Garden of Green (MHA / IzuOcha)

The Last Petal

A/N: Hey, guys. Here it is. The final chapter. Honestly, for this one, most of the notes will be at the end, so read more there! Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

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"I don't understand," Ashido started, continuing on into her room and plopping down on her pink and black bed sheets. Tsuyu crept through the doorway, sat down in the swivel chair next to the coffee table. "I thought their feelings were mutual."

Tsuyu leapt down, pulled at the loose stitching of Ashido's carpet. She curled her toes and pretzeled her legs as she maneuvered into a comfortable position on the floor. "Ochako's feelings for Midoriya?"

Frankly, Ashido hadn't specified why she wanted Tsuyu here in the first place. Come to my room, her unanticipated texts had read, I want to talk to you. Tsuyu—calm, cool, and collected—just played along. She had a feeling she would be barraged with questions like these, questions about Ochako's circumstances, especially only a day after she'd stunned all of her classmates with her Hanahaki revelation and had been wheeled off to the hospital. She wasn't unnerved in the slightest to discover she had surmised a perfect guess.

Ashido threw her hands in the air. "Yeah! Did they seriously not have a thing for each other, or am I just blind? I usually have an eye for these things!"

Tsuyu stared at Ashido's button nose, and then up into her eyes. They weren't close friends, so she wasn't at all surprised by the slight disconnect that held between their gazes. Tsuyu cleared her throat. "Midoriya is nervous around all girls, ribbit."

Ashido didn't look any longer, instead turning to glance idly out the window. She rested her head in her hands, fluttered her eyelashes. "I just thought, with their mutual respect for each other and Ochako's pining, it'd be enough to form love. And I thought Midoriya definitely felt the same way. He must have felt something, at least!"

Tsuyu stood up, stared across the room and spaced out. Her black eyes held their gaze even as her awareness came to. "He probably did feel something, ribbit."

Ashido spun her neck around. "Huh?"

Tsuyu strolled toward the window. She sighed, reluctant to enlighten the disoriented girl sitting before her, and instead separated the curtains farther apart, letting more light in. She looked out at the daytime scenery and then back at Ashido, her deep pink lips parted slightly. "To put it simply, I think Midoriya would've fallen for her eventually," Tsuyu stated, eyes becoming increasingly more forlorn. Her breath hitched in the back of her throat as she managed to say this next part. "But then, out of nowhere, the weight of school and the workload and Ochako's fate was resting on his shoulders. What do you think that'd do to a person?"

"Probably.. tear them apart from the inside out? Bring about internal conflict?" Ashido asked.

"Yup. A war inside their own head, ribbit. And then, suddenly, he was overcomplicating things, searching for something that wasn't supposed to be looked for, and that, right there, was when he lost."

Ashido put a finger to her chin. "Hm..." She scrutinized the more intricate details of Tsuyu's lecture. "Ah, I see! But... you said, even if only slightly, Midoriya might have been developing feelings for her, right? So why didn't that stop the Hanahaki?"

Tsuyu knotted her hands behind her back, closed her eyes. She opened them again, stared out the window. The hills were rolling outside, trees blocking her view. Barely being able to look up at the sky, she blessed herself for the miniscule part she could see beyond the clouds, her sight bestowed upon heaven. "Quite simple, really: Midoriya was only dipping his feet into the water, then, testing out the temperature, when it had already become too late. Ochako was suffocating, drowning in the deep blue sea."