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It’s 31 degrees out, her watch screen reads 4 kilometers, and Ochako is regretting her life choices.
Why the hell am I doing this to myself, she questions, as she has been doing for the past month. Why do I put myself in these situations.
When she’s not running, it’s easy to conjure up an answer: So I can be healthier. So I can get a better time on the mile in PE. So I have something to do instead of hanging out at home all day.
But in the last stretch of a run, with both her heart rate and the amount of sweat dripping onto her shirt reaching catastrophic levels, it’s hard to think of a reason to keep going.
With one last glance at her watch (4.3 kilometers, now), she lets herself slow to a walk and gasp for air.
Her legs are still wobbly with exhaustion when another set of footsteps make themselves known, crunching on the gravel behind her. Ochako dutifully moves closer to the trail’s side with steps worryingly similar to those of a baby deer.
The footsteps are closer, and then next to her, and as she turns her head to see the other runner, they call out, “You’re doing great! Keep it up!”
It’s a boy, probably her age, who flashes her a bright smile as he passes. She doesn’t recognize him from school. Shame, because plain as he is, that curly hair and freckles are –
Already almost out of sight ahead of her, what the fuck.
Two thoughts flash through her mind, one right after the other. He’s really cute.
I want to beat him.
Because encouraging words or not, no one sprints past at double her pace and gets away with it… or something.
Even though her legs still ache, Ochako forces herself to run the last half kilometer anyway.
She’s gotten into a routine of running every other day, so two days later Ochako finds herself on the trail again. The temperature is the same; the humidity even higher, and it feels a little like she’s breathing through a wet washrag as she forces herself to keep a faster pace.
The song she’s blasting through her headphones ends, and she’s about to take a well-deserved break when she hears footsteps behind her once more. The trail is never completely empty of other people, but it’s not exactly well-known either, so she’s not surprised when she looks back and sees the green-haired boy again.
She moves over without slowing this time, because if she plans on beating this guy someday it would be embarrassing to stop while he’s still going, and tries to return his smile. She’s so out of breath it comes out more like a grimace.
This time, he cheers “You got this!” and shoots her a thumbs-up as he strides past. He’s not even out of breath, what the hell?
He vanishes around the next turn, and Ochako keeps her pace for another minute and a half before she finally lets herself walk.
The next time she runs, it’s a little earlier in the day, and the only person she sees on the trail is an older man on his bike who politely ignores her as he goes in the other direction. She supposes she can’t expect the green-haired boy to be there every time, but she’s surprised by her disappointment at his absence.
She reaches the end of the trail as it spills into the park and is seconds away from flopping to the ground when she spies a familiar shade of green, contrasted against the grass.
The boy is sitting near one of the benches, folded in half at the waist as he stretches his hamstrings. “Hey!” Ochako calls out, and he startles, eyes darting around before landing on her.
“Hi!” he says, and it comes out more like a squeak than anything. Ochako stifles a giggle as she walks over and sits in the grass across from him.
“I guess I was a little too early today?” she says, and he looks surprised for a moment. Ochako wonders briefly if that means she’s not special, if he cheers on everyone he passes while running and she’s making this weird by talking to him, before he nods a little too fast and gives her another bright grin.
“Well, and I’m a little late.” He crosses his legs, twisting his fingers awkwardly together. “It’s nice to meet you, I mean actually meet you and not just run past each other.”
Ochako isn’t going to mention that it’s really just him running past her and not the other way around. “It is! I’m Uraraka Ochako, by the way.” She holds out a hand to shake, and in the half-second where he’s reaching towards her, suddenly becomes far too aware of how she’s currently dripping with sweat and how he definitely is not. She looks away, a little embarrassed, and her eyes land on the battered green water bottle at his side, characters scribbled in black marker on the plastic.
He shakes her hand, apparently unbothered by the sweatiness. “Hi, Uraraka-san. I’m–”
Ochako tilts her head, trying to read the characters, and the word bursts out before she realizes she’s interrupting him. “Deku?”
The boy laughs nervously, dropping her hand to fiddle with his fingers once again. “Midoriya Izuku, actually, but Deku’s, um, it’s something people from school call me.”
