' a dream is a wish your heart makes '

━━━━━

Dust streaked fingernails dig crescents on trembling palms, and a steady resolve washes over the silver grey haired girl, her blue eyes burning brighter than any flame. Yuko will, she has to talk to him, because those kinds of loneliness that she saw in Todoroki Shouto ruin people and relationships.

She will do it.

And when the match ends, all the battles buried in the past like Uraraka versus Bakugou, the heated battle between Izuku and Todoroki, Iida climbing to the top, Yuko feels a surge of admiration for everyone. Everyone is strong in their own way. Everyone fought and those memories would forever hold special places in her heart.

( And be inevitably forgotten. )

Yuko runs, not away from everything, but toward the boy who she cherished so much. Past the swaying trees and the colorful and cheerful bustle of people greeting her.

She sees his back.

"Shouto! Shouto! Shouto!"

And the aforementioned boy turns to her direction. "Yuko...?" he asks softly, eyes shone with wonder as to why the girl who was running towards him looked so distraught.

The moon is a pale full plate this time, illuminating the vast obsidian sky with a sickly white glow. Todoroki Shouto is still clad in his PE clothes, and that confused look haunting his beautiful face.

"Shouto!" Yuko screamed again and Shouto didn't see it coming. Arms wrapped around him, soft and tender. His eyes widen a little, but she holds on tighter and it's a fact that she knows that he's ice ( a cold cold aching boy ) and he chooses to reject the fire within him ( until the hero with celadon hair reached his arm out and broke the ice wall ). And Shouto is utterly and hopelessly confused, because when those walls broke down, he doesn't know what to be anymore. He doesn't know and it aches.

Who will tend to the embers the celadon hero ignited? Who will make the fire blaze?

She will take on the challenge of becoming his warmth. She will strengthen that fire. She will be his source of solace in this cruel world. Akihisa Yuko will be that.

"Yuko... what are you-?"

Moonlight basked pavements, trees swaying with the breeze, starlight guarding up above and two teens.

"I'm here," she whispers to him, because she is his friend and Yuko is a fool who sticks to close to people that will hurt her and tries to mend their shattered hearts. "Let me be your friend, okay?"

"Yuko..."

She closes her eyes and tighter. "I saw the match earlier," she said. "The one against Katsuki, the one against Izuku. I saw."

I saw your pain, your hatred, your loneliness, your despair, your hope.

"I saw everything."

"Please," she says. "Please. I don't want to say anything pretentious, because I've never been in the same type of situation, so for now all I can do is be your friend and urge you to listen. It can be anyone, it doesn't even have to be me. You can open up. I'll be by your side no matter how long it takes."

"I'm not enough," she says, "I never will be, but there are a lot of us that would care if only you let us. You have your sister, you have Izuku, you have the whole class. So for now, please..."

Moments of silence and then the boy rested his head on her shoulders, face streaked with tears. He remembers Midoriya's words, the kindness of his mother, his siblings and stupid, wonderful Yuko. "Yeah..."

Yuko closes her eyes and relishes the moment wrapped in serenity, the unfamiliar yet marvelous feeling blooming in her chest that hopes to thaw the frozen heart guarded by towers of flames. Calm and peaceful. Not fury or apathy. An in between.

To be human.

But that night with nimbus clouds, she dreamed and it was unbearable.

There are flower petals, peach and white and pink and they're falling out of her mouth. Streaked with crimson blood, but the thing is, it's not hers. She looks at clammy palms again and see a heart, beating and bloody. And when she looks up she sees Uraraka, betrayed and lonely and her chest is empty from where her heart used to be, and she points at the heart in Yuko's clutches.

"How could you, Yuko?"

Then Yuko looks at the heart in her hand and her eyes widen when it stops beating. Instead of the blood that's coating her palms, she sees the same petals falling from her eyes and she looks up at Uraraka again. But this time it's not the lovely girl she killed. It's Shouto.

"Why? Why would you do this?"

And it's Izuku standing in front of her and she's screaming. His chest empty like the others who have appeared before him and his face is crumbling and when his flesh is revealed, she runs towards him, but she passes his body easily.

Whirling her body to look at him, she's approached by the terrible realization that it's actually Katsuki and underneath him is a pile of dead bodies.

Sero, Kaminari, Sato and Kouda. The people who've been nice to her. Iida is running out of breath and Katsuki is angry, furious more than his natural state and he points at her the same way Uraraka did. But not at her.

So she turns around to see and it's a mirror, rimmed with black and embellished with withered flower petals. And the glass is cracked at the middle but when she sees it, it's not her reflection but of a girl. Black hair, red eyes and a cruel gaze. Then that boy is standing next to the mirror and he's grinning at her with crimson eyes and hair the same color as hers but purer.

And the glass shatters.

Yuko woke up in a cold sweat, palms trembling, a sheen of swear trailing from her collarbone to the middle of her bare beasts. Even with the windows open and the thin glace camisole she wore with cotton shorts, it had been so hot.

Wiping the sweat with the back of her hand, she moved to a sitting position and gazed on the scenery beyond the open window, a square shaped space with four wooden frames, the roofs of low class suburban homes, the firefly tree the next door neighbor was so proud of. Even with the cold shower water and the flickering light bulbs, Yuko was at least proud of the scenery her bedroom window provided.

It was a good alternative for a television, only with this one the only drama she could watch was the feuding families- the Ichimonji and the Bando- and the Ichimonji's eldest son, Shigeo and the Bando's second daughter, Jun sharing kisses over the white picket fences and sometimes proclaiming their undying love for each other.

It was more interesting to note that Shigeo and the Bando's eldest daughter, Kei, the very source of their quarrel, had a baby together.

Yuko supposed it was tragic but she couldn't care less so now, she was only waiting for Shigeo to go after the third daughter, Jun's twin sister younger by a minute, Mei.

Fringes of baby blue fabric twined with clammy fingers, the fading photographs pasted on the dingy peach tapered walls, textbooks piled next to the bed, Yuko opted to sit next to the windows, and close her eyes.

She didn't wish to fall asleep because of a beautiful face of a beautiful boy had haunted her and told her. Told her perplexing things but when she woke up, when she sat up, heart lurching in her chest, the words would be meshed together and the next thing she knew, it had slipped from her memories and only a blurry figure with lips parted open greeted her.

To call those things startling was an understatement so instead of having five hours of sleep, already subtracted with the time she spent on the Noodle House, she could only have three. Imagine the big black bags underneath her eyes and see her classmates voice their worries but Yuko was a girl who had sunshine on her teeth and she had to be perfectly okay forever and ever so she merely shrugged their concerns away.

She was being unwound from inside out and something, someone one was screaming something and she wanted to lend her ears to hear but it became a dissonance of something that felt so hurtful. The exact same feeling she had whenever her quirk recoiled, heartbeat almost to a stop, passageways of air blocked and her head splitting into two.

Help. Help. Help.

But no one would come because deep down, Yuko knew this was the reason. Why she wanted to be a hero in this world.

Heroes saved people. And because no one would save her, she intended to save herself.

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