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Dried blood clung to the walls of Tsu’s nose, turning her snot red every time she blew into a tissue. Tsu blankly stared off into the distance where sun rays refracted off Ground Gamma’s maze of metal pipes. A wintry breeze cloaked her, making Tsu shiver beneath her hero suit which worked wonders for keeping water out but did little against the cold.
Tsu’s nostrils tingled and she inhaled deeply, keeping a sneeze at bay that without a doubt would have become a bloody mess. And the last thing she wanted was to have her classmates fussing over her.
Knots still wove their way through Tsu’s forehead despite her best efforts to chase the ache away with Tylenol. But each dose of cough syrup, every decongestant left Tsu like a fish on land desperately grasping for moisture – despite how she’d only consumed half the recommended amount. Sighing Tsu imaged filling a water bottle up to the one-liter mark the second she returned to the dorm – anything to restore the fragile ecosystem of her body.
Her tongue felt as dry as parchment – devoid of its usual moisture as her cold buckled against efforts to stay dry. Looking down at her watch, Tsu followed after Aizawa as he and 1A trailed toward the cement platform in front of Ground Gamma.
As much as Tsu wanted to refine her capacity to become a hero, she could hardly wait until the training exercise was over. Being cold-blooded and outdoors in January was bad enough already, but apparently a frog quirk and the common cold were equally incompatible.
Brown eyes drifted in Tsu’s direction. The sort of deep hue that filled Tsu with warmth at the sight alone. Trying to banish the goosebumps from her skin, Tsu straightened her back as much of her amphibian quirk would allow.
Images flashed through her mind of elementary school classmates sticking dead frogs inside her desk. Laughter echoed every time she’d let a ribbit escape her lips. Kids on the playground would pull the ridge of their eyes wide and hunch over, imitating Tsu’s blank expression.
Back then, Tsu couldn’t have been more grateful for how stoic her face was. Heaven knows what taunts would have followed if Tsu had let on that she’d felt nauseous enough to spit out her stomach. She doubted the schoolyard bullies would have gotten any more creative. Tsu suspected they would have stuck flies in her school lunches – though the joke would've been on them since Tsu didn’t mind the extra protein. In fact, she liked the crunchy texture of insects. Not that she’d want anyone outside her family to know.
With snot clogging her sinuses, Tsu struggled to steady her breathing. Feeling Ochako’s gaze still lingering on her, Tsu chased the tension out of her frame. There was no point in fretting about the past, not when Tsu prided herself in her pragmatism. Especially since the teasing got better once no visible reaction could get coaxed out of Tsu.
Plus, UA wasn’t like her elementary school. Midoriya’s eyes had practically glowed as he scribbled away in his notebook and asked how much she could lift with her tongue. Ochako had wrapped Tsu in a tight embrace whenever Tsu grabbed the popcorn bowl with her tongue whenever it levitated away after Ochako got so enamored in the movies they watched together that she activated Zero Gravity.
Clenching her tongue inside her mouth, Tsu hardened her resolve. No matter how accepting her friends seemed to be she had to be careful. There was no good reason to push any buttons and remind them of how different she was because of having a mutant quirk. And if that meant concealing the extent to which her cold and weather were affecting her, so be it.
Padded fingertips grazed Tsu’s shoulder, leaving her gulping in spite of how it irritated her sore throat. “Hey, Tsu. Are you alright?”
“Yes. It’s just a small cold.”
Equally thin fabric hung from Ochako’s skin as her brows knit together with worry and she looked at Tsu.“Okay, but if you’d rather get some rest and recover let me know okay.”
“Understood.”
As Tsu paced away after that flat response, Ochako gravitated toward and gently linked a hand around her wrist. “You know we know you’re a hard worker, right? It’s fine to take a break if you need it.”
“You’re a good friend, Ochako.”
Letting go of Tsu’s wrist, Ochako beamed like a galaxy. “Likewise, Tsu. And please take care of yourself. That’s the best favor you could ever do for me as a friend.”
Tsu let a warm smile stretch across her face even though it made the persistent itching in her skin intensify. Maybe here with Ochako, it was alright to let her guard down, to conceal how much she wanted to bury herself beneath the ground like a forest frog in wintertime. Maybe just, maybe Ochako was the kind of person who wouldn’t push Tsu away for how her quirk affected her in more ways than were immediately obvious.
But as much progress as Tsu had made with letting herself croak at UA without antagonizing about it, she wasn’t quite ready to have Ochako be confronted with coldbloodedness and the other consequences of her quirk just yet.
Echoing the training with 1B a couple of weeks ago save for the time that 1A was doing training alone, Aizawa called out names and sorted students into teams. As Tsu heard her name resound through the bitter frosty air, she drifted out of Ochako’s orbit.
