Chapter Text
Two weeks after Ochako’s confrontation with Toga, she finds herself at the tail end of a spar with a far more heroic and less criminal opponent.
She swerves past Kirishima, failing to lay a finger on him yet again. It’s a careful balance she’s playing with here: on one hand, if she wants to use her quirk on him, she’ll have to make contact; on the other, Kirishima will surely try to land a winning blow with his hardening if she gets in too close.
Her opponent is aware of this as well, given how long they’ve been circling each other for, one making a move, the other moving away. Ochako’s calves burn with every step she takes, and there are small bleeding lines littered across her arms from earlier in their fight, before they reached this careful stand-off that’s been going on for far too long.
Kirishima is looking at her methodically, either deciding what to do next or trying to predict her next move. Then, suddenly, his eyes break that harshness for a moment, and his once-fighting stance weakens just slightly. His eyes still retain that same spirit, only a little hesitant now.
For one crushing moment, Ochako thinks he’s gonna call it off, ask if she’s okay, or if she wants to stop. She knows what she looks like. Her fatigue presents itself loudly. In the slight tremble in her hands, the quick rise and fall of her chest, the uneasiness in her steps, the painful flush in her cheeks, she knows how her weakness bubbles to the top for everyone to see. For everyone to pity. It makes her want to throw up.
And maybe it’s a pathetically insecure thought to be having, and maybe she’s just making something out of nothing, but regardless, Ochako feels that newly-acquainted heat in her chest send her launching off the mats and charging toward her opponent.
Kirishima’s eyes go wide with the unforeseen attack. He barely has time to activate his hardening and still move out of the way. Ochako just changes directions, however, roughly spinning back over to rush at him from behind. Once again, Kirishima barely dodges out.
No stopping now. No holding back.
Her changing directions, rushed attacks, and sudden rush in power and objective all serve her well, sending Kirishima reeling as he tries to catch up or even get his own hit in. Still, simply confusing her opponent is not what she’s here for. She has to win this.
She charges towards him again once she’s made enough space for him to decide on a move. His upper body is fully hardened as he rushes toward her at a twin pace. It’ll be a direct attack; she either dodges and prolongs their battle or faces the full impact of Kirishima’s quirk at full speed.
She chooses neither. As the two are a hair away from converging, Ochako sinks to the ground, shoes squeaking against the floor as she angles her body so she doesn’t crash into Kirishima’s legs. Rather, just as she passes him by, she reaches out with one hand and grasps his ankle, all five of her fingertips touching bare skin, activating her quirk.
Twisting her body around, Ochako takes his other ankle in grip and flips his, now weightless, form into the air. And just as she lets go to send Kirishima circling back to the ground, her hands meet in the air once more, joining her fingertips together.
“Release!”
Her opponent is sent crashing to the ground with the full force of gravity meeting him at the end. She’s won the match.
—
“Uraraka-san, that was incredible!”
Ochako turns around to see Deku, Tsuyu, and Iida bounding toward her from where she’s resting on one of the benches, nursing some of the cuts she received in her spar. Kirishima had laughed good-naturedly as he took her hand to help him get back up. He’d said it was a good fight and that it made him realize he needed to get better at thinking on his feet. He even complimented her tenacity! He was so sportsmanly that it honestly made her feel a little bad about projecting her own insecurities onto the guy during their battle.
Still, winning against someone she considers to be one of her strongest classmates made her feel light and weightless in a way not even Zero Gravity could achieve. Ochako could get used to this feeling, she thinks.
She beams as her friends reach her, Tsuyu taking a seat right next to her on the bench as Deku and Iida stand in front of her excitedly.
“Ochako-chan, I’ve never seen you move like that before!”
“You totally changed the trajectory of the fight! And the way you utilized both your quirk and your martial arts training was inspired!”
Ochako blushes at the onslaught of praise as she brings the towel up to her face, trying to hide her big smile. “Thanks, you guys, but it wasn’t anything too special,” she plays down nervously, always bashful with this kind of attention.
“Wasn’t anything?” Deku gapes as if she’s personally offended him. “Uraraka, you were amazing!”
Ochako’s eyes widen at his bluntness, heat reaching her face. She bites her cheek, not knowing what to say. Her reaction must trip Deku up as he jolts and starts to stutter out his words. “Uhm– not that– I mean you’re always amazing, you’ve just been–” he bumbles with his hands trying to explain himself.
“Kero. What he’s trying to say is that you seem to be feeling a lot better recently.” Tsuyu interrupts helpfully, while also aiming Ochako a knowing look. She saw firsthand how low Ochako had gotten after her loss at the sports festival and the attack on the training camp. She avoids her gaze but nods anyway.
