❝𝘿𝘼𝙍𝙇𝙄𝙉𝙂, 𝙔𝙊𝙐𝙍𝙀 𝘼𝙎 𝘿𝙀𝘼𝘿 𝘼𝙎 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝘿𝘼𝙔 𝙄𝙎 𝙇𝙊𝙉𝙂. ❞
↣ A PARADOX IN WHICH
a girl rises and falls
like the Empire of Rome,
knowing not of
what she has gained,
but instead of what
she has los...
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『 Chapter 20 』
⤐ ♤ « 〚♞〛 » ♤ ⬷
Sometimes things are best left buried.
Todoroki's eyes were carefully trained since he was just a young kid. He knew what to look for in people, in heroes, and in villains. An analyst he was, skillfully dissecting the world into layers.
He learned the value a hero has, or what characteristics his father has or wanted to have. He remembers relishing the days he would only have to study and inspect countless hours of videos instead of having to train with his father. It would give his body a break from his rigorous schedule.
He is not one to encroach on people's boundaries—intentionally, that is. Secluded away from many, regular, children while growing up, Todoroki lacks the understanding of social cues and how the subtle things people do reflect of their feelings. He isn't very introspective on other's emotions, but when he wants to know something, he'll push and push and push until he gets what he wants. Again, he doesn't understand that this stubborn coldness of him is widely detested.
So, when he sees her, Hidaka, for the first time, he recognizes her features. The curvature of her nose seems uncomfortably familiar, and so is the shape of her head. The sleekness of her jawline and how she cracks her knuckles all of the time—how much Todoroki fucking hatesit when she does that—but what hindered these consistent comparisons was something at simple as her smile.
Y/N did not have an admirable grin. She would beam and the world would darken around her like she was surrounded in a funnel, her words a python with cold scales of deceptive growth and lost connections. Her smiles send centipedes to slither and glide across bones and dig into skin, ripping tissue and burrowing into the subconscious you didn't know you had. Filling heads with doubts and poisons as true as the ones that run in her marrow, all she said was a paradoxical masterpiece.
The smile he remembers so well is the one of a thunderous tornado. Striking and loud, a flashing brilliance through the slate clouds and the pouring storm. It's whimsical and delicate, filled with passion and prospering turmoils of a glorious generation. But, just as quickly as it comes, the smile leaves—retreating like the tide. The desire to stay is strong, but the ripping buds of everlasting time pull it away, it's retirement is noticed; without this, the world lost a glowing hope.
The memory of a blistering heroine with a dazzling personality is who he reminisces. He had watched her film, her moves, her journey, just as his father had instructed him to do. He studied her hero work from age 17 to age 23; he remembers it in such fine detail that he feels like he grew up with her and knows her personally. Like Deku to All-Might, Todoroki was, and is, a devoted fan.
