***
[ 9:43 AM, Wednesday ]
Eli?
I heard you got a fever
How are you?
[ 10:35 AM, Wednesday ]
Remember that daredevil thing? Todays the reporting
I don't mind doing it by myself,
I just thought I should tell you
Hey just an update
We got a perfect score
Though it wouldve been better if you reported it with me
[ 10:56 AM, Wednesday ]
Kaminari isnt here either
I heard he got a fever too
Get well
[ 11:03 AM, Wednesday ]
Please
[ 3:08 PM, Wednesday ]
Im coming over later
Do you want a bento?
Im making one for Haru too
[ 4:29 PM, Wednesday ]
:(
[ 5:01 PM, Wednesday ]
jus got my phone im so sorry i cant use my phone cuz of radiation or sumn idk my dad wont let me and my mind is still messed up. im glad the reporting went great i owe u one.
you don't have to come here
I don't?
You don't want me to?
i just said u don't have to
...i didnt say i dont want u to
Im coming over
_____
"Haru! Don't go to your sister's room! It's freezing in there-" Hikaru's golden eyes lands on the teenager standing outside of her house. "Oh. You're Eicchan's friend... Bakugou, right?"
"Katsuki is fine. She's here, right?" He shifts nervously on his feet. "Eli, I mean." He tried his best to act normal when he was talking to Eli's mother, though they already met a couple of times.
"Ah, Katsuki. Yes! She's here– Haru!" Haru's head popped out of the door, causing the mother to open the door wider.
"Kacchan!" He points to him, stars in his eyes when he had not seen the teenager in a few weeks.
Katsuki looked down and saw the cute little brother of Eli. "Haru!" He exclaimed, kneeling down and grabbing him in his arms.
Hikaru saw the change in Haru's expression when he saw her eldest's friend. "You two know each other?" She tilts her head and asks.
Katsuki picks him up and walks into their house. "I– I mean Eli, invited me– us to Little Stars a few weeks ago." He stammered.
Hikaru nodded. "Ah, I see." She spots the paper bag Katsuki was holding on his left. "What's that?"
Katsuki looks down. "Oh! This is uh, bento I made for Eli and Haru."
Why am I so nervous around her?
He puts Haru down and gave one of the bento boxes to him. "This is yours."
"Yay!" He cheered, jumping up and down. This cute little action of Haru made Katsuki's heart soar. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!!"
"Welcome, kid." He ruffles Haru's bright orange-yellow hair– a shade lighter than Eli's. "Is Eli okay?"
Haru puts a frown on his face, then shaking his head side-to-side. "Lee doesn't feel well. I couldn't see her today." He cooed.
Katsuki noticed how Haru was talkative when it was just the two of them. He stands back up, then cocked his head to the side. "You can't see her?"
"She's isolated in her room." Kojin walked into the room wearing his white lab coat. "Who even told her the idea that she can manipulate lightning?" He scowled, crossing his arms.
"Oh, I don't know..." Katsuki shrunk.
A certain Pikachu, Aozuma.
"Even if she paired it with her Godspeed just so she could stop motion and time, Eli doesn't have good reflexes She's too slow to react." He shook his head in disapproval. "Now, look at what she did to herself."
Even if he was her father, it looked bad to even put the blame on his daughter. Katsuki noticed how bitter her father was in this little incident. "What? I'm sure she tried her best–"
Kojin spins around to face him, now acknowledging that there was another male in the house. "Her best? Well," He scoffs, clicking his tongue and walking away from the three. "–I guess her best wasn't enough."
The younger teenager was bewildered by Kojin's statement. How the hell could he say that to her? Even if she didn't, she still tried, didn't she? "Eli isn't–"
"Dad? ..." Haru tugged on Katsuki's pants as he watched his father walk away.
"Don't mind him too much, Katsuki..." Hikaru puts a palm on Katsuki's raised shoulders, attempting to calm him down. "He just doesn't want Eicchan sick." She smiled at him.
Katsuki turned around and met Hikaru's loving eyes. From there he deduced that Eli got the beautiful shade of yellow in her irises from her mother and the alluring shade of red from her father. "Yeah," He nodded. "–I understand."
Hikaru flashed another smile as she left him to go up to her room. "Oh, and before I forget," She spins around, "–Don't worry if she's... off... when she talks to you." She says warily.
The ash-blonde blinks at her in curiosity.
"She's kinda high on medication right now. And the room is freezing cold, I suggest you don't take off your jacket." Then finally leaves him.
