PLASTIC FLOWERS ( k. bakugou )

chapter 40

‘ souls stashed in selcouth cages ’

━━━━━

"Was it fun?"

Three words, wielded as weapons but dismissed just as easily as they had been concocted.

"I told them that I'll talk to you first," she said. "Lessen any sort of hostility in you, but we'd be fooling ourselves, won't we? And that's enough lies for these days."

"I know what you fucking did," he said, crimson irises nothing but hostile and Kaede is a trained murderer and she can almost see herself in those eyes, her own eyes, all hostile and power.

"But you don't know who I am," she finished and sat cross legged on the bar table three paces away from his encasement— three belts and one board.

That's where he grins and looks at her, but she reminds herself that she's not Yuko— poor, pretty and pathetic— so she doesn't succumb to carnal lust and merely meets the intensity of his eyes with her own.

Under the bar lights, they look like crimson and blue flames battling over who gets to overpower one first. Two personages, one boy and one girl— a thousand shades of emotion and millions of possibilities within.

She told him he was the sun once and that was true, and golden boy of the sun only deserved the moon, but Kaede was just a star— dim lights, and evil intentions. She didn't deserve him.

She didn't want to either. It was frivolous and unnecessary and bothersome. There is no passionate pleasure, so unlike the one she has prided herself in, within the battlefield where she must always stand and be the winner.

"I know you," he says again, with that smirk. As if he wasn't the one strapped to four machine belts with five holes each. "Underneath all that bravado, you're fucking shaking."

Kaede shakes her head, fingernails digging into her palms showcasing those crimson crescent moons yet again. "It must be because of excitement, it has been too long since I wore that measly excuse for a cover. Four years, seven months, eighteen days, four hours, sixteen minutes and five seconds. I did my waiting."

"You're so blind that you can't even see what's your damn shell and what's not," he seethes through gritted teeth and she's burning in that gaze, turning into a puddle of goo. He's a king, Katsuki Bakugou is a conqueror king. Conqueror of battlefields and lost souls, and hearts. But Yu—Kaede is a god. She will not submit to mere gazes.

"Join our side, Bakugou," she says and rectifies the mistake of identifying herself as Yuko by calling him by his last name. "We see your true potential."

"I'm a hero," he said and gives her a cocky grin. He was brilliant. "Nothing can change that."

"Heroes are meant to save," she says and meets his eyes. "And with this, these current chaotic events, you cannot save anyone."

"You can't save everyone, Katsuki," she repeated and whispers the additional words but he hears it, because he was meant to from the very beginning. "You can't save me."

His eyes softens and she's lost metaphors to name those red eyes anymore. Not rubies, but precious. Not flames, but powerful. Not rose petals, but pretty. Not the eyes of a god, but the eyes of a boy. Of a person, of something she wished to be treated like once upon a time. The secret of the story is not the mysteries or the power or the stars the people wished on every nighttime. The secret was that the queen of darkness, among anything else, wanted to be human too.