' prince of thorns '

━━━━━

They sat on a wooden bench at the park that day, the dog propped on the girl's lap, still and eyes looking ahead.

"That was exhausting," Yuko commented, wiping droplets of sweat from her forehead with the sleeves of her shirt- a baggy white thing that had a picture of a black triangle halved by a line and a circle at the very middle.

"Your stamina is just shitty," Katsuki commented as he drank from the water bottle Yuko had given him earlier.

"You have the stamina of twenty thousand soldiers, Katsuki," Yuko retorted still panting for air. "You can't blame me for being less than you."

"That's what training is for, dumbass," he answered, looking at the same direction as the dog, the rim of the water bottle leaning on his lower lip.

Yuko shrugged in a typical Yuko fashion and crossed one leg over the other. "I have to do jobs," she said.

"Then do it in school," was his grumpy reply, tilting the bottle higher so it's contents fell on his mouth.

A sheepish smile captured Yuko's lips at that. She could. But she knew what she did with her free time in school or rather, what happened to it. "I have detention."

"That's your fault for being a dumbass," he said and put the empty bottle of water on his forehead.

Releasing another sigh, Yuko replied, "But it's my nature. To be a dumbass."

Katsuki snorted, a mocking short snort. "Look at how that's turning up fucking fine for you, you shitty excuse for a human being."

"Says the person who has to add a curse word to every sentence that he mutters just to prove he's superior," Yuko muttered underneath her breath. She would usually let this things slide, but she felt weak, inside and out from all these matters. She hadn't eaten lunch and breakfast, only having water and a coffee Fuyumi had given her earlier.

"What a bitch," he said.

"It takes one to know one, yeah?" Yuko stated and emptied the contents of the water bottle on her mouth.

"Shut up," he grunted and Yuko chucked the water bottle at him, laughing as she did so. She closed her eyes and let the cool breeze do its duty and cool her down. To her right, she could hear Katsuki sputtering curses and the evident sounds of explosions crackling on his finger tips.

Maybe she shouldn't have thrown the water bottle at him, but she knew that he had deserved it and it was so seldom that she could bare her anger for the world to see so damn the stupid repercussions, she thought and caressed Roki's fur on her lap.

In the end, Katsuki didn't do anything to her and overcame with fatigue, she fell asleep on his broad shoulders, Roki nuzzling her stomach all the while.

She slept soundly that time and even the boy, the ticking time bomb with blonde hair and crimson eyes, didn't do anything to harm her, just tuck an errant strand of her hair that fell over her face.

And as if on cue, Yuko woke up to an uncomfortable Katsuki glaring at her and Roki on his arms. She blinked at him, trying to fathom why he looked that way (or one could argue that the expression was his default mode).

A yawn escaped her lips and she tried to muffle it with her palms. "What time is it?" she asked.

"It's time for you to find a goddamned watch and use it to tell the time instead of fucking asking me," he answered and she merely chuckled at him.

"You have your phone," Yuko argued, pointing at his pocket.

"Hell I'm letting you borrow my phone!" he screamed, holding the phone with his right hand while his left held unto the dog on his lap.

"I'm just going to check the time."

"Then find a fucking watch!"

"That's so inconvenient, Katsuki," she said and pointed him. "You're literally within my arm's reach."

"Have you ever heard of privacy?!"

She groaned. "It's not like I'm going to read your messages and look at your cringey selfies."

"No-"

"Oh my god, you have immoral pictures on your phone, haven't you? Or a diary?" she asked, wide-eyed and amused all the same. "I'm guessing the former, you're a guy and you have your ur-"

"What the actual fuck?! I don't have those shit!" he growled.

But Yuko was on a roll. Lips quirked to a lopsided grin, eyes the steely gaze of an eagle and hands trembling from excitement. "But you're clearly hiding something."

"Am fucking not!"

She raised an eyebrow. "Certain?"

"Shut up!"

"I will if you tell me the time," she answered, gaze cool like the gusts of wind she created.

He glared at her but it more or less denoted her victory since he relented and told her it was quarter to three. Since there were only a couple of minutes left, she took Roki from him and baded farewell.

