『 Chapter 19 』
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To be destroyed in the most beautiful way possible—isn't that the way we all want to go?
She stands in the back row of the red seats in her class section. Everything within her is heavy—too heavy to bare. Her eyelids droop and her fingers lose their sense of touch. It's too much. She doesn't even know what it is, but she just knows it's too fucking much.
What was once a tactile body is not hers anymore. The husk she inhabits feels like a burden and all she can do it see. She can stare. The entirety of the world is too much weight to hold, and so she peers into the unknown. A variable she cannot control.
The world is in front of her eyes, and she now realizes how small she truly is. A singular girl in the midst of the overpopulated and well-know Musutafu, Japan, with the hopes of being a hero. She is truly, utterly, and definably, unoriginal.
She is not just a small person in a society of untruthfulness, no, she is smaller. With her useless hands and futile efforts—everything within her is a lie.
What is she compared to the likes of Bakugou Katsuki? A personality too definable and truthful. His life bound to the sweat in his skin, his hands hold the gifts of DNA and inscribed destiny. His world is within the bounds of his eyes and the reach of his mind, stretching so vastly over basins of ocean and continents of dirt. His confidence is the reward of success and ability, so developed it intertwines his soul to his body as if it was blood.
How can she hold a candle to the light that is Midoriya Izuku? With the morals of a golden statue, he stands without a hair out of place. Everything with him is refined and supported, he shines as what the world should look like. He is a martyr of the light in a world of corruption. A puzzle piece of a thousand slots and all to form a masterpiece of a renaissance mind. All at once, all alive and all thriving, he is whatever the world needs. From grace to brash, he is wholly, fully, completely, true.
Is she even in the same league as Todoroki Shouto? A boy endowed in righteous fortune of trial and error. He is the gift given to those so persistent, to a family so wobbly and so crooked. He holds the weight of his code on his shoulders, everything he promises he'll be can only be defended by himself. How honorable is he, a young man who fights for his own autarchy? Chained by himself and then released by an icon of righteousness, he basks in the sun—the axiom of potential is an amalgamate of his perplexed existence.
Riptides of a blazing heat push the hair away from her face and cause her to grit her teeth, her eyes sting but she does not turn away. The tears that forebode their falling evaporate with all of her hopes and dreams. It's a searing warmth of passion and regret, full of repressed absolutes and indirect, muddled rage.
Sprouting from his left arm are the cinders of a blistering red, billowing in the wind like a crashing wave. The deathly frost melts while the flames grow, like a weed in a garden sucking the life of a fresh bush of roses. Wilting roses perish to the swan song of Hellflame, perilously encroaching on a soul that could've been. Todoroki loses himself to the fire, the words of his opponent shattering the shackles of an unprincipled childhood.
Pyres of a voluminous red emerge from every corner. From the fire that sit on the shoulders of Shouto, to the red half of his flickering hair, to the screaming of the crowd, to the leather seats she was sitting on, to the approval of a lackluster father, there was red. It was false. Fake. It was unoriginal and produced. Mass marketed and broken.
A lens or filter had to have been put over her eyes, she thinks. It's too much to be in one space at one time. The air is red and so is the sun, the fire that is smoldering is red, so is the immaculate concrete and the voices in the sky, the blood on Midoriya's face and misaligned digits on his hand are too, her tears are red as well as her blood, her breath, her hands, her emotions, her promise...it's all red.
That's what it is. It is red. Red is shame. Fear. She's done the very thing that she told herself that she wouldn't do—and she did it with pride. Her shoulder tense while a contradictory chill coils around her spine in the midst of a raging storm of fire, she feels a crow walk across her grave stone.
When she sees the frozen tundra grow from the right palm of Todoroki, she's already trying to navigate herself out of the row she was in. Y/N can sense the pressure growing in her chest, squeezing her head that the headache she's receiving is only increasing. Her tongue is feeling too big in her mouth and her hands are shaking, twitching so anxiously and sharply.
Her legs can't hold themselves up well from the speed she is moving, but there's not enough room in the isles for her to go so fast. In the upper row were five people including herself.
She sat on one end seat, alone, secluded, just how she wanted it to be after the pain in her chest had subsided and her encounter with Midoriya had faded away. The other end of the row sat four boys, Kirishima, Sero, Kaminari, and Bakugou, in that order. There's no way through the stands and towards the exit other than through them.
She's already stumbling at first, but, when the heat expands from Shouto, she knows what's coming. It's simple science. Cold condenses and heat expands. Two things cannot occupy the same matter at the same time. Basic. This is regular and well-known knowledge: correct? And when these principles are pushed together, the ideal of equal and opposite reactions are shown first hand.
She hates herself when the explosion goes off and she collapses like a broken tower of blocks. Her life folds in on itself while her hands try to cover her ears and her eyes are shut so tight. The wind flys and uproots concrete slabs and hauls them across the stadium. Her body's aching before the burst finishes. The ringing in her ears is doubled and she hates herself even more. She's been here before.
A hand lands on her shoulder when she realizes she's been curled up far too long. The explosion has come and gone and she's still on the ground, a quaking mess of memories and regret.