Ochako knows she’s been feeling a lot better, more confidant, less frantic, but it seemed like everyone else was taking notice too. Earlier in the week, Yaomomo pointed out that she’d been smiling a lot more and participating more in class. And just yesterday, Ashido had asked her for her skincare routine because Ochako’s skin was apparently ‘glowing’. She was pretty disappointed when Ochako replied with a singular drugstore brand moisturizer.
“I must agree with our friends, Uraraka-kun, you’ve certainly improved in your performance both training and in class! Tell me, Uraraka-kun,” Iida sits down on her other side and fixes his intense stare on her. “Have you been listening to that white noise playlist I recommended to you?” Iida asks, ever so serious.
Ochako giggles at his tone and flicks his glasses. “Every night Mr. President! I’m becoming a whole new woman,” she says to his utmost delight.
As Iida starts to chatter away about the effects of different kinds of noise frequencies on the psyche, while Deku and Tsuyu interject with a question every once in a while, Ochako absentmindedly traces the faint scar beneath the strap of her tank top, where Toga’s knife plunged right under her clavicle just two weeks previous.
She loves Iida, he’s one of her best friends, but Ochako hasn’t opened that playlist link since he emailed it to her. That isn’t to say her sleep and overall headspace have been significantly improved by nothing, however. She’d tell all her friends about the benefits of regularly getting into scheduled dogfights with a villainess if she could, but she severely doubts they’ll understand. Different strokes for different folks and all.
She feels bad about the secret she’s been keeping these past two weeks, she does, but if it isn’t hurting anyone, if it makes her feel more like herself than she has in her entire sorry life, if it’s finally making her the hero she needs to be then was it really anyone else’s business?
What they don’t know can’t hurt them, Ochako reassures herself, as she feels her phone buzzing quietly in her pocket with new message notifications. Another thing she’s beginning to get used to.
If she smiles a little wider at the sensation, well, then how could that be anybody else’s business either?
—
The first time they arrange something, Ochako is more than a little lost. Toga makes her directions abstract and difficult to follow. She’s pretty sure she’s walked by the same stop sign three times already.
She rubs her shoulder nervously. It still aches from when Toga stabbed her yesterday, a good reminder of the insane nature of voluntarily meeting with the girl. A good reminder that Ochako is choosing to ignore.
Opening up her flip phone, she squints at the texts for the umpteenth time. The sun is so bright outside that Ochako can barely see her screen or whatever new messages she’s receiving from ‘himiko-chan my love ❤️😻🩸💋🫀’.
She should really change that name, shouldn’t she?
Pausing in her futile search, she takes a second to put herself in the shoes of a knife-wielding-most-wanted criminal. If she were trying to find a clandestine spot to meet up with a hero-to-be, where would she look? She walks around like that through the dark and quiet parts of the street for a few minutes before she finds what she’s been looking for.
“I ought to stab you for making me wait so long,” Toga says, not even bothering to look up as she sharpens her knife atop a crate, swinging her legs idly.
“Good thing that’s what we’re here for, then,” Ochako says, voice hopefully not revealing how the sound and sight of Toga still makes her hair stand up on the back of her neck.
Toga looks up at that, sparks bursting in her eyes, a simmering smile on her lips. She rises from the crate as if she’s already raring to go, so Ochako puts a hand up. “Wait. Not yet.”
Toga looks at her curiously, maybe even a bit annoyed, but she stops moving all the same. “I thought we–”
“Yeah. I mean, we will, that’s what this is for but–” she straightens her posture and tries to sound less awkward, lacing some faux sense of authority into her tone. “I wanna set some ground rules first.”
Toga dares to snort at that. “Rules?” Ochako nods stubbornly and tries to not feel stupid for attempting to talk rules with a wanted criminal. Toga stares at her and looks like she might laugh again but, to Ochako’s surprise, lowers herself onto the concrete instead.
She looks up at Ochako, who is kind of stupefied, and pats the spot in front of her. “Come on, I thought you wanted to set some ground rules, Ochako-chan?”
The joke isn’t funny, and Ochako doesn’t laugh, but she does slowly sit on the ground, legs crisscrossed, mirroring Toga’s. She takes a deep breath.
“If we’re gonna do this, I want to make some things clear first.” She puts up one finger.
“Rule one, no stalking.”
Toga scowls. “I already told you, that wasn’t stalking. It was a coincidence we were both at the mall, and I barely followed you around before I revealed myself.”
“You still tried to trick me.”
“And it didn’t work! No harm no foul.”
“Well either way,” Ochako remains firm, “You can’t ambush me at some random place and time. When we fight it’s because we both agreed and planned it out beforehand.”
“We.”
“What?”
