𝐇𝐢𝐤𝐚𝐫𝐢 『Bakugo Katsuki』

◆Chapter 37◇

By the time she left school, the sun was already getting past the horizon and the stars were almost out. The walk to the train station was quiet, not only because of Ochaco and Izuku's absence, but because her mind had fallen quiet and she could no longer hear her own thoughts.

It were as if she were everywhere and nowhere all at once and Miyuki felt almost weightless as she got on the train.

"You're not alone."

Those are the three words Aizawa had told her. She felt they could mean a great many things:

No, she wasn't alone, not anymore. After she met Izuku then All Might, that distinction became clear in her life as the void she'd been ignoring since her days at the orphanage suddenly became full. Their overwhelming support for her... the mornings she could look forward to...

She hadn't been alone ever since she got accepted into the best hero course in Japan and met some of the best people a girl like her thought she would never find... including the angry ash-blonde.

Miyuki hadn't been alone for some time now.

Stop running from it - you know very well what he meant.

Her shoulder felt like it was carrying the weight of the world on it as she adjusted the strap of her bag. The brown envelope Aizawa gave her was neatly tucked away inside, unopened and undisturbed.

This is the truth now, Miyuki -

"Excuse me," She said quickly after nearly colliding with another woman. Her cheeks turned a cherry pink in embarrassment, and when she glanced at her feet she realised one of her books fell out of her bag. Picking it up, she saw it was the shoujo manga she'd been reading.

Miyuki finished reading it some days ago and had actually been meaning to return it to Katsuki ever since the sports festival ended.

Tucking it back into her school bag, she decided to stop over by his house on the way home and do just that.

I'm not alone.

Out there, somewhere, she had a relative she never knew about. Tsukauchi and the force assigned to her case had abandoned the search years ago when they couldn't find anyone with any links to her. She had accepted the solitude that came with that truth with open arms and embraced it her whole life...

Until now, of course, when the embrace turned cold and the truth she'd known had become a lie – in just three simple words.

But what changed? How were things different to their search this time than they were the last time? Even All Might was a part of it and they still came to a dead end.

They didn't have Aizawa-sensei.

Could that have been it? Had her homeroom teacher really made that much of a difference?

She clutched the strap of her bag.

What if it was him?

Miyuki huffed quietly, shaking her head slightly.

No, that couldn't have been. If it was Aizawa then he would have told her the truth right then and there, right? He wasn't a man who liked beating around the bush.