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Ochako stood in front of the mirror in a pretty dress, accessorized with the inescapable feeling that this was not going to end well.
The problem wasn’t the dress. It was pink, fluffy and cute, just how she liked it. Being dragged to a college party she had no intentions to attend wasn’t the main one probably either, although it was a big part of the issue.
The problem was Mina introducing her to her boyfriend’s roommate, in a poor but predictable – if not recurrent - attempt to get Ochako over her self-imposed singleness.
It wasn’t that Uraraka didn’t want a boyfriend; she was just in no hurry for finding one. First of all, she had a scholarship to keep, what meant dedicating long hours of her day to study. Uraraka was smart enough to admit she wasn’t a natural-born genius and didn’t have half of the dedication Momo, Iida or even Todoroki had to study. She had a part-time job because she refused to rely only on her parents’ allowance. She also had her friends, who she loved dearly, to keep her company in her free time, as scarce as it was.
All things considered, one could say the reason why she was not looking for a boyfriend was that there wasn’t any room in her life for another person right now. As true as this was, it was not the main reason.
Uraraka believed in plenty of things her friends didn’t. She believed in God; she thought we couldn’t discard the existence of aliens yet; she was sure she had seen a ghost when she was a kid. She never walked under a ladder, she would hit a piece of wood three times when someone said something bad would happen, and she avoided black cats. But above all of that, she believed in destiny –- more than believed, she knew that there was someone out there for her, someone who would love her more than anyone else could, someone right.
As the majority of the sensible 19 years old girls, however, she refused to be acknowledged as one believing in soulmates , because a) the whole concept was ridiculous and b) that would be a huge giveaway that she spent too much time reading fanfics before going to sleep.
But she couldn’t discard the existence of soulmates either.
God, she was helpless.
Not helpless enough to hope for anything else than disappointment from this night, though.
Uraraka had heard about him before, of course. Kirishima’s best friend, Bakugou Katsuki, was quite popular in her department. Some of her colleagues from her earlier class liked to sit on the desks next to the windows just to watch him doing his morning jog. More disturbing than that, however, was the reason why Mina decided to introduce them.
“He’s a grumpy workaholic just like you, ‘Chako. You can avoid sleep and not produce enough endorphins together, just like an old married couple.”
Kill her if that wasn’t every girl’s dream man.
Her friend (and neighbor) Iida was kind enough to give her a ride to the karaoke, even though he spent all the time lecturing her about the proper behavior it was expected from a college student. As if she needed any reason to feel more nervous.
Mina cheerfully welcomed her as soon as she entered the crowded place, and true to her friend’s word, Bakugou Katsuki was exactly how she had expected. Even though he was handsome, his distressed expression clearly showed that he liked being here as much as she did.
Not much at all.
“Bakugou, this is my friend Ochako!”
He barely looked at her before turning around to Mina.
“I already told you to stop introducing me to the crazy stalkers, Mina,” he grunted.
Stalker?
“Who the hell would want to stalk you?” she blurted out, indignantly. Wow, good job Ochako. Nice way to make a first impression. And then, she remembered she didn’t care. “Bold of you to assume I’m here because of you, asshole .”
“Ochako!” Mina half-laughed, half-scolded. Her boyfriend,
Kirishima, didn’t even try to pretend he wasn’t having the laugh of his life.
Bakugou, however, was quick to recover from the shock.
“Who are you calling an asshole, round face?”
Round face? Very original.
“The asshole who assumed I’m a stalker,” she answered, frowning. “Again, who the hell would want to stalk someone as grumpy and rude as you ?”
“I can see why you didn’t deny the ‘crazy’ part,” he retorted instead of answering her question. Kirishima and Mina had already conveniently disappeared, in the crowd, living her alone with this self-absorbed idiot. She knew this night was not going to end well. “Why are you here, then?”
“Same reason as you, apparently. I have the worst best-friend ever.” She crossed her arms and gave him an analytical look. “So, what’s the plan?”
“Plan…? I knew you’re crazy…”
“Look, I don’t want to be here. You clearly don’t want to be here either, but the two idiots who have power over us are watching.” She nodded in the direction of Mina and Kirishima shamelessly observing them from a corner. Bakugou saw them too and let out a curse. “So, let’s pretend we are getting along for a while, and then we can escape together and let them come to the wrong conclusions.”
