Raindrop Side Stories

Joue's Office - 2 (Shinsou)

Hi this is the first meeting Shinsou had with the counselor a little while back. He started hanging more around Denki and wants to figure out what to do about their relationship.

Enjoy~

Shinsou's POV

"Hello, you must be Shinsou," the counselor greeted, stepping aside. The first thing to notice about the office was that she had no chairs, only bean bags scattered in the corner like a seating area, a space between them and the corner of her desk. There was a small gap between her desk and the wall shortened more by her bookshelf. Her office was crowded, but not in a distracting kind of way. Each thing had its place. She smiled and gestured to the beanbags. "I'm Joue."

"Hello," I replied, sinking unnaturally in one of the bags. She plopped down, crossing her legs comfortably so that she could lean up against the wall.

"What brings you here?"

"Well Aizawa-sensei has been training me so I can get up to class 1-A, I'm in 1-C. He suggested that I might benefit from seeing you," I explained. She smiled and nodded.

"Anything specific bothering you?"

"Uhh..." I had scheduled this meeting specifically to talk about the idiot Kaminari. Well, he wasn't stupid, he just drove me crazy. It was the kind of crazy as in can't get him out of my head. He was an idiot.

I glanced up and away from my jumbled thoughts towards Joue. Should I tell her it's a girl? Would she be wary of our orientations? She smiled at me, waiting for me to speak. She was letting me take my time. She didn't seem like the type, but it was still uncommon in Japan anyways.

"Well I wanted to know how to get the courage to ask someone out."

"Oh, of course. I can't assure you I know exactly what it's like to ask someone out. I've never," she said, "but I can most certainly help with confidence!"

"It's just...my quirk is basically mind control," I started. She didn't seem phased by the fact. "So for a long time people were kind of freaked out by it. Like I had a villains quirk or something. So I figure I'm not that great of a match for this person, or anyone."

"Hmm," she hummed.

"He's really upbeat and cool and he's nice to me. I know he likes me too, I may have pushed him away earlier but I want to ask him out now. I'm just struggling because while he might not have a problem with my quirk, other people do and I don't want to ruin his reputation. He's in 1-A," I said. She gently smiled, sitting back. So she was cool.

"Well. We can work on affirmations. I can assure you that if he likes you and he likes your quirk then other people shouldn't matter. That's easier said than done and I know it can be even harder being the same sex. It's unfortunate and hard to deal with, but I can offer you 2 things. You can try affirmations, as long as you say them enough you'll begin to believe them. That and in my opinion, you two don't need to broadcast things if you don't want to. Telling close people is always nice. I think if you 2 like each other enough you won't run into problems you can't tackle together.'

"I guess you're right..."

"As for your quirk and your self image, you can do affirmations and different things with me. Trust me, I know what it's like to be under quirk discrimination," she said. "It's no fun, but it is a very good opportunity to show people that you're not someone to underestimate."

"Yeah. I really am working hard on getting into 1-A," I repeated. "What happened to you?"

"I can read people's emotions. People hate to think someone can root around in their head, but I was never one to really care all that much. Despite the fact I used to have some bad social anxiety just thinking about what bad things people could say about me, bullies never really got much satisfaction out of me."

"Oh."

"Trust me, I'm no high road kind of person. I was pretty gullible and innocent. There's a really good chance I didn't really know what was happening. Or at least didn't realize it was as bad as it was until later. That's the overthinking. But you appear to have a lot of potential, I'm sure you can overcome a lot of stuff like I did. If I can do it, you certainly can too. I'm nothing impressive."

"Well you're good at this job."

"Thank you," she replied, smiling. It was obvious she didn't see herself as high as she should, but it wasn't something holding her back or bringing her down. It was more of a laugh at yourself attitude that probably stemmed from real self-deprecation. She had found an okay middle ground. "Well you said Mr. Aizawa is teaching you, he has probably faced something similar to you. You don't have to be in the spotlight to fix people and not everyone will like you. It's just a fact. But as long as you're doing what you can and you're helping people, that's more than enough to prove people wrong."

"I can see why he recommended I come here," I replied.

"What can I say? I work hard to prove people wrong," She replied. "If you really want to think about it like living out of spite, that works too." I stifled a smile and she grinned at me.

"Yeah."

"If you'd like, we can talk about a few confidence boosters," she offered.

"Yes, thank you."

"Oh, there's an excellent one--"

~Caly