He nodded then proceeded upstairs. When he reached the second floor, he couldn't help but look at the opposite hallway from where Eli's room was and flickered his eyes to the entrance of the attic– her secret attic.
It's been a long time since I got up there...
He dismissed the thought then knocked on the door twice. "Eli?" Knock knock, "I'm coming in..." Katsuki hissed at the cold doorknob. "It's cold?"
Right, her mom told me the room's freezing, but what for?
He opens the door slowly and felt the cold come out, "Fuck, it really is freezing!" He shrilled. He looks inside and his eyes caught Eli sitting on the bed wrapped in her white comforter like she was a human burrito.
"Ah-choo!" She sneezed, opening her eyes slowly when she hears her bedroom door open. "Katsuki?"
Katsuki felt his heart relax when he saw her for the first time today. "Hey..." He voiced out, a visible grin sitting on his face.
"No, you're not Katsuki."
He drops his smile. "Sorry, what?"
"Katsuki doesn't have horns coming out of his head."
Katsuki stops in surprise. "Horns?" Oh right, she's probably high on her medication– or what her mother says. "It's me."
"You're the devil."
"Is that how you see me?" He walked up to her desk and placed down the bento and his school bag which he brought with him.
Eli chuckles, her voice shallow and dazed. "That's how everyone sees you." She yawned. "Can't believe I got struck by lightning."
"Poor you."
"Alexa, play 'Thunderstruck' by AC/DC!"
"Wait, what?!"
"Now playing, Thunderstruck by AC/DC."
Katsuki averts his gaze to the device on her desk. "Oi, are you serious?! How drugged are you?!"
"Thunder!" She sang, shaking her head despite it making her very dizzy.
"Eli, stop singing– isn't your head throbbing?!"
'I looked round
And I knew there was no turning back!'
"Hey, those lyrics fit well with me!"
"Alexa, stop." The music abruptly stopped. "Oi, you're scaring me." He huffed, getting worked up by her sudden singing.
"Ugh, you're such a drag." She squints her eyes to the bento box sitting on her desk table. "Is that my bento?!" She lights up.
Katsuki looked back, "Oh, this? Yeah," He turns the desk chair around and sat down. "–but I'm kinda starving so I guess I'll eat–"
"I'm the one sick here, not you!" She laughs, immediately morphing into a coughing fit. "So-sorry,"
The younger teenager suddenly got reminded that she was still sick. He took the meal from his hands and the plastic utensils in the paper bag and places it next to her. "Fine. I guess starving for a friend is a good cause of death."
The girl gladly accepts the meal sitting on her bed. "Itadakimasu!" She yelps in joy, then opening the cover revealing the meal he had prepared for her.
Katsuki thought about Eli the whole time he was making them, of course, he won't tell her that. He opted to make the theme of the bento stars and sun– things that reminded him of her.
He watched her gobble down her meal with a smile on his face. By now, he forgot the extreme cold present inside the room. Just watching over her brought warmth to him. His eyes dart to Eli's face and reached out his hand to check her temperature.
Eli felt the gaze and glanced at him, then seeing his hand draw close to her. "Wait!–" She leaned back away from him, still holding her food.
Katsuki recoils. "What?"
"You can't touch me! I'm above fifty-degrees right now, you might burn yourself if you touch me!" The food in her mouth muffling her voice.
He leans back on his chair. "Above fifty-degrees?"
Eli adjusts herself before clarifying. "Whenever I get fevers or the flu, my body gets hot and I subconsciously use my quirk to cool it down, but it always ends up heating it up more," She takes another bite, "Weird, right?"
"Weird. Like you." His lip curls up.
"Shut up."
"So is that the reason why this room's cold as hell?"
"Yup." She says, popping the 'p'. "Cold as hell. The irony." She chewed some more. "That's a figure of speech right?"
"Look at you, you're getting smart, Tangerine." He chuckled, then turned around to face her desk. "Well, I guess I should tell you about the stuff we did in class today."
Eli groaned, putting the empty bento box on the ground below her bed. "Are you obsessed with school, or something?"
"Not obsessed, just intelligent."
"Ha ha." She slowly lays back down on her bed, hugging a pillow on her chest. "I'm gonna sleep, don't even bother asking me some mathematical equations."
Katsuki opens his bag and took out his notebook. He wrote down everything they did today for Eli. "We have a quiz tomorrow in Heroics."
"What's it about?" She murmured.
"Just the different quirk theories All Might discussed. You remember those right?" He flips to the next page. "Right?"
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever." Eli nuzzled her face deeper.
"What are the three quirk theories besides the quirk singularity one?"
