The Couples of Class 1-A

LCO | Ch. 30: Unboxed Feelings

Just as I suspected. No matter what I do, my heart... won't calm down.

Midoriya had spent the last eight minutes with his palms flat against his closed bedroom door, staring dead-eyed at the collage of All-Might posters plastered there. He couldn't focus on them though, with his mind too cluttered to deal with anything that wasn't the topic of Uraraka Ochako.

He had tried desperately to tune himself out. After all, this wasn't the first time he'd questioned his feelings for her. She was a girl, of course, and being young and charged with extra hormones, Midoriya was not the exception to having personal fantasies. To wonder occasionally what it would be like to have someone to hold—someone who would squeeze your hand, or drown you with kisses... yes, he'd thought about it before, and frequently enough, Uraraka was the face he'd conjure during those weak moments of his.

But in those times, he would usually catch himself, and break free—like an intrusive thought. In fact, more so than a typical teenager his age, he actively tried to refuse having those thoughts. He would block them out of his mind as much as possible in order to keep his focus centered on his hero studies. It was a practice he'd deemed necessary—avoiding any sort of love notes or potential dates with such aversion, he practically seemed afraid of love in general.

Which, Midoriya was starting to realize, wasn't all that far from the truth.

Midoriya had kept his feelings for Uraraka under tight wraps. In a way, it was as if he'd sealed them into a tightly-locked box. Whenever a situation came up where his feelings for Uraraka were under question, Midoriya would search all around the room where the box was for an answer, but yet he'd never open it. Constantly ignoring the obvious, he would uncover every table, dust every corner, and peer under every chair, while that box would continue to sit plainly in the center—slowly bulging as the contents inside grew bigger.

Today, he had in both the literal and metaphorical sense, tripped—spilling the contents of the box all over the floor at last.

It left him where he was now—clutching his shirt above his heart, unable to pick up the pieces as everything he'd kept hidden away tumbled into plain sight. Now he stood, swimming in his own feelings, with too many thoughts bombarding him from every angle possible.

Where would he even start? There was no point in denying it. He'd said it mentally once, and that had been enough to ruin him.

Eventually, he decided to start by letting out a deep sigh.

Pulling himself away from the door as if he were puppeteering his own lifeless body, Midoriya sulked into the center of his room. He stopped there for a moment or two, unable to decide between the floor or his bed to collapse on. In the end, his knees gave out in the middle of the room, and he sank to the floor onto his back.

Then, Midoriya stared.

And he stared for a long while.

"I lo... I love..."

Midoriya's mouth made the shape of the "U" sound, but hesitated on her name.

His heart rammed against his ribs. He could feel heat spreading into his cheeks and ears.

"I love... Ura... raka."

It burned.

The words physically burned his throat and cheeks. He was shaking again already, his whole body begging for him to take those words back, but he couldn't. He just couldn't.

"I love Uraraka." he said again, more hurriedly this time.

It didn't get any easier saying it twice.