Chapter Seventeen: Strange Things

Three more achingly long days into the week, the she decided that she couldn't take it anymore.

Bakugou Katsuki, (a.k.a the guy who hated her guts) was everywhere. It was a lost cause, really. He sat near her in class, he joined them for lunch, he lived next to her- avoiding him was about as fruitful as watching paint dry.

Three days was a long time to do some reflecting. Morie had pinpointed the reason for her inital annoyance towards Mr Spiky Hair- it was strange, but she somehow had felt hurt, of all things. She was someone who generally wore her heart on her sleeve- something, she decided, made it all too easy for her to become attached to other people. When Bakugou rejected her concern, she must've subconsciously felt like he was rejecting her as a person.

... yeah, that must be it.

As much as she didn't like to admit it, she couldn't keep going on like this forever. Bakugou wasn't even ignoring her on purpose, he was acting the way he always did. She was the one making everything more difficult for herself.

What if they were put on the same team during training? Or even paired up together? If she didn't muster up the courage to resolve this soon, (because Bakugou sure as hell would not) it would certainly just spell trouble in the unforeseeable future. She might as well just swallow her pride and deal with this- fixing this problem should be her priority right now.

(Thus came the second time Morie willingly talked to Mr Spiky Hair when he was all ruffled and angry.

There was still something she was missing, however, and frustratingly she couldn't place it.)

.

(ಥ﹏ಥ) (ಥ﹏ಥ) (ಥ﹏ಥ)

.

It was Friday, and the first three attempts had gone awry.

Morie arrived to class about thirty minutes early, remembering how early he had been on the first day of the semester. She'd thought that she could corner him before class started, and would be able to avoid a prolonged confrontation. That plan went to shit however, as Bakugou strided into class the minute before homeroom began.

The second attempt was no more successful. Morie hastily rushed to find Bakugou before he joined them at the table as usual. She had seen him queuing, but all she managed to do was step forward and run into Shinsou, who thankfully was not holding food. After apologising to him for the umpteenth time, she realised with a small groan that Bakugou had already secured his food and was already seated with the rest of the guys back at their table.

The third attempt was the worst, however. Fucking hell, who said that 'third time's the charm!'

The brown-haired girl got the brilliant idea to wait outside the guy's room before hero training, but she hadn't well, taken into account the presence of the other guys. After some leering from Mineta, she sputtered out, red-faced and embarrassed that she was 'waiting for Kiri', much to his bemusement. Sero and Kaminari didn't let her hear the end of it, and she even ended up spilling her guts out to Kirishima about why she had been acting weird all day.

Running a hand through brown hair, Morie shook her head exasperatedly and sighed- it looked like desperate times called for desperate measures.

.

BAEREN: you mean the neighbour guy is mad at you again?

BAEREN: don't know him personally;; but since he's acting normal lately maybe he's cooled down?

BAEREN: try talking to him again;; okay but i'm rooting for you my child please don't die!

.

Morie flipped through the text messages from Ren nervously.

School had just ended a while ago, and she now found herself standing outside the Bakugou's home with a small bag of cookies in her hand- the very bag she'd been carrying around the whole day. Her rationale? The Bakugous seemed to share a universal love for food; heck, they were great at cooking (though it went without saying that her dad still cooked the best food.) Morie wasn't proud of her culinary skills, but she was proud of her ability to bake, at the very least.

(No, she definitely had not begged Kiri to ask him for advice; it was not like she was socially inept, or anything!)

Petrified at the thought of Mr Spiky Hair being the one to open the door, she couldn't bring herself to just ring the goddamn doorbell. It must've been a strange sight, watching a small brown-haired girl lose her shit in front of her neighbour's doorstep.

Leaving the cookies outside the gate wouldn't work at all- they would get stepped on, or worse, some ants would get to them before Bakugou did. She paced around a little, feeling her heart race in uncertainty.

'Ren, I can't do this.' Morie squirmed, feeling helpless. Fiddling with her phone, she took a deep breath and decisively dropped it into her pocket, hearing it clank against the glass marbles she kept on her.

Okay. You got this. Just ring the doorbell, pass on the cookies, and you're clear. It's simple.

With that thought, the brown-haired girl stepped forward and pressed the doorbell (or would punched be a better word?) before she could lose her nerve.

The next few moments of silence were tense and suspenseful- dark almond eyes craned to see if anyone had opened the door further inside the compound. On an anticlimatic note, her heart sank as she realised that no one was home.

'I'll have to come back later,' Morie inwardly groaned, torn between apprehension and relief. That one moment of spontaneity had been wasted. Moving to walk back to her house and reaching for her phone, a shuffling noise suddenly caught her attention. Her eyes widened somewhat.

Lo and behold, Bakugou Katsuki was turning the corner. She froze as the crimson-eyed boy glanced up momentarily, only for his eyes to meet hers.

What was with this sense of déjà vu?

