Inside Your Mind

95 - Shinsou

These voices won't leave me alone

Kaori Shinsou was lying awake in the middle of the night. This time it was (probably) not due to her insomnia - well, not mainly due to that, at least. She couldn't sleep, because all kinds of things kept popping up in her mind - memories, fears, questions. It was one of those days when it was all just a little too much.

And she felt lonely. Too lonely. It had been a hot and humid day, and even the night was extremely warm, but over the last few hours a bunch of dark clouds had started amassing. Heavy rain, at least, most likely a thunderstorm. Kaori wasn't per se scared of thunder and lightning, but she didn't enjoy it either.

"Go on. Watch, little girl. You're not getting away, either."

The cold breath on her neck, her heart pounding and her eyes widening in horror as she saw Shouta's arms get broken in front of her eyes.

"Look what's going to happen to you, soon."

The sickening noise when his skull cracked.

"They're still inside! The family living on the third floor. They never got out! Someone needs to get them out of there!"

The panicked looks from that woman running out of a burning house. The charred corpses later on.

"I... I feel... cold..."

Tensei Iida lying in a pool of his own blood, barely conscious while Kaori was trying to stop him from dying, before the ambulance arrived.

"It was bad, Mr. Aizawa. We got there and he was just lying in a pool of his own blood and wasn't conscious. He was only barely breathing. We called the ambulance and I did the whole first aid thing and... I honestly don't even know how I managed to remember what to do, felt like my brain was in emergency mode."

Shouta's worried look, how tired she was that day, not knowing whether Iida would make it or not, almost having Stain before losing him again.

"You all need to be purged!"

The manic look on Stain's face as he was holding Midoriya, just before he collapsed.

"You know what I think? You're not doing this job because you're interested in helping people like me or because you want to prevent crime. You are curious. You like seeing a sick mind and slowly dissecting it, don't you?"

The sickening smirk on his face, as if he could stare right into her soul and everything she was afraid of.

"Go on. Do it. Pull the trigger."

The cold gun in her hands, Shota looking at her with a faint smile.

"Worst-case scenario? How else would you describe a situation where 26 were wounded and one was kidnapped?"

The smirk on the reporter's face when he thought he had caught them out, while all she could think about was whether Bakugou was okay or whether Shouta would get fired.

Fuck. This wasn't going to work. She couldn't sleep like that. Not with all those images flooding her brain. She couldn't even close her eyes without seeing Stain's smirk or that creepy smile that Shigaraki had. And it all just got worse when she drifted off to sleep. She couldn't do it.

With a sigh she sat up in her bed. Maybe taking a walk and smoking a cigarette would help. Kaori had been somewhat paranoid about smoking weed on campus, but it was maybe 2 in the morning right now, so no one would be up, anyway.