K.BAKUGO X READER (Cover art by me)
In a life where I'd be safe in one moment and on the brink of death in another, I realized that he was the only force that could ground me. Of all the people in the world. My volatile co-worker. My menacing rival...
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part twenty-one
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If someone had told me that I'd torn up my own acceptance letter, I wouldn't have believed them. UA was at the top of my list. It would be utter nonsense to destroy an opportunity so precious. Besides, why would young, 14-year-old me have reason to do such a thing?
Well, she didn't. But I did. Because the memory I remembered was one where I never received a UA letter. In the life I'd lived, I never went to my dream school and fought day to day with that explosive delinquent. I never got my heart broken over a silly crush. I never witnessed my rival lose everything he cared about to save my life.
In my stack of envelopes, none read UA in bright blue and yellow print.
And so, with her letter torn to pieces and unknowingly sitting in the neighbor's trash, I watched from afar as my young self stepped back inside, disheartened, and unaware of the memories being written over before my very eyes.
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Many years passed. She graduated high school. Left her family behind. Took on various internships. Ended up in the city that she'd soon call home. Moved into a little apartment and started work at the agency.
Carrying her box of desk supplies, she met that blonde idiot for the first time. When he sat defiantly on her desk, it didn't snap or break. They fought over it in the training room, and he won – just like I remembered. From then on, he bothered her at said aforementioned desk, and they walked to and from the office, and waited in the coffee shop line together. He held her hands on that cold winter day. And he gave her an invite to his apartment one evening after work.
On the way home, she was caught up in the anxiety of the mission to come. Worried about packing, and what awaited on the mountain. I remembered being pushed by a person I never saw. Someone who's existence I questioned in the first place.
Fire burning on my hands, watching within my bubble, I had been that stranger. This whole time, I had pushed myself that night. Her phone shattered on the sidewalk. She never made it to Bakugo's apartment. The dinner date was a fragment of a different past.
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They flew out the next morning. Bakugo chewed her up on the plane. She tried to apologize but what good would that do? She'd stood him up, not that she would've known about the date that never happened... Out in the snow, searching the mountain, she and him had parted ways. She followed the sound of the river and found a dying man and a bear with a vengeance.