Yuko might have been imagining it, but she thought she saw a smile on his lips before she turned her back on him.

━×━

Fuyumi arrived at exactly three on the gate of their household. She gave Yuko payment, a smile and turned to look at Yuko when she seemed to notice something different with the dog.

"I can't believe he looks energetic," she says. "That's a new one."

Her face was blank, cool as ice and for a second there, she saw something- no, someone. A boy who also had the same hair color on half of his head and that cool, disinterested gaze that was both faraway and not.

"Ergo, Fuyumi-san," Yuko began and debated if it was better to just push the thought aside. "Your last name wouldn't happen to be... Todoroki, would it?"

"It is."

Bullseye.

The nimbus clouds overhead seemed to clear and reveal the majestic sun for a few seconds. "Then you surely know Todoroki Shouto."

The girl looked her in the eyes, blinking and curious. "You know Shouto?" she asked and looking at her face this close and tracing the relations, she really looked like him. Half of him at least.

"I'm his... classmate." It pained her to not say friend, but Shouto had indirectly refuted that idea when he decided to label them as classmates.

The older female seemed to be as perceptive as her younger brother or son or whatever for she raised an eyebrow and flashed a sad smile. "Not friends?"

"He makes it a point to remain so unfeeling and distant so friends is a relationship stage that's leagues away from him," Yuko blurted, adding her own personal woes and bitter thoughts so when Fuyumi winced and crouched down to pet Roki, a pang of guilt struck her.

"Does Shouto have any friends at least?" Fuyumi asked and looked sadly at Yuko with that angelic face and melancholic smile- that in ways truly resembled her ice block for a brother or son.

Yuko didn't want to add to the distress of the woman but it pained her even more to lie to a person who has shown her sincerity ever since their first meeting so she shakes her head as a reply.

"I see," Fuyumi says and there's something in her eyes that betrays the fact that she was probably expecting such a turn of events. "Shouto really is... distant."

"But he's a good boy," the snow haired girl whispered and Yuko couldn't help but feel an ounce of pity for her.

"He has just been given burdens one after the other. And even if he passes those things, there are still scars that serve as living proof for what the people around him did, for what they felt."

"What do you mean, Fuyumi-san?" Yuko asked, kneeling next to the girl and placing a hand on her trembling shoulders.

"Shouto... Shouto must feel so terribly lonely. Our father, Endeavor, has placed too much pressure, too much pain unto him and our mother-" Their mother who was in the hospital, Yuko remembered "-that he forgot that he was his own person. That he buried himself in rage and denied himself calm."

"What happened?" Yuko ask and she felt as if she was walking on thin ice and the next words would make it shatter under her feet and drown her in pools of sorrows and aching and loneliness.

"One day, when our mother, when our mother just felt so exhausted with the constant harsh treatment he receives from father, when she saw father on our brother who managed to receive both their quirks, she- she burned a part of Shouto's face."

Yuko just wished that he wasn't being such a bitch about it because everyone had their fair share of misfortune and there were seven billion people in this planet and he was just one of them.

She was such a horrible person for thinking so lowly of his problems, of his past and how it made him what he was.

Life was like a walk in a garden. And Todoroki Shouto's garden was filled with nothing but thorns.

That night, Yuko slept, hoping that the shame that burned on her skin would be gone when she woke, but when dawn came and the animals welcomed its arrival, she woke up in a tangle of thin sheets and she still feels utterly ashamed.

━ × ━

Beyond traipses into the realms of guilt and fields of mango trees and effervescent girls strolling underneath their shade was a memory. With dream fruits falling off the barks and rotting and seeping into cyan dresses and porcelain skin, the memory was a vague one. Almost as if it was a dream with a boy bearing crimson eyes, blonde hair, the same set of expletives and something more underneath the wreckage.

It felt tangible though. The scent of cinnamon and dirty pavements with flip flops and aspirations and foreign names she knew nothing about. And whoever or whatever that boy was, she could feel the most tangible of emotions. Pulsating and flowing like a raging river, sloshing its currents on land.

That boy.

She loathed him.

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