Jirou released a breath of smoke into the air as she leaned against Momo's car before taking another long drag and letting the cigarette fill her lungs. She closed her dark eyes when she released another smoke-filled breath, her shoulders slumping slightly. The light rain made her want to step into her girlfriend's car, but she knew if she got in smelling like 'that delinquent shit' there would be an argument, and frankly, she just didn't have the time nor energy to fight her today. She lifted her fingers to take another drag, but the sound of wet footsteps prompted her to stop. She looked around, half-lidded eyes wide and alert, but found no one and nothing surrounding her. "Come on, Kyoka," she said to herself, letting go of a breath she didn't know she was holding, "get it together." Still, the wet footsteps echoed in her mind, becoming louder and quicker, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She let her eyes dart around for a moment, and though they didn't see anyone getting closer to her, she couldn't shake the feeling that someone was getting a little too close to her. "Get real," she said, tossing her cigarette to the ground and stomping it out, "Curses and shit aren't real. It's all in your head." She wrapped her arms around herself in an attempt to calm herself down, releasing another heavy breath.
"I wouldn't dismiss it so easily, Kyoka," a masculine voice said from behind, causing Jirou to scream—a foreign and decidedly unwanted sound. She turned around and found her stalker—Tenya Iida—and released an angry groan.
"You almost gave me a heart attack!" she said, narrowing her eyes at him.
"Should I call an ambulance?" he said, slight concern leaking through his voice.
"Figure of speech."
"That's pretty morbid—not to mention inappropriate for a funeral."
"I'm not at this funeral by choice. I didn't give a fuck about Mineta or Nezu. I'm only here because Momo wanted to come."
"That's a really cute gesture, but I didn't ask about all that," Tenya dismissed, waving his hand around. Kyoka raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. Instead, she reached into her purse and pulled out another cigarette, determined to light it up and drown out the world around her. "You're going to get lung cancer if you keep smoking, especially with the curse active."
"I don't remember asking for your opinion," she quipped back, rolling her eyes and inhaling the smoke. With a steady breath, she added, "The curse isn't real either."
"Just because you don't believe in something doesn't make it any less real, Jirou," Tenya replied calmly. "It doesn't make Nezu and Mineta any less dead, it doesn't make you—or anyone else in our class—any safer."
"Why the fuck are you here?" she asked, her patience wearing thin. "It's not like you're doing anything useful."
"I'm just the male class representative, what do you expect me to do? Stop the curse?" he bit back sarcastically, placing his hands on his temples. "It'd be disrespectful not to show up for my classmate's funeral, and I'm only checking on you to make sure you didn't sneak off and die. If we're being honest, I thought you'd be the first one to off yourself."
"That's a very Bakugou-like thing to say," she scoffed, "but I'm very much alive and not going to kill myself. I don't want you babysitting me."
"Don't choke on your words," Tenya said, walking back towards the funeral, whose guest seemed to be thinning out by the second.
She watched his retreating for gradually get smaller before all bug disappearing in the misty cemetery. She mindlessly put her cigarette to her lips and went to inhale another puff, but found the stick had went out. "Stupid fucking Iida," she grumbled, fumbling around her purse for a lighter, "stupid fucking funeral." Her eyes lit up when her fingers grazed upon the smooth plastic and she pulled the lighter out, calming down when the small flame came to life. "There's no such thing as curses," she said to herself, breathing in, "No such thing."
Before she could bring the lighter to meet her cigarette, it went out, the flame disappearing just as quickly as it appeared. Rolling her eyes, she fumbled with the lighter before it came back to life. Quickly lighting her cigarette and throwing the lighter as far as she could, she inhaled again, long and deep, letting the smoke run down her throat and fill her lungs. When she went to exhale, she found that she couldn't; the smoke would not leave her. It wrapped itself around her lungs, squeezing them and drying them out, producing very dry, very small coughs. Her throat constricted, tightened with each drying cough that left her body. The smoke filled her entire body and refused to let anything other than more smoke enter her. The air around her was there, wafting around her with a teasing feel on her skin, but did nothing to help her breathe; she couldn't breathe.
Before she realized it, Kyoka had dropped to her knees, clutching the wet grass and hoping, praying that she'd find air. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound would come out—just dry gasps that only she could hear. Her lungs burned from inside her chest and her throat for something—anything—but she wasn't able to help herself. She looked around and realized, for the first time, that she was alone. The only thing she could see were tombstones, and they seemed to stretch on for miles. Can't breathe. She needed help. Can't breathe. She was alone. Can't breathe. She was choking. Can't breathe. She was dying.
How fucking ironic.
When she looked up, she noticed the way sunlight reflected off of Momo's windows—and suddenly she had a plan. Can't breathe. Using the last of her strength, she opened the car door and slid into the front seat, pressing her hand on the horn with as much force as she could muster. Can't breathe.