“You said ‘you can’t’, but these rules should apply to both of us.” Toga smiles condescendingly and punctuates her words with a pointed finger. “We can’t go staking each other out. Which means you can’t come around looking for me either.”
“I’ve never gone around looking for–” Ochako stops herself when she remembers she certainly had that one time. She blanches.
“Okay, fine. Whatever. We.” She raises another finger. “Two. No extreme violence.”
“Oh, you’re so lame.”
“I mean extreme. Like, nothing life-ending that I– we couldn’t recover from in a few days.”
Toga still looks bummed but nods her head slowly. “So… the knife is still on the table.”
“What table? I’m pretty sure the knife is still under your skirt.”
Tragically, Toga doesn’t laugh at her hilarious quip. “Where do quirks fall in all this, then?”
“That’s what I’m getting to.” Ochako raises another finger. “Three, no transformations.”
Toga gawks, her spine going rigid. “But that’s–” she protests.
“I don’t want you to fight me wearing the skin of an innocent civilian.” Ochako interrupts, arms crossed. “Just for this. You can do whatever you want before or after because that’s outside of our agreement.”
She’d spent a lot of time thinking over that one. Both the boy and woman that Toga had disguised herself as before had to have been hurt for Toga to transform into them, regardless of circumstances. The thought by itself made her stomach curl. No, she was holding her ground on this one. No transformations and that was that.
Toga huffs but backs down, nodding again reluctantly.
“So what’s rule four?” She grins, and Ochako knows she’s gonna say something stupid. “‘Don’t fall in love’? Because I think it’s already–”
“Rule four,” Ochako asserts. “We keep this secret. No telling anybody on our respective sides about this.”
“Right. Because you’re so eager to tell all your hero friends about this, yeah? Y’know,” Toga begins to pick at the frayed edges of her knee-high socks, not meeting Ochako’s eyes. “It kind of feels like these rules are being way more directed towards me than they are towards you.”
Ochako looks away defensively but stays silent, biting the inside of her cheek. Of course the rules are more directed towards Toga, she's the one who’s wanted nationally for breaking, like, twenty different laws in one night. And that's not even counting whatever else she gets up to in her free time. It's only reasonable that these rules be more formatted to keep her in check rather than Ochako.
Still, as correct as she is, she feels a little bad about it.
“Okay, that's fair.” Even though it isn't. “What rules would you propose?”
Toga beams. “Your blood. As long as we're fighting, I get to take what I can.”
“No.” Her response falls out immediately.
Toga scoffs. “What do you mean ‘no’, you think it’s fair only you get something out of this?”
Heat flares in her temples at Toga’s words and the condescending edge of her voice. She wants to insist that yes, it’s fair like this because Toga’s a villain who acts on every urge and only cares about herself, and that yes, Ochako’s already risking so much more than Toga could even comprehend by being here, so yes, obviously this arrangement is fair.
Shame curls in Ochako’s stomach familiarly tight. Another, possibly more sensible, part of her can see how Toga would think that. It certainly looks that way, Ochako setting rules and bossing Toga around to get what she wants out of the girl, while simultaneously refusing any input.
Even if the input is letting her take my blood.
Before she can reconsider any further, Toga attempts to assuage her. “Listen, it would only be during our fights, and only if I can get the upper hand.” Her grin takes on a competitive edge. “So, just fight better than me and you won't even have to worry about it.”
She’d roll her eyes if they weren't busy glaring at Toga. She can see it for the bait it is, dangling a challenge in front of her eyes like Ochako's a dumb fish. Unfortunately, she might just have to take it.
“If it's only during fights…” she trails off, but Toga’s already brimming with glee at her agreement, clapping her hands together fervently. Ochako turns away from the admittedly endearing sight.
“Though, we'll have to reevaluate the terms of rule two if that's going to be rule five.”
“Right, rule two… which was…?”
Ochako sighs and digs out a notepad from her backpack.
In about half an hour, they hammer out seven rules written neatly on the yellow notepad paper in glittery gel pen, at Toga's insistence. The sixth is a simple agreement that they wouldn’t try to extort each other out of confidential information. Meaning, no discussing anything hero or villain-related while they’re here; no secrets shared means no risk of exploitation. Easy for them to agree on.
The seventh is even simpler: the friendship clause.
“As long as we’re doing this, we might as well get to know each other, don't you think?”
Ochako’s immediate reaction is to scoff, roll her eyes, and dismiss Toga’s proposal. After all, the whole point of these rules is to minimize the risk factor of this whole ordeal, swearing herself to actually being friends with the villain is counterproductive at best and dangerous at worst.
But Ochako doesn’t immediately dismiss Toga. She pauses to think about where she is right now and why.
