Well first of all I just wanna say sorry for saying that it would only take a couple days to post in the first chapter but just posting this three weeks later. I reread what I wrote after posting the first chapter and didn't feel satisfied with it at all so I pretty much rewrote it from scratch for the next few days… only to seemingly overnight feel burned out for more than a week T.T
Todoroki and Yaoyorozu make their way to the kitchen to prepare the tea. Not many of their classmates are there on the first floor and the ones that are just give a quick hello, not paying much attention to the pair.
Yaoyorozu's tea collection sits on the top shelf of the kitchen cabinets. As the tallest girl in the class, she can typically reach it while flat-footed. However, this time the tea box had been pushed close to the wall and even when tip-toeing she had trouble getting a firm handle on it.
She frowns when, in the process of retrieving it, she inadvertently pushes it further inside. She contemplates grabbing a chair to stand on when she feels someone's arm graze hers. She turns and sees Todoroki pull down the box. His height was measured at 176 centimeters, 3 centimeters taller than her, on the last physical examination but she notes that he might have grown a little since then.
"Good thing we came together." He remarks. Their shoulders are touching and, when he turns toward her to speak, their faces are less than a foot apart. The close proximity doesn't faze him as he holds the box in front of him, expecting her to take it.
She quickly grabs it and turns away so that he can't see her blush. "Y-yes. Thank you, Todoroki-san." She says for what she feels like is the tenth time today.
As the kettle full of water boils on the stove, she sits on the chairs near the counter and checks her phone for student council updates from Iida. She notices that Todoroki always dashes away whenever she had places the kettle on the stove even if they were standing close to each other beforehand. She glances at him as he leans against the pillars connected to the windows, his expression stoic as always. She wonders if there's something more to what just happened.
'It's not my place to pry.' She thinks. 'I just hope that if there is something more to it, he trusts me enough to open up about it one day.'
When she finishes texting Iida, she spends more time stealing glances at the heterochromatic boy. He is gazing out the window and looks as effortlessly stunning as always.
The last thing she expected when she heard a knock on her door was to see Todoroki on the other side. She didn't exactly feel down at the time, but any lingering negative emotions she was holding in from the joint training went away as she listened to his calming voice. The inferiority feelings that had plagued her earlier in the year had started to creep up, but she was confident that she is now strong enough that a good night's sleep could make her forget about it tomorrow. And then he appears at her doorstep and her recovery accelerates.
And then to find out that he also brought her the cake that she wanted in case she was feeling down? It almost seemed like a dream, which is perhaps the reason for her sudden boldness when she asked him if he would like to spend more time with her under the guise of trying the cake.
She mentally pleads with her mother for forgiveness, who would surely admonish her for speaking with an ulterior motive.
The water is still not finished boiling, and so her mind, despite her best efforts, wanders to the question of what she is to him. He seemed cold and distant at the start of the year, but she has learned that he has, through his own efforts, warmed up to the rest of the class over time. Surely he would do this for all of their classmates, right? If he would only do this for her, that would be… very touching.
'No, that can't be true.' She refuses to let her mind go along this line of thinking. 'Get yourself together, Momo. What would he even see in me…'
Ever since they teamed up together against Aizawa-sensei in the final exam, she always felt distracted when it comes to Todoroki. Even in class, her comfort zone where her focus is greatest, she finds herself occasionally looking at her seatmate out of the corner of her eye (though at the time she didn't know it). Her grades have suffered as a result; she placed second on the last practice exam.
She has believed her entire life that grades are the final result of effort and efficiency when it comes to studying. The phrase "knowledge is power" runs especially true for her quirk, which made her determined to figure out what the predicament was.
She is still using the same study methods as always, making it not a question of efficiency. That only leaves effort as the last possible explanation. She was ready to do whatever it took to find a source for her lack of effort.
Several days and multiple notebooks later (where she identified not only her habit of side eyeing him, but also that many of her idle thoughts and even the occasional dream centered around her seatmate), she at last came to the conclusion she might have a crush on Todoroki.
She realizes that she might have been out of it for too long because she has no recollection of when he came closer and his blue and gray eyes started to bore into her onyx ones. All she knows is that she immediately snaps out of it when she hears his voice. "Yaoyorozu."
The intensity of his eyes makes her believe that he can read her thoughts. She prays that this is not the case or she would have to go into hiding out of shame. She clears her throat and says as calmly as she can: "Yes, Todoroki-san?"
"The water's ready."
Somehow, her thoughts were strong enough to somehow drown out the loud whistling from the kettle. She really needs to fix this habit of staring at her seatmate. "... Yes! You're right, I'll prepare the tea immediately."
She turns her attention to the whistling kettle and wills her gaze away from his heterochromatic eyes to the steaming kettle.
She may have answered one question, but many more pop up. What will she do with this new knowledge? When she participates in Class-A's 'girls only' nights, Ashido always makes a point to tell everyone that if they know they like someone, they ought to grab it by the reins and confess before it's too late. But… that's too much to ask of her.