Her gaze meets the eyes of Kirishima. Worriment dazzles his features while his concentration skips all around her face—as if looking for injuries. She's okay, he notices. At least physically. A few more seconds pass, the world is unwavering and doused in smog. But through everything, she sees that his eyes are red.
"Oh shit—" she spasms as her bandaged hand reaches up and around the base of her neck, something foreign to Eijirou builds up in her eyes, "I'm gonna be sick."
She's pushing through her classmates and into the hallways. Not even able to see the aftermath of the smoke, the cheers that pulsate through the stands tell her that the son of Endeavor has won. Sounds grow louder and combine with the ringing to create static of unfathomable proportions.
The static is like gray snow, but it's not cold. It piles up and fills the edges of her vision like a storm cloud. It's thick like a blanket, tough enough to block out the sounds of the sky and the gushing blood of her veins.
The bathroom door is slammed open wide, the edge of it threatening to break the tiles along the walls. With one hand pressed against her mouth, the other throws open a stall. It's empty. Thank god. And so is the whole bathroom. No other student would be caught dead not watching the Todoroki and Midoriya fight, it would be sinful not to.
She doesn't even close the stall behind her before her hands are gripping the edges of the porcelain bowl and her knees hit the chilling linoleum of the floor. Whatever she had eaten at lunch with Ohta is spewed in frothy chunks and potassium stomach acid. Her stomach contracts again, pushing heavily on her esophagus and tries it's hardest to expel its pungent insides, but after awhile, nothing more comes up.
There is no one to bring her a glass of water, there is no one to give a shoulder to weep into, and there is no one to tell her everything will be okay. That's not how this works.
She's grateful at least to have gotten to the bathroom, knowing that water neutralizes the acids after effects of her quirk. She stills for awhile before flushing the toilet and standing up, wiping her lips on a piece of paper towel and dropping it into the bin. After a few more steps, she's leaning against the counter of the sinks, her head hanging low and her chest heaving. After a brief pause, her eyes float upwards towards the mirror.
Hidaka Y/N is fifteen when she sees herself for the first time.
It's in the form of shattered fingers and bloody knuckles, crippling ability and predestined scars, sweaty brows and barred teeth, blazing ambitions and undetermined origins, lifeless eyes and lost hope, bursting veins and cracked skin, carmine rage and fruitless drive, crying lungs and damaged pride, wasted opportunity and disappointed hearts, wavering loyalty and glass tears.
She's pathetic, she notices while she stares at her hollow expression for far too long. The clear lines of stray tear tracks along her cheeks and drip off her jawline are what she first sees. Then it's the sore lips from her gnawing teeth. Next is the see circles under her eyes. After is the sweat drenching her neck and her hairline. Last is the same old frown on her lips.
She looks tired. That's it. Plain and simple. But, she wasn't. She has the endurance and the drive, the sports festival shouldn't be this hard. It's not her fault, she knows this. It's not her fault she's like this. She's been afraid of explosions since the accident. She can watch them, hear them through audio, but in person? You've just seen the reaction. Her classmates wondered why she didn't watch the fight between Uraraka and Bakugou—they'll know soon.
The screams haven't stopped yet. She's almost forgotten that the world still exists outside of the little cage that she calls her mind. This bathroom seems so, absolutely, fitting for her small, pathetic, useless self. How could she? She truly is the worst person she knows.
Ryou isn't happy with her, she knows that much now.
She thought she was being deceptive and smart with her over-worked and rehearsed pledge for the start of the games, but it's too bad that was all a lie to make the public love and support her. How awful.
She though she was being defensive when Bakugou attempted to have her join his team, but in reality she was just scared of his quirk and turned her fear into agression—that was the punch. How hilarious.
She though she was being intimidating when she was talking to Ojirou, but then she had compared him to a chess piece when in actuality she was just being an asshole and standoffish. How selfish.
She thought she was asserting herself as a powerful student when she choked Ibara and forced her to forfeit her chances in the festival. The same with Iida, whom she didn't even give the chance for him to fight back—she had just pushed him out of bounds with an insurmountable wall of flames. She humiliated them. How fucking despicable.
There's one important difference between powerful people like her and the likes Shouto and Izuku: they're alive. Not just breathing, but they're alive. Fate has added to their arsenal of experience and predicted a glorious future. Ashes of what would be future constellations dot Midoriya's face like freckles and smear themselves across Todoroki's cheeks like tears. Oh yes, they're alive!
But is she? Is she as alive as Todoroki Shouto? As Midoriya Izuku? Her hand raises against the increase of universal gravity, everything has become much, much, heavier. The strain of sight and her own worth is breathing and duplicating like bacteria: exponentially.
Fingers entwine with the athletic fabric of sapphire blue, her palm resting on top of her chest. She listens, itching to feel the pulsating thumps of her red, malformed, heart. She does this in an attempt to feel alive, to feel as real and as true as Shouto and Izuku. But there's nothing. Not even a beat.
This is what red is. It's all things justified and perfect, shaken and sturdy, stiff and crooked. Red is the rattling of a rusty snake or the dripping venom of its piercing fang. It's bent at every angle and is screaming at every chance. Red is loud and destructive, hopelessly desperate. Everything red is wrong.
It is in this moment, Hidaka decides, that she doesn't like the color red very much.
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Piros- hungarian. [red]