Before, Ochako justified her choice to come here by what she had felt during their last fight, a temporary fulfillment or something Ochako simply lacked, unbounded by any previous walls that had been built by her hands or others.
Like not thinking. Like breathing for the very first time.
And how could that be bad? If this is what she needs to become the hero she wishes so desperately she could be, if it doesn't hurt anyone else, if it never affects anything outside of themselves, then how could it be the wrong move?
Ochako looks back at Toga to find her eager yellow eyes staring back, the thin pupils concentrated on her face. How many times has she seen those eyes in her dreams? How many times has she walked past a dark corner or alley and had to double-take because she could’ve sworn she saw a shock of yellow? How many times and how much longer will it happen?
Six feet deep in those eyes, Ochako confronts another, deeply seated motivation of hers. Toga, horrible and vile and villainous, had sunken her claws into Ochako’s mind and wouldn’t let go. Impossibly, something deep and determined in Ochako demanded to understand Toga. To know what it’s like to float in that infinite yellow galaxy. To get lost. To fall toward the beckoning black holes that lay in the endless space. To take the edges of the black expanse in her hands and pull them apart to peer inside and understand what makes those eyes appear to her even in her dreams. Maybe then she'd kill the curiosity that drove her here, seated on the grimy floor, having a staring contest with a criminal.
A hand, accompanied by the clinking of jewelry, waves in front of her face and pulls Ochako out from her thoughts.
“Still here, space cadet.”
“Okay.” Ochako decides. “Let's be friends.”
Shock flashes through Toga’s face and quickly turns to delight. Toga squeals and throws her arms around Ochako tightly, squeezing her in like a snake strangling its prey.
… Maybe Ochako can afford to be a little nicer in her inner monologue.
“Yay! This is gonna be so much fun, you'll see.”
Ochako grimaces, even as the girl pounces off her to grab her pen. She isn't so sure of Toga's words, but allows her to scribble out the now official seventh rule on the notepad. Maybe she should’ve asked what exactly ‘being friends’ with Toga entails, but the thought seemed hardly consequential as she watched Toga’s wide grin as she held the notepad up.
And finally, in all its sparkly, chickenshit handwriting glory, the rules were set in stone. Almost, anyway.
“So, should we sign it? Make it ‘official’ and whatnot.” She offers Toga the pen and promptly gets her hand slapped away.
“Signatures? Those mean as much as the gum at the bottom of your shoe, Ochako-chan!”
Ochako sighs heavily. “Then how do you want to do it?” she asks, trying to check the soles of her pink sneakers subtly. No gum. Lying villain.
“Blood oath.”
“Why’d I even ask?”
“It’s more binding that way! Please?” Toga gives her what must be an earnest attempt at puppy dog eyes, which doesn’t work as well with eyes so cat-like.
“Okay, just… not too much,” Ochako acquiesces. Toga’s frantic nodding does little to soothe her mind.
“Just a little prick and then we press it to the bottom of the page, like how police officers make you do it,” Toga explains as she pulls her knife out from under her.
“You’d know a lot about that, right?” Ochako snorts.
Toga shakes her head proudly. “Nope! Never been caught, I just see it in the movies.”
Ochako rolls her eyes at the subtle boast but puts a hand out anyway. “Alright, but I get to do my own.” Toga looks sorely disappointed but passes the knife over anyway.
The weight of the object in her hands is odd. Small, yet heavy, and an awkward fit in the soft part of her palm. She wonders what sins Toga has committed with this knife, what people it’s torn away at. Maybe the answer is none, yet, with how sharp and sleek it is. Is Toga the type to clean her weapons afterward? It’s a pressing question, she’d rather not invite an infection.
She looks back to her hands and it suddenly occurs to her that she just agreed to gather blood from her sensitive, quirk-mutated fingerpads. She panics silently over whether this will affect her quirk, but she’s had more safety scissor-related accidents than she’d care to admit, and it’s never affected her before. Besides, she’d rather not chicken out in front of Toga now.
Still very unsure of herself, she finally grips the knife and drives it into her thumb. It takes little force for the sharp point to give way to spotting scarlet.
She swallows, mouth dry, holding her shaking hand in the air as the blood wells up slowly. Hurriedly, she presses her thumb to the notepage, hard enough that it sticks to her finger as she tries to lift it back up. A red spot, flat and unmarred where most people would have fingerprints, sits pretty on the paper.
When she dares to glance back at Toga, her pupils are blown up so wide that her usual invasive yellow hue is little more than a slim suggestion. Wordlessly, Ochako hands back the knife, and Toga grabs it, stabbing it into her thumb like it’s nothing. Not her first blood oath, Ochako presumes.
