PAPER FLOWERS ( k. bakugou )

chapter 1

' the stars will guide you home '

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Kaede cannot fathom why she's smiling.

Maybe it's because this is something familiar. Tomoe in front of her, clad in his grey sweatshirt and his hand on hers. The scent of street food wafting in the air and moments like this are what reminds her how bright Tomoe was. How he is the lantern she desperately holds onto in the path of darkness and solitude, the only source of warmth and light and all the beautiful things.

"I want a candied apple," she says, tugging on his sleeve, attempting to satiate the hunger coursing through the cavern of her stomach and Tomoe sighs, lowers his head a little, runs a hand through his hair and she counts twenty two seconds before a candied apple is in her clutches.

Kaede doesn't say anything and she bites into the apple, unconsciously playing with the fabric of her clothes. It's sweet, satisfactory, but she thinks she doesn't like it very much. "It's not that bad," she comments.

"It'll be better if you had showered before we came here," Tomoe comments glowering at her, his tone chastising and sharp but Kaede merely lets the words roll over her like tinges of dust and she devours what remained of the apple and sashayed past him, throwing the popsicle stick at him in the process.

She hears a brief, "Gross," from him before the sounds blur again. The hush of the evening, the soles of shoes, sandals and the occasional boots clanking against the cobblestone pavements with the little jilts of laughter followed by the brief sound of cloth, metal chimes and the distant lake that ripples ever so slightly and disturbs the reflection of constellations as verdant leaves fall on it.

"I want dango next," Kaede says, when Tomoe reaches her side, wincing all the while at her lack of good hygiene.

"Won't you at least wash your hands?" Tomoe asks and hands the money to the stall owner. He accepts two sticks of dango easily and holds it above her as he awaited her response.

Kaede shakes her head, before getting the two sticks, standing on the balls of her feet to add a little height, finishing two dango balls with one chomp. Crumbs litter the edges of her lips and after she swallows down the last dango from the first stick, she uses her tongue and licks it off.

Tomoe almost fainted.

"I hate you Kai," he grumbles, as he clutches his hands on his sides. And she suppresses the urge to laugh at his vex. He was easily ethereal even in his states of frustration, but Kaede can't find it in her to feel happiness. "You're so unhygienic that I want to vomit."

Kaede shrugs again, that smirk present on her face. A smirk that doesn't really match the angelic face of Akihisa Yuko, but the people will have to make do, present on her face. "Spare me some slack, Clean Freak," she says while she chews on another dango ball. "I lived more than two years as a fucking pauper."

"Pauper is overexaggerating," Tomoe points out. "And that second stick was supposed to be mine."

"You can have it." She hands him the stick which only contains two dango. Originally, there are three dango balls on each stick, but Kaede is in the midst of chewing one.

"After you've splayed your saliva all over it?" His nose wrinkles in disgust. And even with a disgusted face, Tomoe easily looks beautiful. And what Kaede would do to have such a face. It was useless for most parts because Tomoe was anything but amiable around other people, but with the right lies and hollow promises, she'd be able to bend even the most obstinate people to her whims. "No thank you."