"There's Cosmic Quirk Theory, Artificial Quirk Theory..."
"Then the last one is? ..." Come on, Tangerine. You're close.
"Quirkline or the Quirk Evolution Theory. That's the... one..." Just like that, Eli fell asleep. Her mind went blank and her breathing became steady.
He nodded. "Good. Cosmic Theory suggests that a person may manifest a quirk that can deal with the laws of the stars or that concerns the celestial objects and phenomena. Artificial Quirk, on the other hand, suggests that the quirkless can manifest a manmade quirk from cells and genes. Quirkline Theory states that," He turned around, and saw the peaceful girl sleeping soundly on her bed. "–And you're already asleep."
The girl's face was hiding under her pillow, but he knows that she wasn't faking her sleep– he knew she wasn't one to fake it. All that he could hear was the faint sound of Eli breathing into the cloth.
He sighed, beginning to feel tired as well. His eyes flickered up to the girl and a soft, loving smile tugs on his lips. Ever since that night in Tokyo, Katsuki involuntarily looks out for her. He could count the times when he would walk home with her and put his hand out whenever she trips on her own foot, or when he switches places with her when she . He never noticed how he started to care about her.
But, more than anything? He was relieved Eli was in the comfort of her house rather than the general hospital.
I'm glad you're okay.
_____
"Oh, are you about to leave?"
Katsuki stepped out of Eli's ridiculously cold bedroom and met Hikaru along the way. "Uh, yeah... I'm about to leave, sorry for–"
Hikaru stops him, "No, no! It's okay," She smiled at him.
He looked up at her, observing the pastel yellow bathrobe while she carries a laundry basket– two of them. "Do you need help? I can carry those for you–"
The mother laughed at him. "Such a gentleman, but I can handle it!" She raised the two baskets up in the air in each of her palms. "See? I'm not the number four hero for nothing!"
Yeah, right... forgot. "Ah, I see." He nodded, a bit embarrassed that he asked such a thing. "I wasn't saying that you're–"
"Weak?" She lowers them and passed by Katsuki, he followed behind her. "You're saying I'm weak?"
"What?! Hell no, I wasn't!" His face gets flushed as he disagrees. "I wouldn't tell–"
She places the baskets down again. "I was kidding, Katsuki." She gives a sneaky smile. "Besides, a lot of men already told me that. Why'd you think I became a hero?"
The laundry room was near the kitchen, Katsuki was just standing near the laundry room's door. "Well, I don't really see why they would call you weak."
Can't believe I'm casually talking to the best female hero in Japan. I've read about her, she's come a long way from being a rookie in Sir Nighteye's agency to reaching the top ten. After getting married to Akimoto Kojin, both of them had improved together and reached the title.
"Men today and men then were different, Katsuki." She chuckled. She walked out of the room to the kitchen and went ahead to prepare a drink for herself. "Care for a cup of tea?"
A cup of tea? Does she want anything from me? "But it's getting late, I don't wanna be a bother."
"Based on Eicchan's stories of you two, I think I can say that you aren't a bother. To her at least." She brings out a mug and pours hot water for Katsuki's drink. "Sencha or Gyokuro?"
"Gyokuro, please, thank you." He took the most familiar seat to him. The barstool when he cooked in her kitchen. "Does Eli get sick often?"
Hikaru drops the smile sitting on her face. "Eli's prone to sickness in general. She gets fevers at least every two to three weeks."
I bet it's because of her overheats. "Did the doctors say anything about it?"
She sat down in front of Katsuki, sipping from her mug. "It's in her genes." She lied. It was because of her overheats. Hikaru doesn't wanna think too much of it. "You're seventeen, yeah?"
"Sixteen."
"Ah, right. I forgot Eli's a year older than most of her friends; though, her height says otherwise." She snickers.
Katsuki nodded, smiling.
I should ask her about my mother. She should remember her, right?
"Do you... know someone named Mitsuki?" He asked, holding his cup of tea by his mouth, taking a small sip.
Hikaru does the same. "Your mother? How could I not know her, she's a friend of mine. Has she been well?"
So she does remember her. In the back of his head, he didn't know why he would ask in the first place. "Yeah, she's doing great."
"She tells me about you all the time, well, at least, when we see each other." She stares at the cup she was holding, a small smile tugging her lips. "She raised you well, Katsuki."
Katsuki widens his eyes at her. "What do you mean?"
Hikaru meets his eyes and grins. "Mitsuki always told me about how she wanted you to grow up to be someone classy, dresses well, nice to girls– a gentleman." She rests her chin on her hands, "You're not exactly classy, but you got the rest of them."