A cough itched at her throat, leading Tsu to gather saliva in her mouth to help swallow it back down. A dizzying gaze clouded her mind, making her feel as if her brain was swimming in a sea of snot. Just a five-minute match. She could hold it out for that long without collapsing. After all, she’d dealt with villains at the USJ and fighting while sick in winter could not hold a candle to that.
Entering Ground Gamma, Tsu tried to ignore the wind rushing through the walls. Her ribs tightened with every breath as the cold burrowed into her skin, leaving her limbs stiffened. Her head spun as she tried to get her legs to listen and break from their frozen state. Lunging into a jump as a timer ticked in the distance, Tsu tried to recall who was on her team. Kaminari? No, that was last time with joint training.
Placing her fingers against her forehead, Tsu attempted to massage her forehead and chase away the persistent pressure plaguing her. But try as she might, her teammates were a blur. She’d barely registered her own name being called out. Maybe Ochako was right and Tsu should take a break. Glancing at her watch, Tsu registered that there were two minutes left to go. Sending herself soaring above pipes, Tsu jumped in the direction her clanging metal sounded. She was certain she could hold out for just a little longer without causing a scene.
As Tsu landed on the ground hard enough to chafe the webbing on the soul of her costumes, she didn’t register the ice crystals that narrowly missed her head. The temperature dropped well below freezing as Todoroki’s glacier raced past her. Pressing her lips together, Tsu desperately tried to recall whether Todoroki was on her team or not.
Todoroki pulled his arm back, bringing his ice to a grinding halt as Tsu sluggishly stepped aside. Silhouettes in bright costumes stood nearby and Tsu heard Ochako’s bright voice from just outside Ground Gamma. But before Tsu even had the chance to piece together if Todoroki was on her team, darkness washed over her, and Tsu collapsed onto the ground.
Blinking her heavy eyelids open, Tsu shied away from the fluorescent lights glowing on the ceiling. A jawn escaped her as her face felt leaden from being so clogged it mimicked the pressure within a closed soda that got jostled around a bit too much. Warmth enveloped Tsu as soft fabric encased her entire body. A deep green blanket was draped across Tsu and a clipping noise sounded near the foot of her bed.
Sitting upright, Tsu spotted Ochako cutting off the tags from the new green blanket that smelled of feathers and plastic packaging. Crouched on the lilypad rug in Tsu’s room, Ochako sheepishly held on to the craft scissors she’d used to snip off the tags.
Ochako scratched herself behind her left ear. “I thought you’d feel better with a down blanket. Since you’re cold-blooded.”
Tsu ran her fingers along the rich green fabric. Her favorite color. The texture seemed as soft as a cloud – the metaphorical kind of cloud at least since water vapor wasn’t soft per say. Tsu internally slapped herself, and her stomach somersaulted. She hadn’t meant to cause Ochako an inconvenience. She didn’t want to bleed Ochako’s finances dry just because her quirk mutations meant she couldn’t even handle a little cold.
“Yaomomo could have made a blanket if you’d asked. You didn’t have to go out of your way for me.”
Reaching out to hold Tsu’s hand, Ochako tethered her back to Earth before she could drift away to the darkest recesses of her mind. “Tsu you’re worth going out of my way for.”
“Still, it must have hurt your wallet.”
“When isn’t my wallet hurting? Besides, I want you to have nice things.”
“I don’t want to be a burden –”
Ochako’s voice went stern as her gaze adopted the same determined wedge they had when Ochako had fought Bakugou at the Sports Festival. “Tsu, you’re not a burden. You didn’t ask to get sick and I know for a fact that you’d look out for me if I had a cold. Just take the blanket as a sign of affection.”
Pulling the fabric tighter around her, Tsu let the warmth encase her and chase the memories of dead frogs in her school desk away. As Ochako plopped herself down on Tsu’s bed, she took in the softness of Ochako’s soft smile. The faint scent of her strawberry perfume that Tsu could just barely smell through her congestion. A girl who accepted Tsu - frog features and all. Maybe it was time for Tsu to no longer hold every sense. Time to trust that Ochako wouldn’t shun her from going into hibernation mode or liking the taste of flies.
“I suppose money is a love language for you,” Tsu said.
“Hell yeah it is,” Ochako laughed.
Lifting the blanket, Tsu beckoned Ochako to scoot closer. “You know the blanket would be even more effective if I had someone warm in my surroundings.”
Ochako lit up. “Then I guess I have no choice but to cuddle with you.”
As Tsu nuzzled against Ochako’s shoulder and basked in the warmth radiating off Ochako, Tsu shut her eyes again. With exhaustion pulling her in, Tsu counted her lucky stars that Ochako didn’t shy away from her cold-blooded touch. And she knew that with Ochako beside her she’d make it through the winter for sure.