[There's a physical ache beneath his chest-tight uneasiness. "Anxiously helpless" shifts to "entirely lost". A freezing emptiness in the small, pitted, hollowed space beneath his ribs. The kitten gently and gingerly brushed to his side. "Sheltered" as he was, prevented from knowing as much as he should, he stumbles mentally through his thick cloud of fog; aware that prejudice still exists, though he could hardly relate to such a fear for himself...

No thoughts of dating missing an interest to date. Nothing for boys; nothing for girls or gender or secrets or this. And how can he possibly understand when he isn't attracted to one or the next? He thinks, "I'll never know this fear", the flush of shame, or the hurt. The words mean nothing. Attraction means nothing. Watching his friend expel the sick, only to slowly, mechanically rise to his feet. Without a reference; never observing enough to care for more than half of his life; watching the feelings forced from his gut; over another, heart-kept, still closer friend. Caught in a stupor before his hand, reaching out without his input at all, finds his shoulder with wary, tentative downy-soft touch.]

Bakugo- [Trying his name before the breath-]

I already know there's more than one me...

[Because he's seen; younger, violent, angry, unhealed—]

But I'm "me" too. So, I'm the me who decides what I'll do; and whether those two or more exist, I'm mine. [His life, his choice, his feelings, his thoughts?] We might share a past but it's all that it is...

[He knows he's changed now; he's certain.]

Your life's your own, if that makes sense. The "you" you are decides how he lives.

[Losing his string, still-oblivious how their tether's dissolved; beneath his notice.]

The "you" you are... isn't the you I met. [So-] You're not the same. And he's not.