When the blood wells up, she pushes it into the same spot Ochako did on the paper, only angled differently. When she pulls her thumb away it reveals the shape of a lumpy, blood-red heart. The gesture is almost cute and childish when she ignores the context of literally everything.
“There! Now we’re bound to this agreement, nothing to worry about.” Despite her previous objection, Ochako does feel weirdly obligated to adhere to the glittery notepad now. She hopes Toga feels the same way.
Or maybe she’s just happy she egged on Ochako enough to willingly stab a knife in her finger.
“Now,” Toga says, pushing herself off the rocky ground before offering a hand out to Ochako. “Shall we begin?” her voice takes on a stupidly fancy edge to it and Ochako huffs out a small laugh.
“We shall,” she replies, only half as fanciful as she makes to take Toga’s hand.
Just as they’re about to make contact, Toga abruptly tears her hand away while Ochako falls forward, gripping onto nothing.
No. Way.
“You snooze, you lose, Ochako-chan!” Toga laughs hysterically as she darts away, clearly goading for a chase. Tragically, Ochako’s gonna give her just that.
The moment her rubber soles scuff against the asphalt, she feels that ignition inside her start to rekindle since their last fight. Slowly she lets herself detach from the harsh reality of her goals and sets herself in this moment, in the rhythmic thumping of her heart, in the summer city air infiltrating her lungs, in Toga and her biting laughter that permeates her mind.
Even steeped in the stakes of it all, Ochako can’t find it in herself to regret this. Not yet.
—
Things could be going a lot better.
Ochako finds herself flat on the ground during one of their fights, losing quite remarkably. Toga’s knees are digging into her thighs painfully and Ochako’s tried and failed to throw her off twice already.
When Toga lifts her knife, Ochako feels that familiar terror creep down her spine. Rule list be damned, Ochako won’t be getting stabbed today.
So she does the only thing she can think to do and zeros Toga’s knife before it ends up in her arm or something, floating it at least ten feet away from them.
“Huh.” Toga pouts, hands hanging lamely at her side before she goes to retrieve something from her thigh holster. “Don’t worry, I’ve got a spare–” she says, before Ochako unceremoniously cuts her off with a punch to the gut.
—
“Wait! Time out!”
Ochako stiffens up and abruptly pauses in her next attack. They hadn’t ever stopped for something before; had she taken it too far? She slowly walks over to Toga’s crumpled form to see her clutching her forearm.
“Are you…?” She trails off sheepishly. Toga lifts her arm up to Ochako’s face to inspect the injury. Ochako bends over to get a closer look only to violently recoil as a blade suddenly slashes forward, barely grazing her face. A fake out. Again.
“Sucker!” The horrid girl sprints away. Ochako grinds her teeth and swears revenge one of these days.
—
“Did this have to happen now?” Ochako grumbles as she messily ties up her hair, still clad in her big pajama shirt.
Toga shrugs, inspecting her knife. “I had an itch to scratch.”
“At two in the morning.” she deadpans. “You know I have an exam in 6 hours?”
“And you still came! You flirt.”
“… Nevermind, I need to kick your ass.”
—
“Are you sure you know how to do that?” Ochako questions nervously as Toga pulls out the needle and thread. Her hand is completely streaked in blood from the open wound on her palm, but somehow Ochako believes her lightheadedness comes more from staring at Toga holding that sharp needle.
“Sure do! Jin-kun taught me how to sew last week and I’m basically an expert now. Check it out!” Toga tugs the side of her skirt forward to show Ochako a vertical tear in the fabric that had been stitched together haphazardly.
And, well, it could be worse?
In reality, Ochako's main concern is avoiding going to Recovery Girl with another lame lie to cover up what she's really been up to. You can only have so many ‘training accidents’ in a week before somebody starts asking questions.
But, honestly, whoever “Jin-kun” is should be struck down for letting Toga walk around thinking she’s a well-versed seamstress, Ochako thinks as the girl grabs her hand and presses the needle lightly to her skin before pausing.
“Oh, you might want to bite onto something. This is gonna hurt.”
“What?”
Then, the needle is stabbing sharply into her skin and the scream that erupts from Ochako's lips is only cut off by Toga slapping her hand over her mouth.
She tuts lightly. “Now I gotta start all over again.”
On second thought, maybe five training accidents in a week isn't so crazy.
—
Her neck strains painfully as she whips her head wildly from side to side, eyes squinting to try and see anything in the dimness of the late afternoon. She had run Toga into a dead-end alley, and that should have meant she’d be right where Ochako was standing now.
Maybe she would have thought that Toga scaled the building or found some other way out if it wasn’t for that feeling. That sense of something being there that she just hasn’t picked up on yet makes her skin crawl and her muscles tense. She knows she’s here.
