Flicker (KatsukiXOC)

7. Tutoring

Something was missing.

Katsuki Bakugou looked around the buzzing classroom. He couldn't exactly tell what, but he knew something was missing. He had checked his bag several times and even checked his pockets, going through a mental checklist of things he needed. Nothing there was missing.

But something was missing.

His gaze moved around the classroom as he began to count classmates. He stopped to leer at that shitty Deku before his gaze settled on an empty desk.

Ah, that was it.

Perhaps she was running late?

A few moments passed and there still was no sign of her.

Maybe the press held her up?

Maybe not, he thought, as he saw Aizawa close the door to the classroom. Katsuki snuck a glance at his cellphone, a tiny pout coming onto his features when he saw he had no new messages.

Though he wasn't sure they were on good enough terms for her to text him.

Where was she?

~

Awako waved to her father's car from her bedroom window as he pulled out to leave for work. She then settled back into her bed, pulling the covers over herself and sighing softly. She was too exhausted to go to class today and her anxiety seemed to gnaw away at her for the first time in forever. Her stomach ached.

She curled up beneath the blankets and fidgeted with her braclet. It was the first time she looked at it since she first found it. It must have taken Katsuki ages to figure out how to braid the thread, she thought as she rubbed the charm with her fingers. It must have taken him even longer to find all of the beads for it. The thought of Katsuki being patient brought up a giggle. She knew he had to have lost his temper a few times.

The memories of catching him staring at her hands as she worked on her bracelets crossed her mind. When they ate lunch together or when he gave up tutoring her. It was one of the few times he ever seemed calm.

She felt her face flush a little as she thought of his calm expression. She glanced at her phone to distract herself and saw that she had a text from Tsuyu.

Tsu: I hope you feel better soon!

Awako smiled and sent back a thanks before opening up her messages with Katsuki. Should she text him? She always did before they fought.

She locked her phone and set it on her nightstand, turning over in her bed and closing her eyes.

He was tall and slender, like Awako's mother. He had brunette hair cropped short and glasses like her father. He was a lot older, she remembered. Seventeen or eighteen and he was a prodigy. He was always showered with praise from people that passed them by as he walked her to school. Even her teachers had nice things to say about him.

They expected great things like that from Awako.

The dreams of Naota were always the same. He always had a benign smile on his face as their mother laid behind him, unmoving.

"Awako, are you good or bad?" he would ask her. They were the last words she ever heard from him before he knocked her out. In her dream he always had a coldness to his eyes. The same eyes they shared. Tendrils would slither down his arms, long and curling, before wrapping around her body. A stinging pain would overcome her senses and her own screaming would wake her in a cold sweat.

His quirk had been passed down the Kurage bloodline for generations. Long tendrils come from the skin like a jellyfish's tentacles and inject a stinging poison into whatever it touched.