change of plans || todoroki shouto x reader

chapter forty

"how are you feeling today?"

[name] looks up from the textbook she was reading on her bed. her brother, plainly dressed, stood in her doorframe.

"kousuke, you ask every morning, and every time i give you the same answer. i'm fine. you should still be in bed."

she gets up and leads her brother back into his room. he still had a few weeks left in the recovery time the doctors had given him after he was discharged from the hospital.

"bleh, i'm so bored. i wanna go out and play soccer, or something."

"well you can't," [name] says. "if you need anything, call a maid."

kousuke stubbornly kept getting up and going around the house, despite his still injured leg. though [name] couldn't say she was surprised. he's always been the more hardheaded one between the both of them.

it's been two days since the training camp incident.

it was only a few hours ago that news soared about what happened in kamino ward. though, since she arrived in california, [name] had been off the grid.

her brother was the one that kept her up to date with the news: the reports of the training camp incident, the UA press conference, the fight between the villain and all might. the hero community in los angeles was particularly affected by the news of all might's fight, being the place where he spend his first few years as a hero.

thankfully [name]'s disappearance wasn't publicized, as she was able to report to a police station before the news of the training camp incident went out.

save for a message to the class group text about her being safe and going out of the country for a while, [name] hadn't talked to her friends since that night. as soon as her family heard the report of her disappearance and her safe "escape" from the villains, they put her on the next flight back home.

she still remembers kousuke's stupid teary face that greeted her as soon as she got back.

there was still so much emotions in [name]'s heart that she couldn't express. not that there was anyone she could express it to anyway. she couldn't just tell her brother she made friends with some guy in japan, and that guy turned out to go on and become a villain. she sure as hell couldn't tell her parents.

if she told her friends they'd find out that she actually doesn't really want to become a hero, and that doesn't seem to be an impression you want to leave on heroes-in-training.

so [name] did everything to suppress them.

for days she did anything and everything she could in their multimillion dollar bel air mansion. she cooked her favourite foods, baked her favourite desserts, did so much different kinds of sports. she learned new languages, took online classes, binge watched movies, shows, anime, and binge read books and manga. she played video games.

she threw herself into her training. spending hours and hours in the training hall, dedicating so much time to expanding her knowledge to use for her quirk.

she did it all. anything to keep her mind off japan, and UA, and.. dabi.

the way she coped, it was almost like they had some sort of messy breakup. in a way, it kind of was.

sometimes she would check her messages and see their old conversations, she couldn't bring herself to delete it. instead, she would toss her phone aside and run off and do god knows what, anything as long as it can distract herself.

---

"kousuke, good morning."

"good morning, mother, father."