⊱ ──────ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ────── ⊰

"Y/L/N? I-IT CAN'T BE YOU  ..."

Shoto shook his head at Y/N as subtly as he dared, blowing his fringe out of his vision when it inevitably fell in his eyes, and fixing his heterochromatic gaze on her with unwavering intensity.

She couldn't reveal she was there. It would get her, him (and the other boy, he supposed) in insurmountable amounts of trouble, possibly resulting in a mental hospital and a straitjacket.

Y/N's lip wobbled, but she nodded at him, before running back out to the hall through the wall, leaving no one the wiser. Shoto turned to stare at the green-haired boy, daring him to mention that she'd been there in the first place.

He nodded imperceptibly, a red flush high on his cheeks as he took his seat, several people giggling at him.

"Useless, Deku," one blond growled in a low, angry voice, his arms folded over a messy uniform.

"Did you say 'useless' twice?" some other student called across the classroom, tilted back in his chair with a smug ease that told Shoto all he needed to know about his personality. He had a black lightning streak in his hair, and a wide smirk seemingly permanently affixed upon his face.

"Don't call Midoriya 'Deku'!" a brunette girl with a bob insisted in a sweet voice, giving a borderline annoyed glance to the first boy. She definitely didn't seem like the type to be angry, ever, though living with Fuyumi would definitely teach anyone the dangers of upsetting a woman. 

Midoriya. Shoto filed the name away for later use, reminding himself to ask Y/N about him later. On the topic of his best friend, he'd never seen her so frightened or shocked, not even the night when she'd first shown up.

Whoever this Midoriya was ... he must've meant something to six-year-old Y/N before she died. That thought stirred a twinge of jealousy in his stomach, which he attempted to force away - harbouring any romantic feelings or envy towards a ghost and her Kindergarten love life (in that order) was absurd, and a most un-Todoroki-like behaviour.

However, the boy still found himself thinking about her as their first class began, with some Underground Pro Hero as their Homeroom teacher.

≻───── ⋆✩⋆ ─────≺

"How did you die?"

Y/N flinched. "That was abrasive."

She regretted saying the sophisticated word most six-year-olds wouldn't know, but in shock, sometimes she reverted to the way she was brought up. She loved her parents, and they treated her with the utmost love and care, but she was brought up on a whole other level of society, at least something Shoto might've understood.

"Sorry." The little boy blushed embarrassedly, turning back to his calligraphy brush with red-tinged ears. "Apparently I'm very blunt sometimes. I didn't mean to be rude."

"No, i-it's okay," Y/N frowned, watching as she tried to pick up a pencil on his desk and her hand just passed through it, with the same feeling as when she sat on her leg and it fell asleep. "I don't really know. I just remember ... flashes."

This wasn't the entire truth, and even back then as a kid, Y/N had hated lying to Shoto - it was why she'd never lied except for about how she died. She remembered the entire scene in vivid detail.

More so than the actual death itself, she remembered the pain before, her own screams and of those of her parents.

But most of all, she would recall every day, how her sweet, innocent, six-year-old self had begged to die as blood leaked from her body, willing herself to stop fighting and stop breathing, trying with all her will to just leave the pain behind.

"Don't remember, then," Shoto spoke, after a momentary silence. "I don't want you to go through pain just trying to answer one of my stupid questions."

"Your questions aren't stupid, Shoto."

"Really?" a derisive snort, and a deliberately blotted character as he cast the brush to the side. "Tell that to my father. All I want is to please him, but I can't be a kid."

She'd noticed that too - he spoke as though he was twice or three times his actual age, with loss and buried sadness churning dangerously beneath the surface of every one of his words, thinly veiled with indifference.

Hopefully she wasn't too late, and she could save him from a life of living in the past, turning slowly until he was exactly as his father - ignorant, egotistical, uncompromising, prideful. 

"Be a kid with me, then," Y/N suggested, getting to her feet and pointing to the floor with a devious grin. "Come on - draw on the floor for me. Let's play hopscotch."

"Y/N ... what's hopscotch?"

"... you've gotta be kidding me."

⋘ ──── ∗ ⋅◈⋅ ∗ ──── ⋙

At lunch, Shoto could barely stomach his soba noodles, and it wasn't because he'd already had some for breakfast.

Y/N hadn't reappeared again - the ghost was nowhere to be found. He knew it was probably wise for her to keep her distance, especially when Midoriya could see her, but he dearly missed not spending almost every second with his best friend.

He sat alone in the corner, well aware of how socially hopeless he must appear, but unable to bring himself to care, knowing that his aloof detachedness and power would ensure that he was never outright hated.

Characteristically 'Todoroki' of him? Perhaps. Y/N wasn't a miracle worker. 

Shoto pulled his phone out of his pocket, staring at the locked screen.

Two texts from Fuyumi. One from Natsuo. The daily update from the hospital, with a report on his mother's condition. A couple of alerts from one of the numerous social media platforms he never checked.

He swiped them all to the side, scanning his lockscreen. When he and Y/N had been ten, they'd figured out that she could show up in photos, though no one else could still see her when they tried to look.

This photo was from the week before - Shoto holding an ice cream and making a peace sign with his fingers, Y/N making a silly face, mid-laugh with a spectral ice cream of her own.

"Excuse me, Todoroki?"

He tilted his head upwards with a cool stare, not at all surprised when he saw Midoriya.

"You see her, don't you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." He hated to gloss over Y/N in this way, but it was for the good of both of them. As much as Shoto loved his mother, he didn't wish to end up in the same mental hospital she lived in.

"You do," the green-haired boy insisted, a flash of frustration scrunching his features. "You see her. Y/L/N Y/N. My best friend."

⊱ ──────ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ────── ⊰

thank you for reading this
book and i hope you enjoy it!
~ jazzi