PLASTIC FLOWERS ( k. bakugou )

chapter 37

‘  an unveiling of sorts ’

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"Katsuki, promise me, will you?" she whispered when he's stopped giving her a sarcastic laugh from one of the humorous jokes that escaped her mouth.

"Why would I do that?"

"Just please."

He looked at her, and his look made the universe expand. The universe inside of her. "Stop crying, then."

"I will, if you promise."

Pause and then he stared again and she wants to rage at the stars, pluck them from the obsidian sky and swallow them. "Tell me."

"Promise me that if I ever hurt you," she said and looked at him with tearless eyes. "Promise me you'll be as cold as the stars." Stars that raised your hopes up with faux wishes and let you wait wait and wait only for you to end up alone and miserable and wishes unfulfilled. Watched you in their throne up above, just there- brilliant and sparkling while you suffered.

Confusion mires his attractive face, and he scratches blonde locks and he looks at her with eyes, exasperated and confused. "You can't hurt me, you never will, so I promise, I guess, Yuko."

"And Katsuki," she called him again and tossed him back his shirt, standing up, gaze as cold as the stars that fled her stomach. "Except for that promise part, I didn't tell you anything."

"Good night," she tells him and she's poured all the embers of warmth on her stomach because she knows. It is the last.

"See you, Yuko."

And that hurts her more than anything else in the world. Even the headache tearing herself apart.

━ × ━

"You've stopped annoying me," Katsuki said with an indecipherable expression. "Good riddance."

Her lips met, a straight line and she was gone. Without a word, without a look, without a care. She should have told him properly last night.

Be cold as the stars, Katsuki, because I will be.

Floating in her own mind, feeling the burst of power flowing through her veins, Akihisa Yuko has never felt so cold. And yet it felt so ordinary, as if she's been born with it and that she has lived this sort of starcold life.

Pushing quirks to the limits, they said. She didn't feel all that motivated to push it to the limit. What was the point for the end was coming, the snake would finally stop writhing in the heat and bare its rotting flesh for the world to see.

The desire to be safe from chastisement was the only thing that kept her going and walking two paces back, behind the mountain of ice Shouto created, Yuko decided that it was logical she also try to upgrade her quirk.

Fingers moved as if spinning threads, pulling oxygen until it gathered into her palm as air and raising her palms, she tossed the arrow into one of the trees and watched as it impaled one two three four five trees and inevitably dispersed.

Yuko tried again, soul floating on her mind, still accomplishing the same results. She couldn't care less. Pushing quirks to limits, that was simple enough. Five gusts were the only thing she could handle. That was limit, boundary and she shouldn't try anymore.

She'll be back soon enough. When night falls, when the stars scatter themselves into iridescent dots again, when the night creatures thrive, she will leave and be back. Be back and leave.