fear. || { bnha }

thirteen.

a/n: aaa, i forgot to mention in the last chapter, but thank you for over 200 votes and almost 2k reads! <3
i also apologize deeply for this chapter

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Valui's eyes grew wide; her face turned bright red; she was sure she stopped breathing and that her heart was beating so hard it was breaking her ribs. She found herself staring in shock at the side of his face, unable to bring herself to move.

Just as her stunned shock started to ebb away, Hitoshi seemed to realize what he was doing. His eyes flew open and he jumped back from her. Their eyes met, both wide and surprised — Hitoshi's face turned red enough to match hers.

"I-I—" he started, his hand falling from her face and his head turning away from hers. "S-sorry, that was, um—"

"I-it's okay." Valui looked down to her lap, being too embarrassed to look at him right then. She stared at their hands clasped together, her free hand reaching up to her mouth and her index finger pressed against her bottom lip. A smile threatened to break out across her face — the corners of her mouth twitched upward.

Your lips are soft.

Her stomach flipped at the thought. Valui let her hand drop back into her lap, her teeth gently biting her bottom lip. They had fallen silent and couldn't even look at each other. Occasionally they'd side glance at the other at the same time, and they'd look away as quickly as they could, both faces turning red again.

Eventually, Valui managed to find the courage to say something. "I-is the tournament still going on?" She halfway forced herself to look at Hitoshi, who seemed to do the same.

"I think so." The awkwardness that lingered in the air around them started to dissipate as they began talking about something else — something casual; something that wasn't what had just happened. "Do you want to watch the rest of it?"

Valui nodded, a small smile appearing on her lips. "Yeah!" Her excitement from before had returned, which made Hitoshi chuckle softly.

"Alright, let's go." He stood up, pulling Valui up to her feet with ease. Hitoshi led her back around the corner and up the stairs into the set of seats his class was sitting in. They took their same seats from before; Hitoshi pulled his hand from hers and rested his arm around her shoulders again.

"AND FOR THE FINAL BATTLE OF THE UA SPORTS FESTIVAL: SHOUTO TODOROKI VERSUS KATSUKI BAKUGO!"

Valui sat up a little in her seat, watching as the two mentioned males stepped out from either side of the arena. Her feet swung lightly, eyes lighting up with excitement as the gunshot went off and the battle started.

Ice was shot off toward Katsuki, who countered it easily with his Quirk — fiery explosions. Even from where she was sitting, she could've sworn she felt the cold from Shouto's attacks, followed by the heat from Katsuki's. As the fight continued, the crowd started murmuring amongst themselves again — why wasn't Shouto using his fire again?

Katsuki voiced the same question — well, more like screamed it. He yelled at Shouto as he attacked and dodged ice attack after ice attack. "Why the hell aren't you using your left side?!" The anger in Katsuki's voice was nearly palpable; his attacks reflected that, getting more violent and reckless with every angry shout. "If you're not willing to fight me at your full power, you're not worthy to stand in front of me at all!"

"He's scary," Valui mumbled, remembering when she bumped into him earlier in the hallway. A chill ran down her spine — how terribly would he have treated her had he been this mad?