Ochako frowns. Deku sounds like an insult, but with the context of him cheering for her even though they were strangers…
“Oh, like dekiru?” She says, putting it together. “That’s super cute, I like it!”
Deku stares at her, green eyes going wide. “O-oh, well, then… you can call me Deku if you want!”
She smiles. “So, Deku-kun, do you come here often?”
His face goes bright red, and it takes everything in her not to start laughing. It’s not her fault that he’s cute when he’s embarrassed.
“I – I come every other day, not all the time, but it’s just a really nice trail to run on because it’s partly in the shade and it’s close to where I live, and it’s better to run on gravel than on pavement so…” His words trail off into mostly-unintelligible mumbling, and Ochako takes pity on him.
“I come every other day too!” She grins. “I actually should go now, so my parents don’t wonder where I am” (and so I can get some water and not die of heatstroke, she thinks wryly) “so I’ll let you start your run, but I’ll see you on Wednesday?”
Deku nods, his face still tinted pink. “Definitely! It was really nice to meet you, Uraraka-san, I hope we get to run together soon!”
He bolts to his feet and jogs off onto the trail, leaving her by the bench with the sun beating down on her shoulders and a silly grin spreading across her face.
On Wednesday, Deku passes her twice, once as she’s about to reach her halfway point and again on her way back towards the park. She’s trying to work out in her head what distance he must be running to pull that off as she finishes stretching her quads.
“Uraraka-san!”
Ochako drops her leg and turns towards the familiar voice. “Deku? I thought you’d be gone by now.”
Deku’s face is red with exertion, his freckles blending into rosy cheeks. It’s equal parts endearing and infuriating, because no one should look that good after exercising. Mostly endearing, though, she thinks as he shoots her a familiar smile. “I waited for a little since I knew you were almost done. It was nice to talk to you last time and I kind of wanted to again? I hope that’s not weird?” He’s nervously toying with the cap of his water bottle, not quite meeting her eyes.
Ochako’s heart forgets she’s already cooled down and starts to pound again. “No!” she says, way too loudly, and waves her hands around as if to clear the sound from the air. “I mean, it’s not weird, I wanted to talk to you again too!”
The heat she feels on her own face isn’t entirely from her workout, and it only grows as Deku’s smile widens. “Great,” he says. “Um, I’ll let you finish stretching, and then if you want, there’s an ice cream place down the street? I thought it might be nice to have something cold in this weather.”
“Please,” Ochako says, because it sort of feels like she’s going to melt into a puddle in the middle of the park. “I’m done, let’s get out of this sun before it kills me.”
Deku laughs, but they both fall silent as they exit the park and start down the sidewalk. Thoughts race through Ochako’s mind as she stares at her feet and tries to avoid eye contact. Is this a date? Is he just being nice and I’m going to make it weird by thinking it might be a date? What do you talk about on a maybe-a-date? A quick glance towards Deku finds his gaze fixed on a stop sign at the end of the block and his mouth twitching as if he’s trying to hold back his own mumbled thoughts, and, well, it’s nice to know she’s not the only one who doesn’t know what to think.
When they reach the shop, he runs a few steps ahead to hold the door for her, and their shoulders brush as they stand at the counter looking over the flavors. “I think I’m getting strawberry,” Deku says, the first either of them has spoken since the park. “What do you want? I’ll pay, since it was my idea.”
Normally, Ochako would argue, but considering she literally doesn’t have any money on her, she doesn’t bother. She’s about to point to a particularly bright rainbow sherbert when something at the other end of the counter catches her eye.
“You have mochi ice cream?!”
The bored-looking cashier nods, raising an eyebrow at her excitement.
“Matcha mochi, please!” She grins at Deku as he counts out coins. “Now our orders match!”
He looks surprised for a moment before she gestures at her face and his hair, and both of them break into giggles that last all the way to the table they choose in the corner.
“So,” Deku says, once they’re both seated, “what do you like to do? Other than running?”
Ochako tilts her head, thinking. “…I think astronomy’s really cool, so I like stargazing? Oh, and I really like Plus Ultra.” It’s an easy answer, because the show’s so popular that almost anyone has seen a few episodes, but it seems to be the right answer by the way Deku’s eyes light up.
