KATSUKI BAKUGO POV
The smell of that sludge wouldn't leave my nose.
It didn't matter how many times I scrubbed my skin until it was raw and bleeding. Every time I closed my eyes, I could still feel that suffocating, oily filth sliding down my throat, cutting off my air, making me feel... weak.
And I hated being weak more than I hated anything else in this world.
The two days since the incident had been a living hell of "pity." That was the only word for it. The teachers at school looked at me like I was a cracked piece of porcelain. The extras in the hallway whispered as I walked by, not about how powerful my Quirk was or how I'd held out for so long, but about how the "Symbol of Peace" had to bail me out.
And then there was Deku.
Every time I thought about that quirkless, useless nerd running toward me with that pathetic, terrified look on his face, I wanted to put my fist through a wall. He had no power. He was a nothing. A pebble in my path. Yet, when the "pros" were standing around with their thumbs up their asses, he was the one who moved.
It was an insult. A direct, stinging slap to everything I believed about strength.
"Katsuki! Dinner's on the table! Stop brooding like a damn gargoyle!" my mother yelled from downstairs.
I growled, kicking my desk chair before stomping down. Dinner was a tense affair. My old man kept giving me these cautious, "Are you okay, son?" looks that made me want to explode the dining table.
"The news mentioned you again today," my dad said softly, passing the rice. "They said your spirit was impressive, holding off a villain like that."
"I don't need the news to tell me I'm impressive," I snapped, shoving a mouthful of spicy tofu into my face.
"They also mentioned the other boy," Mitsuki added, her eyes sharp as she watched me. "The one who ran in. Izuku really surprised everyone, didn't he?"
I slammed my chopsticks down. "He's a damn idiot! He could've died! He didn't do anything but get in the way!"
"He moved when no one else did, Katsuki," she said, her voice unusually quiet. She didn't yell back this time. She just looked at me with a weird kind of knowing sadness. "Strength isn't everything. It's about showing up for those at their time of need."
I didn't finish my dinner. I stormed back upstairs and slammed my door so hard the frames in the hallway rattled.
I flopped onto my bed, staring at the ceiling. My phone sat on the nightstand, dark and silent.
That was the other thing.
Usually, if I screwed up or if something remotely embarrassing happened to me, I'd have a dozen notifications from that annoying Fuse-box, Riko. She lived for this kind of crap. She would have been the first one to call me "breath down my neck" or make some snide comment about how I needed a "real hero" to tuck me in at night. She was a goading, irritating, thick-headed brat who never missed an opportunity to remind me that she was just as strong as I was.
But for two days? Nothing.
No texts. No missed calls. She hadn't even shown up to our usual training spot under the bridge.
Maybe she's just busy with that 'Kira' crap, I thought, trying to convince myself I didn't care. Probably drawing another one of those depressing-ass manga chapters where everyone dies.
But the itch wouldn't go away. Riko Akabane didn't do "quiet." Even when she was being a hermit, she'd send a meme or a spoiler just to piss me off.
I scrolled through our last conversation. It was from the day before the incident. She'd sent a picture of a cat that she said looked like me when I was angry, just to piss me off.
I looked at the time. It was nearly 9:00 PM.
"Whatever," I muttered, grabbing my hoodie. "She probably just thinks I'm a loser now, too."
The thought stung more than the sludge. I'd known her since we were brats. She was the only person who actually kept pace with me. She was the only one I didn't have to look back for. If she was suddenly deciding that I wasn't worth the rivalry anymore because I got caught by some sewer-trash villain...
"Katsuki! Where the hell do you think you're going?" my mother barked, but I didn't stop.
"Out!" I yelled back, grabbing my shoes and shoving my feet into them. "I need air! Just stay off my back for five minutes!"
I heard the front door slam behind me, the sound final and sharp in the quiet evening. I didn't have a destination or at least, that's what I told myself as I started walking. But my feet knew exactly where they were going. My body was on autopilot, carving a path through the neighbourhood as if it had a mind of its own.
I didn't realize I was walking toward her new apartment complex until I was already two blocks away.
The high-rise loomed over the neighbourhood, a testament to how much money she was actually making off those stories. I stood at the gate, feeling like an idiot. What was I gonna do? Ring the buzzer and ask why she hadn't insulted me lately?
"Hey, why aren't you making fun of me for almost dying?" Yeah, that sounded real heroic, Bakugo.
I stayed there for a long time, hidden in the shadows of a streetlamp, staring up at the floor where I knew her unit was. The lights were on, but the curtains were drawn tight. There was no silhouette of her hunched over a drawing tablet, no sign of life.
I remembered the way she'd looked the last time we spoke. She'd been pale. Tired. She'd blamed it on "overworking and deadlines" and I'd been enough of a moron to just take her word for it. But thinking back... she'd been breathing harder during our spars. Her reaction time had been off by a fraction of a second.
If she's sick and didn't tell me...
I tightened my grip on the straps of my bag. Part of me wanted to storm up there, kick her door down, and demand to know why she was acting like an extra. But another part of me, the part that was still reeling from the feeling of being helpless in that alleyway, stayed frozen.
I wasn't used to worrying. Worrying was for the weak.
"Fine," I whispered into the cold night air. "Stay in your tower, Fuse-box. I don't need your damn pity anyway."
I turned around and started the long walk back home. I'd see her at school And when I did, I'd blast that "annoying look" right off her face. I'd prove to her, to Deku, and to the whole damn world that I was still the one at the top.
But as I walked, the silence from my phone felt heavier than ever.
I hated it. I hated every second of it.
.....domain expansion
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....author's island
...welcome ch- ahem, I think its bout time I used....................... an author's note chapter.