Toga manifests from behind her, with only the scrape of her loafers on the concrete giving Ochako any warning before she’s being lunged at. She latches herself onto her body, knife in hand, and gets in suffocatingly close like she always does.
It used to throw Ochako off every time, but she’s starting to adjust to Toga’s unrestrained way of fighting.
Toga’s limbs are locked around Ochako tightly, so she does what she can do and sends herself crashing into the brick wall to scrape Toga off of her. She’s not even given a minute to recollect herself as the other girl charges right towards her, barely back on her feet. Ochako narrowly dodges her, but Toga just skids to a turn and attempts the same thing again. She’s so quick on her feet that Ochako can’t keep up.
The frantic nature of her attacks leaves Ochako disoriented, but she’s not going to let that stop her. Toga’s going to keep doing this until she gets Ochako muddled enough that she can get the jump on her, but Ochako won’t let that happen. So when Toga races at her again, she doesn’t get out of the way but charges head-on.
The change in pace surprises but doesn’t deter Toga. And at their point of collision, when Ochako crouches at the last second to pull out Toga’s legs from beneath her, she doesn’t see it coming. Nor does she expect Ochako to use Zero Gravity as she lifts her up easily, only to release it as she crashes back down, now absolutely defeated.
Ochako’s heart is thumping against her chest, which heaves with her struggling intake of air. Using Zero Gravity always had its physical detriment, but the feeling of activating and releasing her quirk was indescribable. Electricity thrums through her veins and her mind releases all the tension that she keeps stored up.
She clenches and unclenches her fists a few times, her fingertips feeling almost as if their buzzing with sensation. Eventually, her breathing evens out, and she turns to find Toga.
Panic sets in for a moment at the sight of Toga crumbled up on the ground, unmoving against the scraps and debris that litter this place. She breathes a sigh of relief when she hears Toga’s irritated groaning start up again.
“That hurt,” Toga says, pouting as she rolls over and sits up slowly. Ochako smiles at her petulance.
“Serves you right.” Ochako dismisses. Toga grumbles about that and shifts, trying to find some leverage to get up. Taking pity on her, Ochako offers out a kind hand.
Toga goes to take it, and just before she can, Ochako swipes it out from under her at the last second.
The look on her face is one Ochako wishes she could photograph to look back on fondly.
“You snooze, you lose, Toga! See you around!” Ochako calls back cheerfully as she walks away. It takes all her strength to not look back at the gobsmacked expression on Toga’s face.
—
“Where are you off to, Ochako-chan?”
Ochako tries and fails not to jump at the sound of Tsuyu’s voice. “Tsuyu-chan! Don’t scare me like that.” Ochako yelps, turning to her best friend and trying to look as relaxed as possible. Not that she has anything to hide about where she’s going this time. This time.
She’s really not a fan of all the sneaking around she’s been doing lately, but it must be endured if she wants to avoid her classmates’ suspicions. The thought of what could happen if she slips up is deeply distressing, but Ochako skillfully handles that by avoiding thinking about it at all.
Tsuyu takes a seat on the couch and takes a bite out of her granola bar. She’s still in her pajamas, she doesn’t usually wake up this early, does she?
After a few seconds of Tsuyu staring blankly at her with her huge eyes, munching on her granola loudly, Ochako remembers that her friend just asked her a question.
“Oh right, I’m going to visit my parents at their house today,” she says, plopping down on the couch next to Tsuyu. “It’s been over a month since I last saw them. Some daughter I am, huh?” Ochako jokes. Well, mostly jokes. She does feel like a pretty rotten daughter a lot of the time.
“But you saw them not that long ago,” Tsuyu says, taking another bite of her breakfast.
Ochako furrows her brows in confusion, so Tsuyu elaborates. “When we all went to go see that terrible vampire movie at the mall. We were going to go back to the dorms but you said you were going to your parent’s–”
“Oh, that! Ha ha, yeah, guess it wasn’t that long ago I was just exaggerating because y’know my mom’s been calling me like crazy to get me to visit, she makes it feel like it’s been forever–” Ochako rambles on so quickly she nearly bites her tongue off.
How could she have forgotten that stupid lie she told back then? She should seriously start keeping track of what she tells people.
Thankfully, Ochako’s prattle is interrupted by a breakfast bar being thrown at her face.
“I know you don’t like to make breakfast so early, but you’ll probably get hungry on the train ride over there,” Tsuyu explains as she rises from the couch. The gesture is so considerate in a way that’s so typical of her best friend. Ochako smiles and unwraps the bar as she lets herself relax again. There’s really nothing to worry about so early in the day.
The train ride back home takes forever like it always does. It’s a little more bearable when the sun isn’t actively trying to melt everybody, but the boredom is the real killer for Ochako. Eventually, she makes it off the train and treks over to her parent’s house.
