‘  an unveiling of sorts ’

━━━━━

"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.

Cries of anguish continued to occupy the air and Yuko, Yuko the chatterbox who spoke first before thinking, she was found in a bubble of quiet.

"You okay?" It was Shouto. Her Shouto who was warmth and cold and she loved him truly, because she would never have a friend as loving and caring and lonely as him. She didn't deserve a friend as loving and caring as him.

Yuko shook her head no. She wasn't and she was getting more and more unwell because of the fact that she knew she would never be okay. And what was perhaps the most awful reality from it all was the simple, genuine fact that she didn't want to be fine, because she believed that she was never meant to be. She didn't deserve it.

"Maybe you can shorten the arrows," he offered, thinking that she was sluggish because of her quirk and Yuko wanted to cry a river, but she didn't. "If you put the length shorter and increase the density of the tip, it would prove to be stronger."

"Slower," Yuko said, one measly word and it wasn't like her at all, so she offered him an explanation. "I mean, it would be slower, and harder to create. But I guess I have to sacrifice speed for power."

Clouds dispersed up above. Cirrus. Featherlike. "Thank you Shouto," she said. "Thank you for everything."

He nodded just like he always did, unaware that it was her parting gifts of sorts. But what surprised her the most was that he didn't leave her. He stood there, almost expectant.

"About Bakugou," he said. "Do you like him?"

No correspondence came from carnation lips, but to the observant boy it only took a slight twitch of the lips to confirm.

"Is that what's upsetting you?" he asked.

"I'm not upset," she said and tried to wield an air arrow only for it to wobble in her grasp and disperse, an evidence of her lack of focus.

He put a hand on her shoulder and she saw the ice melt above them turning into powdery flakes, like hail but then when it landed on her head, on her halo of silver, it felt more like snow. Looked like stars.

Cold stars.

"Afraid then," he suggested and then when he repeated his statement, he seemed more sure. "You're afraid. But I don't know why."

Silence enveloped them, and for the first time, it wasn't Yuko but Shouto who broke it. Sent it shattering into a million fragments like the ice pelting them. "And when I look carefully, precisely. You're afraid of us."

"You're afraid of me, of Uraraka and Midoriya and Iida and Kouda," he whispered. "What's really wrong?"

"I love you guys," she says and the ground is shaking beneath her. The trees are folding in on themselves and the sky is twisting, twisting until all she can see are the white cotton clouds. "I really do. I'm just scared that if I start failing you'll eventually disappear. I don't want that. I don't."

Shouto smiles.

Yuko closes her eyes and this time she's inside the empty girls' room, her head buried between her knees as she struggled to breathe. Her mind is in a perpetual state of disorientation and she can't remember what excuse she gave to return to the room. She barely recalls a headache and a pat on the shoulder by Shouto— "do you need help?"— and a brief shake of her head.

Sweat trickles from her forehead, sliding to the ridges of her barely discernible collarbone and drip drop drip drop is the first thing she hears amidst it all.

Then— "we'll never leave you." And Yuko appreciates the sentiment, but it is useless. We'll never leave you. What was the point in those words? Four words, fifteen sixteen seventeen letters. We'll never leave leave leave you. Blue fingernails enclose and bury themselves in reddened palms. We'll never leave— leave you— because we love you— leave you. We will never.

What did it mean to never leave someone?

Love? Maybe they loved (cherished, adored, liked, what's the difference?) her and that was enough reason.

What was the point of never leaving her when she was the one who was leaving them in the first place?

In and out.
In and out.

Then, she can't breathe.

Two hands are on her throat again, clawing clawing clawing (I can't breathe, she thinks) for something of a semblance of air. The curtains remain still. I can't breathe (help help help help) and she falls to the floor again (thud she goes against the hardwood like a fallen puppet), her elbow shoving an abandoned mug that crashes to the floor. I can't breathe, she thinks again as the splinters scrape against her reddened skin and the night old cocoa spills and stains the futon sheets.

( So filthy just like the once youth.

Shattered dreams and wicked aspirations. )

Yu—

One
single
breath
please.

—ko
closes
her eyes.

And utter darkness envelops her. Vortices upon vortices of ebony black lapping on her skin, her eyes ears lips teeth and fingertips. The caterpillar ensorcelled in its dry, ugly cocoon prepared for the impending metamorphose. No screams. Hot tears spill from her face.

I
have to
b r e a [k f r e e ] t h e.

And eyelids unpeel on blue eyes. Cornflower blue. Colder, harsher, villainous.

━ × ━

There is a girl.

During the first weeks of the second school year, after finally escaping the suspicious eyes of the school, she begun to wrung a tale from the stars. From the coldest elements and most solitary wishes.

Second year, the routine of going to USJ for the purpose of practicing rescue missions. Entering a phone booth, leaned against a wall and told them, told them all about the defense system and the importance of messing with the signals.

The girl didn't know of their quirks, didn't have time to learn about it because the person on the other side was as impatient as he was powerful. It guaranteed failure, the careless attack, but she thought that it was an opportunity. She'd learned from failure, it was in her too to share the knowledge. Make him learn from his failure too.

Midnight visits, fringes of light blue hair and fourteen hands, she told him everything and everything as he planned his greatest scheme yet. Defeating them all was impossible, the sensei was weak. So they must crumble the hope, faith and trust of others on those idols- those heroes.

The villain bought the girl a phone, handed it to her and she turned the location on before slipping into the hot springs, she told him details on top of details. The perfect time to strike, the personages in the area and heroes whose powers were fitting for sensei's collection.

Amidst the scattered stars, she closed her eyes and watched them atop the cliff, preparing, waiting for the time to strike.

This evening, when chaos spreads like the smile on her face, they will be informed that there are ten villains in total. They will be wrong.

There are eleven of them, one two three four five six seven eight nine ten and eleven. Experienced and powerful criminals, brought together by different motivations and connected with one goal- to bring down this society of faux saviours.

She was the eleventh villain, not as cold as stars, not as warm as the sun. Shs was a star yes, because in faux skins and smiles she was bright. Bright but thriving in darkness. She wasn't warm, she burned. Burned creation to bits and pieces, because she was a girl of chaos and there was nothing more beautiful than the girl wrought of darkness because from the discord in her soul, there was beauty.

Her name is Akihisa Yuko, no, Mizuki Kaede. And despite all the poetic lines and metaphors and symbolisms, Mizuki Kaede was just a traitor.

--

E N D O F C H A P T E R
— s a d n e s s