Katsuki looked away, "Tch. That old hag."
The woman laughed. "You got her attitude too!" She looks at their family picture hanging on the wall above them. "Eli is just like a copy of me, always smiling, always laughing, the life of the party."
He nodded, slowly looking up to see the family picture. There were no bandages on Eli's arms, and it looked like she was around 10 or 11 years old.
"I've realized I've never talked to a teenager other than Eli before," Katsuki finds Hikaru's eyes locked on his. "Keiji wasn't one to talk to me heart-to-heart."
He smirked to himself. "Isn't he shy?"
"He's not shy. He's just... I don't know." She pauses, "Ever since he and Eli started dating when they were thirteen, he changed, Eli didn't notice but I did." A shrug came from Hikaru. "He was really hard to talk to."
Changed? After they started dating? "Changed how?" Now I'm getting curious.
"Not really when they started dating, after like, two years I'd say." She shook her head in disbelief. "Keiji must've felt like he had to love her. His mother loved Eli– too much that she even considered asking me to think about them getting married someday."
"Married?!" Katsuki covers his mouth when he raised his voice. "You mean to say, they were supposed to be... arranged?"
"Arranged, that's a big word. I knew from the start Keiji was hiding something from Eli, he knew she loved him more than a friendly way, but he couldn't also break the heart of his mother. Eli was different in her eyes, says she was 'what she wanted in a wife'."
"But, she told me they broke up?" Am I seriously talking about Eli behind her back?
"Oh, they did. After a few years they've gotten, distant. Their breakup led Eli to avoid any relationships after Keiji. She doesn't want to think much of it, she was focusing on this... dream of hers." She says warily.
Katsuki slumped his shoulders and was somehow disappointed in what he learned. "Avoid relationships?"
"Katsuki, you know that dream of hers, right? Looking at how determined she is, and how close she is to getting it, I don't think she would give a new relationship a second thought."
"So... she won't want a relationship?" His eyes fall down as well as his face.
Hikaru pursed her lips. "Maybe, that's for her to decide." She gets another cup for her, "She should do that more, deciding for herself, I mean." She confesses.
"Deciding for herself?"
Hikaru glances at him, then back at her cup. "As a hero, you're bound to protect everyone, right? Even as an aspiring hero?"
The teenager furrows his eyebrows as he agreed.
"Though, I must admit, there a lot of times where I can't protect the ones that need the most protection." Like my daughter, "Because they believe that protecting them makes us think that they're weak."
"I-I don't get what you mean?"
Hikaru's golden eyes find his. "Eli isn't weak." She paused. "But she isn't strong either."
What does she-
"You're her friend, right?"
"Yeah."
"As her friend, you would want to protect her, right?"
Hikaru and Katsuki, though they've never mentioned it, thought about Eli at the same time. Katsuki thinks that Hikaru was telling about how hard it is for her to see Eli in that condition every time; her in her bandages, the burn marks never fading away. He thinks that Eli's stubbornness is what led to Hikaru thinking that she couldn't take care of herself.
"Eli never listens, but somehow, after she began to study in UA, she began to change." She explained, a sad look on her face. "Maybe it was because of her new friends, or the teachers there, or highschool in general. But I know she listens to someone, maybe someone who's different from her."
"How can you tell?" Katsuki grows interested.
Hikaru thought of an answer, she looks into his eyes, and found it. "She met you, didn't she?"
His heart fluttered, unbeknownst to him. He scoffs, then turned into a nervous laugh. "You're saying, I-I'm the cause of her changing?" He smirks, "She doesn't even listen to me!"
Hikaru forms an 'o' with her mouth. "Oh, so I guess it wasn't you then." She turns away.
Katsuki tenses. Wait, she was testing me?! "Uh, though, I don't know yet–"
"Is it Todoroki's kid then?" She mumbled then looked straight at him. "Anyways, still. You're her friend, can you promise me that you'll take care of her? Despite all the shenanigans she may have caused around you?"
Katsuki holds back his breath. "Why are you asking me? Doesn't Eli have hundreds of friends?"
"Out of a hundred, you're the only one that visited her tonight. I think that's saying a lot." She shook her head, chuckling.
She sticks with me a lot, she always follows me around. If we're not together somehow the universe finds a way to take us together. "Sure. I'll protect her. You can trust me."
_____
A/N:
my sleep schedule broken here's an update at 3 in the morning
also, question: what do you think of katsuki and hikaru's interaction at the end? especially the 'is it todoroki's kid then?' LMAOOOO