The house that stands before her is small and simple, but beautifully built with loving, hopeful hands. That's what her mom says, anyway.
Her dad used to lift her atop his broad shoulders and tell her funny stories of way back when they were building the thing. Of him and Mom and Uncle and their friends planning and constructing what they called their ‘very first company project’.
There's a photograph displayed on their walls that captures them after they’ve just about completed the house. Her dad, face young and shiny, grinning with his arms around his brother and wife. They're sharing cold beers on a gifted couch, their very first piece of furniture, smiling like the world was smiling back at them. The only one in the photo not holding a drink is her mom. Unbeknownst to her dad at the time, Ochako was also in the frame.
When she was little, Ochako would open the big picture albums just to study her parents’ happy, hopeful faces. She stopped looking at them eventually, as the faces of the people in those photos started to look further and further away from the strained, saddened faces of her parents. Life can get hard, she knows that, but it never really let up on her folks.
Ochako crosses the little stone trail to get to her front door, not before stopping to pour some of the contents of her water bottle on the wilting potted plants outside.
The sight of their dry, crumbling leaves makes her stomach sink ever so slightly. Her mom loves these plants, but whenever things get tough, she tends to forget to take care of them. How have things been with her parents? The guilt of knowing used to consume her back when she lived with them, but not knowing at all might just be worse.
With a stomach full of stones, she opens the front door and steps inside.
“Mom? Dad? I just–” she calls out right before she’s tackled into a bear hug by her mom. “Ochako! What are you doing here, baby?” Mom coos, pulling away from their embrace to smooth and fuss over her hair and clothes. Ochako feels her eyes water a bit. She missed the softness of her mom’s skin and the smell of her perfume.
“I sent you a text earlier, did you get it?” she asks, as clearly as she can with her mom squishing her cheeks together.
Mom rolls her eyes. “That broken old thing never shows me anything! You should’ve called, I would’ve started making breakfast.” As her mother yells at her dad to stop whatever he’s doing in the yard to come inside, Ochako feels the tension in her shoulders ease up. Maybe things are just fine after all.
And then her dad limps into the room on crutches.
“Dad! What happened?” She runs over and hovers in front of her father scanning his injuries. His right pant leg is rolled up and reveals a cast over his ankles and foot. He’s also got a bandage over what looks to be a pretty nasty scar right above his brow.
“Good to see you too, sport!” He leans into one crutch so that he can lift his hand to ruffle her hair. “Dad.” Ochako insists. Her dad sighs and reluctantly answers her. “There was an accident at this project I was managing. I got the worst of it, thankfully, so no one tried to sue or anything.”
“Are you okay? Did this–”
Dad waves her off like this is just some minor issue. “Hey, don’t worry about it, kid. You’re home, let’s make the most of it!”
His words do nothing to lessen Ochako’s worries or the heaviness she’s beginning to feel gathering on her shoulders. She smiles anyway.
—
They do make the most of it, as her dad said. Her parents’ cooking is as delicious as it always is, they watch her and her dad’s favorite movies, she tells them about her classmates and all their craziness and about her winning her match yesterday, and they even go to that mochi shop she sometimes got to go to as a kid whenever they had the extra cash.
She insisted they didn’t go this time but Dad assured her it was a special occasion. Even if the ‘special occasion’ seems to just be that she visited for the first time in a long while.
Ochako feels bad. Really, really bad, actually. She hadn’t meant to avoid her own house for this long, she just felt so… guilty. Like every time she’s here and reminded of her parents’ current struggles, she feels ashamed knowing she’s in her cushy little dorm supposedly training to become a great hero. Ochako’s not the smartest nor is she the strongest person in her class. She’s far from either, honestly. What does she have to show for her position in UA? For her stupid hero costume and her fancy uniform?
Her phone vibrates in her pocket insistently. She doesn’t have to open it up to have a good idea of who it is.
The reminder of what she’s doing outside of school, the way she’s jeopardizing her whole future, leaves her feeling sick to her stomach. She silences her phone. The last thing she wants to think about right now is Toga Himiko.
It’s already gotten pretty late by the time Ochako creeps into the kitchen where Mom is scrubbing away at the dishes. Her dad fell asleep not too long ago. She takes a few seconds, not yet making her presence known, wringing her hands together as she thinks of what to say, the way she used to when she was a kid. Was she still a kid? This house certainly made her feel like one.
“Mom?”
Mom jumps at the sound of her voice, but smiles warmly upon seeing her, turning off the water to give her daughter her full attention. “Baby, I didn’t see you there!” She takes notice of Ochako’s tangled hands and wilted posture and frowns. “Everything okay?”
