{SONDER} || Katsuki Bakugou x OC

|| CHAPTER 7: Give it Your All! ||

After exiting her 10-minute trip to the bathroom with a yawn, Shiina went on her way to walk back to the dining room when her shelf full of unbearably large trophies made her stop in her tracks rather suddenly. Longest shot-put throw, longest soft-ball throw, furthest javelin toss, etc. The row of awards her eyes fell upon were full of almost a fraction of the physical activities she'd won before.

More trophies for different sports sat underneath that shelf. And beneath that one sat framed certificates for various achievements regarding contests she'd entered, all covered by glass that had a light layer of dust.

She bent down to the ground and gazed upon the other more forgotten trophies she'd won during her younger years. More innocent awards such as winning a spelling bee and a math contest sat upon that shelf, which expelled a laugh out of her.

"This is so corny," she remarked under her breath.

"Ito?-"

"GAAH! Midoriya!"

He put his hands up. "Sorry! I didn't mean to scare you! You just took a while to come back so... I got worried. Uh... So did your parents. What're you... doing here?"

He looked over to the shelf Shiina sat so intently in front of, remembering how his mother spent so much time in front of it. And now here she was, sitting down with a mysteriously sullen expression. He sat down next to her and began looking at all of the trophies that sat across the partially dusty shelves.

"These are all yours, aren't they?"

Ito didn't respond for a bit. Instead, she brought her knees to the bridge of her nose with her arms stretched across her legs.

"How could you tell?" An unusually raspy voice sarcastically responded to him.

Midoriya too crossed his legs as he read all the titles for the bottom shelf trophies. The more innocent ones, by Ito's standard.

"Have you ever had a friend before?" She asked.

"Well, uh... I have Kacchan. Though... I don't know what I am to him, really."

"Doesn't that guy pick on you?"

"...Well, sometimes, yeah. He says he's just trying to make me realize the truth but... now I've got a chance, you know?"

Ito just frowned in disbelief and turned her head away. "...He's still an ungrateful hot-head."

"He does sometimes upset me... like one time where he hit me really hard on the shoulder. It... hurt pretty bad. It made me so upset that I wanted to put live spiders in an envelope and mail it to him."

Ito slowly turned her head to her friend.

"...You what?"

"I don't want to do it anymore! I realize two wrongs don't make a right... but still..."

"Yeah..." She moved a bit further from Midoriya with a slight scooch while making a mental note to never piss her friend off. "Anyway... thanks for being here. I just feel like this is all... sort of odd. I mean, I know more about you than I do my parents. And... that just feels weird. It feels like I'm having dinner with very... very, very distant family members. You know? I mean, crap, I don't even remember my mother's birthday. O—Or my fathers— I don't remember their birthdays. And then they sit there and... and they act like I'm the most important thing to them."

"...I'm sorry..."

"It's fine. It's not your fault. I just... I thought... well, I thought maybe... I don't even know. I just wanted a friend."