She didn't even feel it when her head hit the steering wheel.
x
The far off noise of someone's undoubtedly cheap car malfunctioning would've been more of annoying to Momo if she wasn't already annoyed by her Louboutin's appearance. With clenched teeth, she forcefully wiped a tear from her wide eyes and let out a harsh breath. After maybe two hours of wear to her principal's funeral, they were completely and utterly destroyed, leaving her to mourn barefoot. A sniffle left her nose for what could have been the four millionth time today and she blinked her tears away. This was the most ghetto situation she'd ever been put in, and it was easy to tell that Momo Yaoyorozu was pissed. She went from class heiress to that crying, barefoot girl in a matter of days. The wet squelching of the grass prompted her to look up, and she found them walking towards her—and she almost vomited in her mouth. "What do you want?" she asked, disgust dripping in her voice.
"Only way someone could have a nasty ass attitude at a funeral is if something crawled in their panties and died—is there somethin' ya wanna confess, Momo?" Ochako retorted, crossing her arms.
"And what happened to your shoes?" Izuku asked, genuinely concerned. "You just don't look to good, sis."
"That makes a few of us then," Momo responded, sniffling. "It's a fucking funeral, I'm allowed to be upset, aren't I?"
"We just wanted to see if you were okay," Shouto said, reaching out to place a hand on her shoulder, which she shrugged off on contact. "It's what friends do."
"Friends?" she scoffed, rising to her feet, "Why on Earth would you think that we're friends, Todoroki?"
"Because all of our fantastic memories we have with each other?" he replied, feeling defensive.
"Like what?" she challenged. Shouto opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it after realizing that she might've had a point. They had never spent any time alone with each other—to his slight dismay because damn did she have killer legs—and the one time they hung out, someone died. Not saying that the someone didn't deserve it—but it was a really bad way to end what could have been a really nice day. Still, that didn't mean that Shouto was wrong, per se, but it did mean that he could be on his way to losing this argument—and losing anything didn't sit well with him. He had to plan his next sentence out very carefully if he wanted this to work out in his favor.
"Like all of the memories we were going to create with each other!" was the best he could come up with. Solid reasoning, he supposed, and he was going to stand his ground it on. "Maybe if you just got that stick taken your of your ass and relaxed—"
"The last time I tried to relax with you, I ended up having to ride home in a police car! Do you know how humiliating that is?! You cursed us!"
"Hey!" Eijiro interjected, placing himself in between Momo and Shouto, "maybe we should all just calm down. We're friends, right Momo?" The girl looked at him with something softer than anger in her eyes—which must've been a terribly difficult feat to accomplish—and nodded quickly. "Yeah! Remember, I said I'd take a bullet for you, even if you are a bitch sometimes. Aren't callbacks fun!"
"You said you wouldn't take one for Aoyama," Ochako added, snickering. "But to be fair, I wouldn't take one for him either. He's really weird."
"Maybe we should just sit here and remember good things, yeah?" Eijiro finished, sitting down on the wet grass, clearly not caring about the suit Bakugou picked out but you know, whatever.
"It'll help us calm up!" Denki said, taking a seat next to him, a small smile on his face.
"You are exactly right, buddy."
"As much as I'd love to sit here and play fucking campfire stories, someone's cheap ass car horn is going off and I'm about to lose my fucking marbles," Momo said, standing up and crossing her arms.
"That's your cheap ass car," Bakugou said, cocking an eyebrow up.
"Can't be," she said, rolling her eyes, "Jirou has my keys." Her stomach dropped when she realized that her girlfriend had her keys and her horn was still going off. She squinted and looked towards the direction of her car, and though she couldn't see through the fog, she started running. Pale feet kicking up mud and whatever creepy crawlies lie on the dirt floor, she took off as fast she could towards her parking space.
x
Seeing Kyoka Jirou slumped over in her car caused parts of Momo to hurt that she didn't know still existed. She tapped the window of her car furiously, crying—screaming—begging for Jirou to please open the door, baby I'm here please, until her throat ran raw and she couldn't hear herself anymore. The longer she stared at the window, the louder the horn seemed to get, and she found herself not looking at Jirou, but her own reflection. Wild eyes stared back at her, red rimmed and running, on a face that seemed to be melting with wild hair framing this picture of hours she put into herself were rendered meaningless in less than ten minutes.
x
"You do realize we're going to a funeral, right?" Kyoka asked, slightly annoyed. Momo noticed her watching her for half an hour, but if she wasn't going to complain then she wouldn't ask her.
"It's not like I forgot," she said, applying highlighter to her nose.
"Then why are you doing all this?"
"Because," she said, turning away from the mirror to look at her girlfriend, "you deserve to walk in with the most beautiful girl on the planet—and this the only chance I have on stunting on Rihanna."
"I think you look perfect."
"I know you are perfect."
X
Narrowing her eyes, Momo clenched her hands into a fist. Before she registered what she was doing, she raised her arm and elbowed her window, shattering the glass in an instant. She chose to ignore the 'Your door was probably open' she heard in the background. Breathing harshly, desperately, she opened the car door from the inside and pulled Jirou out, not paying attention to the stinging pain in the arms. "I got you," Momo said, pulling the girl close to her and brushing her hair out of her face, only then seeing a large gash on her forehead, still bleeding. The stillness in Jirou's chest sent shivers down Momo's spine, but she refused to let a single tear drop from her eyes. She'd spent the entire day crying—at this point she was over it. She turned around and yelled, "Someone call a fucking nine-one-one! She's not breathing!"
"Got it!" she heard Denki call, and for the first time, she thanked God that he was close. "What's their number?"
She took her thanks back.
