looking in the mirror in his cottage later that night, the impromptu haircut looked about as shitty as he thought it would, but he was still just glad to be rid of it. Fuyuhiko had offered to neaten up the cut for him; he’d have to take him up on that tomorrow. He wanted his old haircut again, the one he had in the simulation. As messy as it was, it would still be cleaner than how it looked now. And more importantly, it would be his.
In the mirror Hajime could also see that one of his eyes was its normal green while the other was red. No wonder people kept looking at his face so weirdly. He tried to look on the bright side, see the familiar green as a sign that he was still himself, but any comfort he got from that idea was easily overshadowed each time he re-noticed the unsettling red. The red eye scared him. He didn’t feel like it was his eye.
Actually, his whole body didn’t feel like it was his. He couldn’t shake the sense that he was an intruder in it, like it belonged to someone else. It certainly didn’t feel like it belonged to him; every movement was foreign and incorrect. He moved too fast for his mind to keep up with, each impulse turned to action before he could even process it. It was…unnerving, to say the least, and even just existing in this body was unbelievably disorienting.
Hajime sighed and scrubbed his hands down his face. His face. He knew it was his. Kamukura was the one who was the intruder. Hajime knew who he was. But…his body was just too unfamiliar to fully be his. He almost didn’t recognize it.
He had scars. Scars that he didn’t remember, but he could easily guess at their cause (too easily, with knowledge he knew he didn’t have before). Even though he didn’t remember them, it seemed the feelings that came with them hadn’t entirely left his body; he still felt a rush of fear and pain when he looked at them for too long.
He was somewhat expecting the scar tracing across his forehead, based on what she had told them in the program. But he still didn’t like it. Admittedly, there was still a small part of him that desperately hoped she had been lying, at least about some things, no matter how small.
He was expecting a thin, faded line. Surgical and precise. What was actually on his face was jagged, and much larger than he thought it would be. The uneven scar tissue was long-healed, but he still winced when he gently ran his fingers over it. It didn’t hurt, not on the outside. But the pain on the inside, the pounding headache and the panic squeezing his chest…
His normal haircut wouldn’t entirely obscure it. Maybe a little bit, but it would definitely still be visible. He tried to convince himself he didn’t care.
There were other scars too. Scars he didn’t expect. Thick, uneven rings of faded red circled his wrists and ankles, identical on each limb. He reached shaky fingers up to his left wrist to curl over the bumpy scar tissue there, feeling how it stood out from the rest of his skin. His heartbeat thrummed where the texture changed. Like the scar on his forehead, he didn’t feel them anymore, but a phantom pain pulsed in his nerves under his fingers.
And with it this time, a sudden flash of knowledge. A brief memory of struggling against a sharp pain in his ankles and wrists, trying frantically to escape…something, no matter the cost. His brain helpfully supplied—far too quickly—that he probably had to be restrained during the experiments, and these scars must be what was left over from that.
He quickly let go of his wrist, suddenly feeling sick.
Hajime Hinata knew who he was. He did. No matter what he saw in the mirror, his thoughts and feelings were his own. More importantly, his will was his own.
Hajime Hinata was in control. And he would remain in control. No matter what it took.