This Thing A Quiet Madness Made

Chapter 41

Nevermind.

On second thought, heroes are strange, and Unknown doesn't understand them. It's like they were completely different things, some abstract other she could never really relate to. She doesn't understand their thought process, she doesn't understand why they do what they do, and she certainly doesn't understand why Todoroki Shoto was standing outside her door at such an ungodly hour.

Unknown squinted up at him.

He stared blankly back.

"..."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"Can I help you?" her voice was dry, her half-asleep brain void of any reason why he would possibly be here.

"I didn't know if you were awake," he stated simply, shifting a bit under the bright hallway lights.

"It's 4am."

"I am aware."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"Can we talk?"

"Are you serious?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

Unknown blinked at him incredulously, yet he remained as stoic as ever. After a long, unsuccessful moment of attempting to stare him down, she finally relented, sighing as she flipped the lights on and gestured for him to come in.

Making her way back towards the clearly slept-in bed, sheets flipped aside and abundant wrinkles surrounding where she lay just a minute ago, she sat down on the edge of the mattress and nodded towards the desk chair.

"So what is it?" she asked as he shifted the seat to face her.

Todoroki was quiet for a moment, his gaze focused on something next to her. The buzzing of faraway machinery drifted faintly between them.

"Midoriya said I should speak to you."

"Why?"

"I told him about what happened at the hospital."

And all of a sudden, Unknown was wide awake, a rush of embarrassment slapping the drowsiness from her mind at the reminder of... that. The fuzzy memory she had tried so hard to forget appeared once more in the front of her mind- of how far gone she had been back then, of how invasively close she had gotten to him, of how she-

"...so, about that," she started, despite having no words to follow, "...uh... sorry."

"...it's alright."

Now it was her turn to avoid his gaze. His hardly-convincing response to her hardly-convincing apology did little to ease the constriction in her chest. She reflexively curled in on herself as the horrifically awkward silence dragged on, shoulders hunching, eyes lowering. She never considered herself to be so malleable as to become embarrassed by mere words, and yet here she was, visibly distressed at the thought of a memory she could barely even recall, and in front of some hero, no less.

"...so you told Modoriya about it?" she spoke finally, unable to withstand the deafening quiet any longer.

He nodded faintly, gaze still averted, his usual passive expression now replaced by one almost as uncomfortable as her own. "He said I should speak to you about it."