A Hairdresser's Life [Completed]

Chapter 24

Minimize and rationalize every emotions you feel and you will be able to survive. Surviving is different from living, but it helps going on.

Izuku was doing so; Todoroki was doing so.

Todoroki's hands trembled among the rough surface of the gift he received thirty minutes ago. The paper enveloping the box was coarse and threadbare: This is how our relationship was, is not it? Izuku. Todoroki murmured lightly as words spread through his lips.

He tore the paper off, with rough tearing and snags. If this is how you depict our relationship, let it be so. Let me destroy it again. He shouted in his mind, as words of pure rage echoed through his nerves and neurons.

He threw the torn paper on the carpet down by his feet, its soft colors taunting his gaze.

There was a book inside, as Nathan told him; the title was covered by a white envelope with a graceful writing style lettering his name:

To Todoroki

His pupils trembled among each letters, the gaze maniacally moving among each curves of his name. He took it and put it aside, finally looking at the book: a white cover towered over five hundred pages. Einaudi, the most famous foreign publishing house, known for its beautiful cover, published it. Izuku really succeeded this time.

The title was "The wall"; he opened it and read the dedication:

"To the man who changed me in many ways.

To my storm. "

A quote was written immediately under the dedication:

"Just in case you ever foolishly forget; I'm never not thinking of you."

― Virginia Woolf, Selected Diaries

He still thinks of me... he dedicated the book to me. - Todoroki's mind was racing against a perfectly obvious failure. His heartbeat matched the quickness of his mind, his telltale heart showed what his voice would not form: he was still in love with him.

He felt as if the ceiling just became a sheet of paper: a tear was made in the sky of paper. And his world crumbled to ashes; was he dancing among this dusty rain or was it engulfing him? He sat no more on his couch, now his body felt heavy among those feathery dust fallen from the sky, the reality merging with the subconscious.

I want to be a baby again. I want pure thoughts in my head. I want to forget. – Todoroki always wanted something. He wanted, he desired and he wanted all over again. He closed his eyes and as he reopened it, he found himself again on the couch. He reached for the envelope: two sheets of paper with words spewed across. Izuku cried his pain through these words. He bled it in ink.

"Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad.

Sincerely, I wanted to give up; I wanted to give up on living. There was no denying that tomorrow would come, and the day after tomorrow, and so next week, too. I never thought it would be this hard, but I would go on living in the midst of a gloomy depression, and that made me feel sick to the depths of my soul. In spite of the tempest raging within me, I walked the night path calmly.

I cannot concentrate. Therefore, I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I do not think two people could have been happier until that game of yours. I cannot fight any longer. You see I cannot even write this properly. I cannot read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. Living with you felt like a dream.