Cicatrize

35

Touya had forgotten how long it had been since he had last seen you.

Honestly, he couldn't remember just how much time has passed. He had long lost count, already. It had been such a long time since Touya had seen you, he felt as if he was even starting to forget your features.

What was the exact color of your eyes? Was your scar on the left side of your face or the right? Did you reach his hip or his waist when you stood at full height? How long was your hair? Did your broken teeth grow back already or were you still missing a tooth?

These were all things that he long forgotten about the rest of his siblings and kin, but he never expected for the day to arrive when he would feel as if you were slipping from his fingers too.

Touya had always been prideful. And it was his pride that had led him to such a state. From the moment he first got his quirk, his pride had been his downfall. His inability to comprehend that his quirk was harmful towards his own body was why he was nothing more than burnt skin and bones.

His hatred towards Shoto was also nothing but a product of his pride taking over his mind. He refused to believe that he was getting replaced, and with a child, no less. So he trained and trained and trained, until.he couldn't feel his hands anymore. Until you'd have to beg him to come back home already.

He missed those days. He really did. Back when everything was normal and his body didn't ache with every movement...

Touya thought that maybe he had gotten better at dealing with his emotions, but then the Sekoto Peak incident happened and he realized quickly enough that he was still that pathetic coward hiding behind the front of his so-called ego. He couldn't control his crappy quirk for the life of him, and his inability to digest that simple fact was what led both of you to lose your everything.

Kurohiko's death by his hands was also nothing but another display of his cowardice. And yet you were the one who had to pay the price for his naivety. Time after time, Touya was led to believe that perhaps, you really would have been better off without a brother like him.

You would have been better off with just Shoto and Natsuo. Touya wasn't worthy of your brother. He was nothing but trouble for your poor, kind self.

You would have lived a happy and healthy life if you had never associated yourself with him and simply lived like two strangers in the same house–like the rest of his siblings did. You would have been surrounded by two loving brothers and a very caring sister. Perhaps even Rei would also have been normal if only Touya hadn't been such a difficult child.

But of course, Touya and his unrelenting pride refused to let him admit the very truth that was sprawled all in front of him.

"I see you're as psychotic as I last saw you."

A familiar voice pulled the dyed-black haired teenager that stood lone in the alley–at least until the voice spoke up and revealed its presence–out of his thoughts.

Touya snapped his eyes back in its direction only to catch a glimpse of a white trenchcoat fluttering across him. A man walked out of the shadows and the source of the voice turned out to be none other than Mr. Compress.

"And you're every bit of a creep as I remember," Touya–or more appropriately, Dabi quipped back, a teasing sneer playing on his chapped lips, "-watching underage kids? That's so like you, Compress."

Even if the brunette was annoyed by his jagged words, Atsuhiro did little to show his true feelings. Instead, the older male extended his gaze a bit further and caught sight of the charred-black corpse lying across from him.

Atsuhiro knew things had changed since the last time he had seen the younger boy, when he caught sight of the corpse right in front of him–a result of Touya's quirk doing its work.