She has seen an increasing number of girls confess to Todoroki lately. He's too nice to display it in front of them, but she can tell it's starting to annoy him. The idea that he would also feel annoyed after letting her down gently is exactly the scenario that she wants to avoid. He has shown no real interest in her (or anything, for that matter) so that was a very real possibility.
She thought about asking other girls for advice, but after seeing how much the girls in the class teased Uraraka for her crush on Midoriya, she makes the decision to keep her revelation to herself.
'There is no time for romance.' She convinces herself.
For now, she decides she is content with not jeopardizing their relationship as good friends.
"Todoroki-san!" She calls out. "The tea is ready. Shall we eat here?"
"No, let's go back up. If we eat here others will want some too." He explained. "I bought it just for you."
She does her best to ignore the heat rising to her face "O-okay then, let's go."
As they walk out, neither of them noticed a pair of invisible eyes watching them with great interest all the way to the elevators.
Five minutes earlier
The normally bubbly Hagakure is in a rare state of silence, a result of a rather scathing post-match review by Aizawa. She and her teammate Aoyama had received the harshest evaluations from the joint training. This made her seem especially undetectable, except to Ojiro who is sitting with her. Though she does not say anything, Ojiro notices that her mood seems to be getting worse and worse. He tries to think of a way to cheer her up when he sees Todoroki and Yaoyorozu exiting the girl's dorm and entering the kitchen together.
"Ah, it's Todoroki and Yaoyorozu. It looks like they are making tea together." Ojiro comments as he waves at them. It is returned with a nod and a smile, respectively. When he sees that Hagakure still sits in silence, he adds "I didn't know those two were so close."
"What was that, Ojiro-kun?" Hagakure finally asks. It's the first time she speaks in an hour, and Ojiro wants to keep her interest or else the situation will return to unbearable silence.
"Todoroki seemed much more talkative today than usual. He typically only speaks during class to participate, correct? Otherwise, he doesn't say much." She nods her head so he continues. "When it was your team participating, he made some flattering remarks about Yaoyorozu."
"Like what, like what?!" Hagakure asked with regained eagerness in her voice.
With signs of her bad mood disappearing, Ojiro reckoned that this was a good direction for this conversation to be headed. "Tetsutetsu had just complimented Kendo when she isolated Yaoyorozu, and Todoroki then engaged in a conversation with him. Todoroki repsonded by saying 'that may not have been the best tactic. If she isolated Yaoyorozu because she is wary of her, she might have misread things. If they knew the threat that Yaoyorozu posed, all four of them would have teamed up to crush her right off the bat because rising to the challenge is Yaoyorozu Momo's specialty.' Those are some glowing remarks from someone that I've never heard give much praise. And he was right; she almost pulled off the victory even though she lost the one vs one. It sounds like they are very familiar with one another."
"He didn't say much else about anyone else, right?" He shakes his head no. "I wish I could have been there!" She playfully laments. Ojiro takes this as a good sign. "So the always cool-headed Todoroki-kun only speaks up when the Vice-rep's honor is on the line, like a knight defending his princess… or in this case a prince defending his knight! I knew there was something between those two! Just look at the way that the Vice-Rep is staring at him now, she's got it bad. This smells like more romantic material!"
Ojiro was only trying to cheer her up, but things seemed to be taking a weird turn. He wants to stop any weird rumors from popping up and tries to correct things. "Let's slow down a little. I'm not sure that's exactly true. They could just be great friends-" Ojiro starts but she doesn't seem to hear him.
"I have to tell Mina-chan about this!" Hagakure exclaims.
"You're... going to tell Ashido?" He needs to stop this before it gets out of hand. Based on what he knows about Ashido, if news of this gets to her things will definitely spiral out of control.
"Yep! And Kyouka-chan too! See you later, Ojiro-kun!" Hagakure replies with all the liveliness back in her voice and stands up.
He is glad that she is back to her usual self but he knows he needs to stop her.
"Wait-" He calls out but she is already leaving. He stands to begin chasing after her (she had made an impressive amount of distance between them already). He takes one step and notices a funny feeling in his foot. He then notices that both of his feet fell asleep while talking so he has to walk with his tail. His tail is fatigued from being pierced multiple times earlier and he has to be careful of not breaking anything along the way. By the time he makes it to the hallway, Hagakure is out of sight.
He sighs and makes a mental apology to Todoroki and Yaoyorozu. He promises to give them a physical one if they face any complications because of him.
Had to write something about Ojiro standing next to Todoroki while he explained why Momo is the best. The look that Ojiro gives him the whole time was funny lol.
After writing this, my respect for writers who make lengthy fics (and especially multi-chapter ones) with consistent releases has gone way up because this felt like a slog at times, but felt like it had to be done. Hope it came out okay~
Not any closer to finishing the next chapter than I was three weeks ago and I have some IRL stuff I have to do so the upload date for the next chapter is unknown.