The Couples of Class 1-A

LCO | Ch. 41: Rude Awakening

The sound of Todoroki's alarm beeping felt like a siren wailing in his head when he awoke. Spitting out a few curse words, he slammed a hand on his table until he found the glass surface of his phone, and shut off his alarm. When silence greeted him back, he groaned softly, then fell back against his futon—eyes blank, and somewhat puffy as he squinted at the ceiling.

Much to his displeasure, he'd dreamed of Yaoyorozu last night. And to make matters worse, he was aware that he'd probably done so as a result of the horrifying revelation she'd dropped on him right before bed.

"If you t-truly love her, then we can't keep seeing each other like this."

He'd essentially been dumped.

Moments after he'd collapsed back in his room, Kirishima, Sero, and Midoriya had rushed concernedly to his sides to ask him questions about what'd happened. It'd taken him more than a minute of breathing and holding in tears before he'd been able to provide them with any kind of response.

"#@*%, this is bad..." Sero had cursed, stepping back to think with a hand over his mouth, "If Yaoyorozu thinks that she's doing the right thing by leaving you, how are you supposed to change her mind...?"

"I still don't understand how this could even happen!" Kirishima roared, gripping at his head in frustration, "Wasn't Yaomomo the one who wanted to go after you in the first place!? I thought you guys had already worked out some agreement!"

"We had," Todoroki croaked, voice hoarse and desolate-sounding, "I... told her once that I wanted her to stay by my side despite my 'relationship'. But after what happened with Izuku today..."

Unintentionally, Todoroki's words made Midoriya shrink in the back of the room. He bowed his head bitterly, mumbling an apology which Todoroki shook his head at.

"It's okay, I don't blame you for anything. Yaomomo and I got careless, and you just happened to see us at a bad time. You had every right to be angry."

"Still, if I hadn't tried interfering, this wouldn't have happened to you." Midoriya argued, gradually feeling worse as he spoke. He started to clench his arm, "And If I hadn't said that phrase to Uraraka, then the entire operation wouldn't have needed to happ—"

"Everyone is at fault for that. Don't try taking the blame for yourself."

Midoriya looked up in surprise, finding Todoroki with his head still bowed as he sat in a slouch on the floor. Midoriya honestly would've expected Todoroki to let his statement slide—wallow for longer in self-pity, but despite the bleakness of everything, Todoroki was still determined to defend truth over anything else. That said a lot about him.

"I guess you'll have to talk to her again, yeah?" Sero eventually continued, making everyone turn to look at him, "You were able to make Yaomomo come around the first time. Heck, she'd been angry enough to nearly knock you out of the gene pool, yet you managed to both calm her down, and get her to start pursuing you seriously. Do you think you can pull off that magic again?"

Todoroki just shrugged, "I... don't know what I would say to her this time. The first time was luck—I played off my um... 'flirtatiousness', as me just wanting to rekindle our old friendship. I definitely won't be able to use that excuse again—it's pretty obvious by now that we both like each other. If I want to calm her down, I'll have to give her some kind of assurance that her affiliation with me won't harm my relationship with Uraraka or Midoriya. And I can't really give that assurance, unless I get Midoriya to tell her he's fine with everything."

"Right... and it's too soon still for that. Yaomomo would probably suspect something is up."

"Yes..." Todoroki sighed.