The awkward, overwhelming urge to avoid him like how she did with life in general screamed at her to pretend like she didn't see him and to get the fuck back in her house. But instead Morie swallowed, remaining rooted to the spot as Bakugou drew closer, eyes narrowing at the sight of her.

She resisted the strong urge to go 'fuck this I'm out' at the sheer irony of the situation- before she remembered her earlier painful attempts to speak to the boy.

"B-Bakugou!" Her voice came out louder than expected, and she felt like shrinking back and slapping herself. Of their own accord, her legs were hurrying forward, yet Morie herself felt at a loss for what to do.

"Hah?"

Bakugou's voice dragged out lowly. There was a brief period of silence as he regarded her harshly with narrowed crimson eyes. It was as if he didn't know what to make of her. " 'the hell do you want?"

She shifted around on her feet a little, but she decided to cut to the chase. "About that time a few days ago- "

"- finally grew the balls to face me, huh, dipshit?" The boy bit out, growling at the memory, prompting her to fiddle with her fingers.

'Shit, he noticed?'

Bakugou scoffed, his voice bordering on the confines of apathy- yet she wouldn't say that he was mocking her, either. "You weren't fucking subtle about it."

She blinked, letting out a nervous chuckle.

"... yeah, sorry about that," the girl muttered, refraining from flinching as his red eyes stared into her own dark ones. "About that, I- "

"Speak the fuck up."

There was a long period of silence. For the impatient person Bakugou was, she silently marveled that he wasn't screaming at her to hurry up and speak already.

Gathering her thoughts at last, Morie cleared her throat embarrassedly. "I wanted to give you something."

Fumbling with the small gift bag full of cookies, she nervously shoved it towards the explosion user, whose face promptly scrunched up.

"It's a peace offering, or s-something," Morie rambled on. "Would it be alright to call a truce?"

More silence.

It was the moment of truth. Her dark eyes settled on him nervously, already expecting orange flames to sputter out from his palms to crush her gift into crumbs; she was practically waiting for him to just flat-out reject it, to throw it back at her face without a second glance...

Yet nothing of the sort happened.

Bakugou stared at the neatly wrapped gift bag like it was a foreign object, his face scrunching up as if he couldn't wrap his mind around it. He let out another scoff as his eyes landed on her, not exactly appearing to be the picture of friendliness, yet not radiating hostility, either.

In a smooth, disgruntled action, the Explosion user shoved the gift bag into his pocket.

"You're so full of shit," he told her. With the turn of his head, he marched into his house without so much as another glance at her.

What?

Morie gawked after his slouched figure. Something told her, however, that she wasn't the only soul feeling confused.

Brushing her bangs away from her eyes, the Pressure user decided to retreat into her house. Her fingers reached into her bag and brushed against the surface of another gift bag identical to the one she had given Bakugou mere moments ago- thankfully, Morie hadn't needed an extra one after all.

.

Messing around with her phone to send a quick 'thank you' to Ren and Kiri, (she felt like facepalming when the realisation struck her that she hadn't asked him for his number yet,) Morie dropped her phone and sunk herself onto her bed, absent-mindedly listening to the sounds of the television echoing from downstairs.

Her room was dim, streetlights filtering through her windows in dull yellow shades. If she squinted, she could make out bright white lights coming from the house right next to her own; she even thought that if she focused hard enough, she might be able to hear the voices of her loud neighbours.

('It's strange,' she found herself thinking, staring up at the shadowed confines of her room. It took her a few moments, but an unspoken question materialised in her mind at last; carefully and tentatively, like strokes painting against a blank canvas. 'How can someone so direct be such an enigma?' )

Where that thought came from, she had no clue. Yet as she rolled about in her covers, she felt that the weight on her shoulders felt slightly lighter than usual.

"... well," her voice bit out after a few seconds in a soft lament, not really addressing anyone in particular. "So that happened."

.


A/N:

In which Rie tries to give Bakugou cookies the whole day, receiving support from the bros Ren and Kirishima.

Sometimes I want to see the inner workings of Bakugou's mind firsthand.

But hey, kudos if you caught the reference to their first meeting in chapter one! To me, this is as much a Bakugou development fic as well as a Rie development fic- I was thinking about how the Bakugou from the earlier arcs would have destroyed Rie's gift right away, while the current Bakugou is a smidge more mature and is willing to hear her out, impatient as he is. Trying to look at things from his viewpoint, I feel that a reason he didn't get (that) angry this chapter was because he was more mad at the fact that Rie was right about him, than actually at her- though he would never admit it.

Short chapter, but I hope to make it up with the next longer chapter. I was also trying to make this chapter seem chaotic of sorts, what with Rie's inner conflict and jumbled up thoughts. I would describe this chapter as a rollercoaster of emotions, actually.

My updates are probably going to come slower from this point- school is starting, and I feel writer's block pestering me, argh. I'll try to keep updating as much as I can, though!

Don't forget to let me know what you think of this in the reviews, and thanks for reading!

-C