Smile | Suicidal Todoroki x Kaminari

19 | Phantom

This story is not intended to promote or encourage actions/behaviors such as suicide, self-harm, abuse, violence, purging, or eating disorders.

Shoto Todoroki
•⊱—≬—⊰•

This is how much you hate me? I ask my hollow mind in arid anticipation of an answer. You still hate me enough to pull my plans asunder? I'm ready. I shot down those three days of utter agony...thinking I would be free, but really...the only thing I was shooting was myself. I'm still alive. I survived. Why... Although I beseech that a proper, viable answer emerges, I simply feel a pair of lips electrifying my torpefied senses.

Soft, sweet, and slow, Denki unites our lips for another kiss. His salty tears stain my tongue with his endearing amalgamate of ardent emotion. I want to see his eyes—they're like two ponds of rich, radiant sunlight—but perhaps it's serendipitous that my vision was shattered. He leans against me yet seems to be conscious of the fact that my body is still quite broken as his arms tighten around me.

After that, my memory is a hazy labyrinth of likely possibilities, but no definite answers. Perhaps I attempted to forget what transpired shortly after. However, I can recall Denki visiting me each day after school by utilizing my window as a door, and I can also recall his nightly visits, even if they're foggy. To say the least, it was odd. The atmosphere during the day marginally differed from the atmosphere during the night, yet there was one discrete difference that I should have felt amongst the inconsistencies present.

After accompanying me home one afternoon, Denki asked me if I was hungry. Of course, I wasn't, but because Endeavor's obsession with shaping me to my flawed perfection perished, I wanted to force myself back into a healthy weight range to prove that I was capable of it—my rebellious, intractable flame had been reignited. So, I nodded.

"Awesome! So, you have an appetite again?" He was always delighted by my seemingly genuine, positive responses.

"A bit," I replied, and thus, I was served cold soba by Fuyumi.

I was full after merely four bites, but Denki was ecstatic. "You're so cute when you're eating, Shu," he chuckled. "And you're doing great! That's four bites more than yesterday."

Previously, his praise flustered me, but for a while, I lacked that feeling whenever he praised me. Why? I was still a liar. He couldn't have been proud of me if I'd allowed him to see the truth.

Once Denki left, I threw up the pitiable portion of food I'd eaten through self-induced vomiting, but I was conflicted. I did still have a strong desire to lose weight, even if I was unable to see my reflection in the mirror, but at the same time, I was incredibly disappointed in myself. Why did I care more about being thin than Denki? The only answer I could produce was that it was a habit dinned into both my mind and body.

That night, I felt around a hollow in the wood beneath my sink that I'd created for the razor blades I'd obtained roughly a week prior, and while cutting without a purpose, I could have sworn I felt a hand on my shoulder. It had occurred numerous times before—that distinct, abrupt sensation of my shoulder being clutched—but never while I'd been cutting. Terrified, I sat stiffly in the silence of the house before cleaning my wounds and blade.

Is it you? I asked myself. Are you telling me to stop? I won't. At this point, it feels like cutting myself is the only thing keeping me sane. Hm? Again... What is it? Who is it? Where is it? I shook my head and dismissed my questions as I treated my wounds. I feel bad... I haven't told Denki about much, but he deserves to know. Why is it so hard to admit the truth and trust the people I care about?

Approximately an hour later, Denki arrived again. He sat beside me—so close that I could practically feel the warmth emanating from his body—and for a while, we remained like that. The silence was still and sweet, yet it had been sundered by the shuffling of Denki's arms as he embraced me loosely. Although the hug was reassuring, it managed to augment my own feelings of loneliness.

"Den?" I whispered at last while relaxing into his arms.

"Hm?" he replied in a strikingly similar tone to mine.

I honestly wasn't sure of what to say, despite initiating the conversation. "I don't know..." The sensation of being pressed into his arms was present, but it was numb and dull.

"How come?"

"I don't know."

"Shu, you never seem to know," he sighed. "Is that your go-to lie? 'I don't know,' or anything all neutral like that?" His position shifted a bit.

I don't always have an explanation for what I do and why. "No. I just...don't know. Denki, I don't want to discuss this right now." I began to reach my hand out to caress his cheek, but I hardly lifted my hand before refraining from doing so.

"Okay. Well, how come you only ate a little bit when you said you were hungry?"

I curled in on myself a bit. "Den..." It felt as though my guts were being mashed together.

"I mean, how do you expect to save people from danger when you're more of a liability than an ally?" His crackling voice echoed through my mind.; something wasn't right about it

"That's...why I'm trying."

I was the reason why I ended up like this. I never would have stopped to rest if I didn't have issues with eating. Even if it happened, I could have escaped. Instead, I nearly caused three people to die that day. I can't shake the guilt. I can't forget what happened. I can't crawl back through time. But it hurts...to live with that. Knowing that I could be the one in need of saving...because I can't accomplish something as simple as eating something.

Denki's breath settled in a warm fog at my temple. "Promise me you'll give it all you've got next time?" The damp, feathery brush of his lips met my cheek.

"I can't promise that..." I admitted.

Yet, as weeks transitioned into months, I began to recognize that my nightly conversations with Denki had existed, but not in the way I anticipated. His behavior was perplexing, but I never really thought much about it. As time progressed, he seemed to either be a form of mocking, deriding levity, or a creature filled with enmity, ire, and coruscating bullets for words. I could feel him threatening to crush my hands. I could hear the hissing thunder in his vexed voice. I could see a shadow of something around me.

Much to my chagrin, he was not real. I'd simply hallucinated his existence while my thoughts attained the sound of his voice. I felt hands on my shoulder, hands crawling through my hair, hands weaving into mine... My mind forged the hallucinations into one, and thus unfettered the delusions driving my mind into encroaching insanity. I started to loathe the Denki I saw at night, but after grasping the epiphany that he was a hallucination, that hatred culminated. After all, my own damned thoughts were the fell words falling from his frozen lips.

It seemed axiomatic to me that there was only one way to terminate that anathematized phantom of my mind without unraveling my own promise to Denki.

⊹⊱—≬—⊰⊹
𝘐'𝘷𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘫𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘐 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘯'𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘭𝘬 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦...
"𝖶𝖺𝗌 𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝗌𝖾𝗅𝖿𝗂𝗌𝗁 𝖽𝖾𝖼𝗂𝗌𝗂𝗈𝗇 𝗐𝗈𝗋𝗍𝗁 𝗂𝗍?"
"𝘿𝙞𝙙𝙣'𝙩 𝙬𝙚 𝙗𝙤𝙩𝙝 𝙨𝙝𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙙𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙢—𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙛𝙧𝙚𝙚𝙙𝙤𝙢 𝙩𝙤 𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙡𝙮 𝙨𝙤𝙖𝙧..."