Graffiti // [Kousei]

Late one night, it struck Hero that he was going to die.

Not maybe. Not possibly.

The image of his father sobbing in the Justice Building swam through his head, and it seemed like his fate was sealed. He could recall the way the tears mixed with the saltwater in his father’s beard, how the old man’s body shook with trembling breaths. People didn’t cry like that unless they were certain of their grief, so Hero was going to die.

Any other Career from District Four might be able to make it. He wasn’t the best or the brightest, and better people than him had succumbed to the contest.

Hero was angry at his own life, angry at the thought of dying, angry at the Capitol and all the people who would celebrate his slaughter. Angry that he’d spent sixteen years of his life hungry.

(Maybe he wouldn’t be slaughtered. Maybe he would succumb to the sea, somehow. Taken by the waves he was born on.)

The boy’s unruly anger drove him to the roof that night, and it was his fear of death that led him to write his name on roof’s door. Sixteen-year-olds don’t leave much behind when the world steals them away except pain and graffiti, and Hero Marvray was just doing his part.