Bakugou considered her for a while, frowning. Uraraka had no idea what was going on in his head, but she didn’t care. There was homework waiting for her in her dorm, and she didn’t have time to waste with grumpy 19 years-old self-absorbed assholes.
Finally, he gave her a genuine, wide smile, and that was when she understood why someone would stalk this handsome bastard.
“Not bad, round face. I agree. Let’s grab something to eat, pretend this isn’t an elaborated form of torture, and then get the hell out of here.”
Surprised but not displeased, she followed him to the bar. They ordered their food and spent the next couple of minutes complaining about lousy friends who had no respect for their life choices. From there, the conversation naturally progressed to college, their classes, their jobs and plans for the future. Uraraka was surprised to learn that Bakugou worked as hard as she, if not more, and Mina’s comment about the lack of endorphins started to make some sense.
Ok, maybe he wasn’t as self-absorbed as she had assumed, if he had humored his best friend request to attend a party he hated to meet someone he didn’t want to.
Kirishima and Mina were nowhere to be found when they finished eating, and that was their cue. They left the karaoke, but only traded a crowded room for a crowded street.
“How did you get here, round face?” Bakugou asked, surprising her once more.
“My friend gave me a ride, but I guess I will walk back to campus. It’s still early.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I will call an uber for you,” he declared, leaving no room for argument. Uraraka wanted to argue but decided against it.
Her self-preservation instinct had always won against her pride, after all.
“Well, it may be an arranged date, but it is a date, after all,” she said, giggling.
Bakugou rolled his eyes and said she was not only crazy but utterly ridiculous.
They stopped next to the plaza clock and Bakugou called the uber for her. Uraraka sat down on the bench, but Bakugou’s eyes were fixed on the ice cream parlor across them.
“What flavor do you like, round face?”
“What? Cherry, but… Hey, do you need to keep calling me that?”
“It suits you,” was all he said, before going to buy the two ice creams.
Sitting under that clock, sharing cherry ice cream, gave Uraraka a strange sense of deja vu, but she brushed that aside. She believed in a great number of unusual things, but deja vus wasn’t one of them.
“Do you believe in something, Bakugou?” she asked, surprising even her.
“Myself,” he answered without missing a beat.
Earlier that night, she would have rolled her eyes to his absurdity, but right now she could only laugh.
“No, I mean… Do you believe in something greater than us? Like God or destiny?”
He considered the question for a minute, which, honestly, was more than she had expected. That, of course, was more about how she saw him than anything else, and she blushed, embarrassed of her misjudgment.
“I won’t say I don’t believe in anything…” he started, slowly. “But I never gave it much thought. Maybe there’s something out there, maybe there isn’t. Who cares? I do believe we have just one life to live, and that we should make the most of it.”
“Oh, I see…”
“How about you?”
“I do believe in destiny,” she promptly answered, maybe in a more enthusiastic way than she should. “I believe there’s a bigger purpose behind everything. We will probably never find out what it is , but I know it’s real.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Oh, well. Things would be boring otherwise, wouldn’t they?”
He rolled his eyes, but there was unmistaken amusement there.
“Somehow, I think your life will be anything but boring, round face.”
The sense of deja vu hit her hard again, and this time it was difficult to ignore. Weren’t they just talking about destiny?
Before she could make up her mind about that, his phone rang.
“Your ride is here,” he informed, getting up.
And for some reason, knowing that their night was over, was all it took.
“So…” she started. “This wasn’t so terrible as I had expected”.
He grinned. “Not torture, at least,” he agreed.
“I wouldn’t mind going out together again,” she confessed, biting her lip.
He pretended not to notice. “Yeah, me neit-”
“Are you Bakugou?”
The man that interrupted them had tired eyes. Everything about the way he was sitting told them it was his last ride for the night and he wanted nothing more than to be done with it. What surprised Uraraka, however, was seeing a small blond girl sitting in the back seat.
“Who…”
“Couldn’t find a babysitter, is that a problem?”
The last thing Uraraka wanted to do in her life was giving a hard time to hard-working single fathers.
“No, it’s fine, I should… I’m going.” She opened the door and sent a questioning look to Bakugou.
“I will call you,” he said.
The driver didn’t wait for a second after she closed the door to start the engine again.
What a night.
But the blond girl by her side gave her a timid, but reassuring smile, and somehow, Uraraka felt that everything was going to be okay.