Ochako looks up at her mom and clears her throat. “Mom, is everything okay with Dad? His injury, are you guys…”
“Baby, your dad’s going to be just fine, the doctor said–”
“Not that, Mom, I mean how much did this hurt us? Can he still work? How bad was the medical bill?”
Her mom sighs and smooths her hair down with her hands. “You don’t have to worry about those things, Ochako.”
“But I have to!” Ochako cries. “You don’t have to hide those things from me anymore, I’m not a little kid, I deserve to know,” she says, standing as straight as she can.
Mom looks at her ruefully and then looks away. She brings her hand to her own hair and starts to comb through and tug at it, her own tell.
After a moment, she speaks. “Your father did have to take some time off because of it. The company was already in a bit of a tight spot, but without him being able to be present, things got worse. The medical bills weren’t so bad, but two of the other people who got hurt in the accident insisted that we help with their bills too or they’d make this a legal matter. It wouldn’t have been so bad but things just kept piling up and now…” her mom trails off but the look in her eyes says enough.
Ochako thinks of what to say but draws a blank. She looks at the ground as her eyes begin to sting and a tight knot forms at the back of her throat.
Her mom lets out a heavy sigh and places both hands and her shoulders, pinkies raised. “Ochako. I know you’re just looking out for us, but please, don’t waste your time worrying about this. We’ll be fine, this is just another bump in the road. You should be doing what you want, being with your friends, focusing on school. Things are getting hard over here, but it doesn’t have to be that way for you, Baby.”
Mom’s perfume surrounds Ochako as she feels arms wrap around her. She buries her face in her mom’s shoulder and blinks tears into the soft fabric of her sweater.
“Oh, Ochako, my sweet girl. I know you’ll be an amazing hero one day, you’re already so kind.”
The shame she feels twisting around her heart is one that never really left.
—
After that talk, she tells her mom that it’s gotten pretty late and she has plans the next morning so she ought to head back. It's a lie, one Ochako can't get herself to regret because if she spent the night in her childhood bedroom looking up at the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling, she'd probably throw up.
She's sitting at the station now, sick with pure guilt and helplessness. She figured her parents weren't doing well before she even walked through the door, but she didn’t think things could get so bad without her looking. And, knowing her mom, she probably still found some way to downplay the extent of it to Ochako.
The inside of her cheek aches with how hard she bites down on it. She pulls her clammy arms tight around herself, trying to ignore the discomfort and feel only the tug of her limbs. Anything to alleviate the pressure that she felt pressing down on her.
Because that was the truth, right? Ochako can’t do anything to help her parents, she can barely guilt trip herself enough to call them on the weekends. Ochako doesn’t have the power nor the money to do anything for them, she just has the flimsy promise that one day she will. She hates that. She hates feeling so helpless. She hates how it crushes her, body and soul.
Her teeth bite into her cheek so hard that Ochako feels the inside of her mouth burst with the taste of iron. The feeling of blood in her mouth is almost comforting.
When she looks up, momentarily stirred out of her meltdown, she sees her train has arrived and people are already boarding. She should probably get up.
Standing up is daunting. Her head feels so heavy, as if it might roll right off her shoulders and splatter on the concrete. She sits back down. As Ochako watches people shift through each other to get to the entrance, she pulls out her phone and flips up the screen.
16 unread messages from: ♡
She ignores the texts above and starts typing out her message.
Today 22:08
TO: ♡
Toga? (Read 22:09)
TO: ♡
Come on
Don't be like that
FROM: ♡
so u get to ignore me but i gotta answer u ?
that's not fair
TO: ♡
I was busy (Read 22:11)
I was!! (Read 22:11)
I wanna meet up
FROM: ♡
hm
figured
not like there’s any other reason you text me 🙄
TO: ♡
I wouldn’t do it this late but I’m
stressed
Okay? (Read 22:14)
TO: ♡
Wow
Okay
Toga
I will reply to every single text you send me from now on If you meet up with me this one time
Promise (Read 22:16)
TO: ♡
Please? (Read 22:18)
Himiko?
FROM: ♡
well
ig i have nothing better going on atm 😒
do u wanna go to that place from last time ?
Ochako looks up from her flip phone in time to see the train as it leaves the station. There’s some sort of relief that comes over her from missing the ride right back into her school’s dormitories. She could always trek back and spend the night with her parents. Not to mention, the wait for the next train wouldn’t be too long, if she wanted to forget this and go back home. Wherever ‘home’ is at the moment, if it’s anywhere at all.
She looks back down at her pixelated screen instead.
TO: ♡
Actually I had another place in mind
FROM: ♡
oh ?
TO: ♡
You’ll like it
I'm sure