You Can't Have the Light Without the Dark

Chapter 4: Linguistics

A/N

Kaminari letting his linguistic skills slip.

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Over the course of Kaminari's stay at Project Beta he had tucked away a handful of languages under his belt. And he discovered that one of his favorite forms of communication was Japanese Sign Language. Though it was a required language to master, because of its benefits of conveying messages nonverbally, Kaminari inevitably fell in love with it.

His ADHD brain also really benefited from having him utilize his hands. With it's visual and physical aspects it actually kept him calm at times.

It became a habit he did subconsciously, if he was antsy he'd sign what he was thinking or if he was immersed in a book he'd sign a word or two from the sentence he was reading.

Though he made sure to only do so when nobody was looking, or at least that's what he thought.

Don't tell anybody but one of Kaminari's favorite secret pastimes is watching videos where people signed JSL to express a song. He truly admired how someone could add so much more beauty to a piece of music, even if they could not hear it via conventional methods.

But he made sure to keep this information a well kept secret for multiple reasons.

One being that if he showed these videos to his friends, he'd just receive variations of "Oh that's cool.". They'd of course be supportive of the deaf and hard of hearing community but since they didn't comprehend the language they wouldn't have the same experience that he did. It was like going to an art gallery, sure the pieces looked pretty interesting and they could understand the surface beauty, but they lacked the ability to delve deeper and look into the layers of its artistry. There would be no animosity, it was just not their cup of tea.

The second, and more significant reason he kept this on the downlow was because it'd reveal that he knew another language. It wasn't rare that people were bilingual but Kaminari was a full blown polyglot and if he let out that he knew JSL it could snowball into everyone finding out about his linguistic mastery.

The blonde also wasn't quite fond of lying to his friends, so he did his best to not even bring up topics he'd have to lie about. But leave it to the universe to fuck him over once again.

It was a tad past midnight and Kaminari couldn't sleep, he kept tossing and turning in bed for hours on end. It's not like he didn't want to be unconscious and be blissfully unaware of all his baggage for just a little while, but his body straight up rejected all his attempts to rest.

Shoutout to Project Beta for leaving long lasting effects on his circadian rhythm.

So to kill the time until sleep hopefully befell onto him, he moved to his balcony to watch some of those JSL music videos. If he couldn't go to bed he might as well relax while enjoying the evening breeze. He popped his earbuds in and took a seat in his outdoor lounging chair that he had set up outside.

He was a couple videos in until he decided he'd sign along with one of the songs. He found it fun yet calming and it'd be good to have extra practice for his JSL, though he didn't necessarily need it.

It was also the middle of the night so he figured that he'd be away from prying eyes, but boy was he wrong.

The blonde took a deep breath and closed his eyes, focusing on truly feeling the music. And Kaminari went for it, putting passion into every single move while taking liberties with his facial expressions.

He became engulfed in the song but unfortunately his time signing was short lived, because he immediately halted his movements when he heard a distant click of lightswitch, a balcony door open, and a faint scurry of footsteps followed by louder almost lumbering ones.