Becoming a Hero (bnha x OC)

Chapter 34: Fleur-de-Lis

The house was silent in the hour Izumina waited, her father out late again for work. Nothing new...

After sending Nakiro Kimino a text to let him know where she would be that night, Izumina absent-mindedly stood from her bed and strode over to her desk. She finished her English homework relatively quickly and stood to stretch after only a few minutes. Doing a lap of her room at a lazy pace to wake up her legs.

'What now... Draw or practice,' she thought as she ran a hand over the strap of her violin case, which hung on the back of her desk chair. Her hand tightened around the back of the chair before pulling it out and sitting once more.

Flipping through her sketchbook until she found a blank page, Izumina sighed as she lifted her pencil. Without much consideration, Izumina drew a circle, a base for whatever she decided to draw. Her lines were messy as she created a general face shape. Upon noticing the defined jawline, she associated the base with a male and added thin eyes and shaggy hair. Not wanting to draw over the eyes, Izumina parted the character's bangs twice and proceeded to scribble the ends of his hair before it could pass his neck.

Izumina paused, her pencil hovering over the page as recognition triggered in her brain.

'Todoroki?'

Hesitantly, Izumina drew a curved line over the boy's left eye and separated his hair down the middle. After seeing the similarities, there was no doubt... subconsciously, she must've been drawing the boy from class.

Izumina scoffed to herself as she flipped the page. 'How silly of me,' she thought as a smile crept onto her face and she proceeded to draw more of her classmates, trying her best to remember each of their faces. She started with Izuku and Bakuguo, whose faces she could recognize anywhere, and went on to draw Kirishima, Mina, Uraraka, Aoyama... Before long, Izumina had filled several pages with sketches of her classmates' faces.

Drawing people had always been Izumina's specialty, having used many heroes as references in pages of her hero notebook. Using her classmates as inspiration gave Izumina a sudden burst of creative motivation, something she hadn't had in a while. Drawing rather than playing her violin, or training down by the beach with All Might and Deku, was a nice change. She could hardly remember the last time she'd taken the time to just sit and draw...

Before Izumina knew it, an hour had passed. Had it not been for the doorbell that rang throughout her house, Izumina could've spent the rest of the night with her head buried in pages upon pages of doodles. With a flinch and a quick glance at the digital clock on her nightstand, in disbelief of how fast the time had gone by, Izumina stood to answer the door.

"Charles," Izumina exclaimed, embracing the man. "It's so good to see you!"

The man, who'd always been relatively tall, paused for a moment before wrapping his arms around Izumina and resting his chin on her head. Something about the way he held the girl was desperate, as though he'd been lacking that kind of care-free affection over the past little while. Izumina, noticing this, allowed the hug to linger, her grip never faltering. It'd been far too long...

After a moment of bitter-sweet affection, Charles pulled away from the embrace and cupped Izumina's face in his hands. "You're so strong. I'm glad you haven't lost that smile."

Izumina raised a brow as she eyed the man skeptically, "Umm, okay," she responded, hoping that the man wouldn't mention the death of her mother again.

Charles forced a smile before turning and gesturing towards the rental car he'd come in. "Shall we go then?"

Izumina smiled back as she responded with a nod. Following Charles down the steps of her house after locking the door behind her, Izumina peered into the car window and noticed nobody else was there. "Where's Fleur?"