“I love Plus Ultra!” His voice is so loud that the cashier gives them a side-eye, and his next words come out a little quieter. “I’ve been watching it from the very first episode, I just think the concept’s so cool. I love looking at all the Quirks and trying to analyze what you could do with them that never gets shown in the story.”
Ochako sits up a little straighter. “Same! I like looking at all the different fighting techniques they show and trying to do them in real life, some of them are ridiculous but some would be super useful!”
Deku leans across the table. “Who’s your favorite hero?”
“Thirteen,” she says instantly. Deku smacks his hand against the table, and the cashier gives them another look that they both ignore.
“Yes, Thirteen is so cool–”
They spend the better part of an hour talking about the show, with Deku promising to bring his analysis notebook to show her next time and Ochako offering to demonstrate the takedowns she’d copied from Gunhead when they’re not inside a restaurant. Deku seems far too excited to let her try to judo-flip him, and they’re still both breathlessly talking when Deku’s phone finally rings. He groans when he checks the screen. “It’s my mom, she’s probably worried that I’m not home yet.”
“My parents will probably be calling soon too,” Ochako says, and they stand to throw away their long-empty bowls.
“Thank you for coming with me, Uraraka-san,” Deku says, as he holds the door for her again. “I had a really good time.”
His expression is so earnest that Ochako’s heart starts to speed up again. “I had a really good time too.” She hesitates for a brief second, and then offers, “You can call me Ochako, if you want.”
Deku’s freckles vanish again as his face goes scarlet. “I-if you’re okay with it, then… I’ll see you on Friday, Ochako.”
The world tilts a little at the sound of his voice forming her name, and she knows she must be blushing just as badly. “Y-yeah! I’ll see you on Friday!”
They go in their separate directions, and as soon as Ochako turns the corner, she buries her face in her hands. I’m not going to survive this summer.
Despite that thought, she endures. The temperature rises, the humidity follows along behind, and each day she finishes five kilometers just a few seconds faster than the day before. She watches the air around her waver with heat, and listens for Deku’s footsteps approaching from behind.
It takes longer for him to pass her, now. Each day she gets closer and closer to the line where the shade of the trail gives way to the park’s open sunlight before he goes flying past.
Ochako suspects he might be trying to kill her before the heat does, what with the way he calls out “You got this, Ochako!” each time, and shoots her a smile over his shoulder that would seem cocky on anyone else but on Deku, just makes her melt a little more.
One day when the heat is particularly bad, he sheds his shirt sometime during his run, and Ochako nearly stumbles into a tree as her brain tries to reconcile nerdy, sweet Deku and more muscles than I knew a person could have.
Thankfully, his shirt is back on when she reaches the park, and she’s able to hold an intelligent conversation as they head towards the ice cream shop once more. Each day, he waits for her, and they get ice cream or wander in and out of the shops further down the road or simply lay in the grass and talk until one of them has to go home.
On one Friday, Ochako reaches the park and finds that Deku isn’t so much waiting for her as he is still stretching because they’d finished so close to each other, and she thinks it’s time.
On Sunday, the humidity finally reaches its breaking point, and the sky opens up with a downpour that cools the city about ten degrees. Monday finds Ochako back on the trail, dodging puddles with each step and pushing her pace faster than ever before. All those weeks of blistering heat and heavy air had built more endurance than she’d realized, and she’s shocked by how easy it is to run past the spots where past-her had stopped to gasp for breath.
The weather may be cooler, but determination still burns red-hot in her mind, flowing through her veins like fire as she stretches out her strides over the crunching gravel.
The edge of the park is in sight when she hears footsteps behind her.
It’s not a real race, of course. She isn’t sure when Deku had started or how far he’d run, but this is the longest it’s ever taken for him to catch up to her.
She looks over her shoulder, and sees him grin and open his mouth to call out some encouragement.
Ochako smiles back, and breaks into a sprint.
Whatever he’d been about to say turns into a surprised “Hey!”, and she hears Deku speed up a moment later. She focuses on the finish line, and there’s a few seconds where the only things that exist are
Greenery blurring around her
The jolt of each step spreading up her legs
Gasps of breath drowning out every sound except
The pounding of her heart beating through her entire body
Her eyes are locked on that line where shade gives way to sun, and it’s closer and closer with each step, and with one last stride she’s over it and standing in the open park and she turns to see Deku reach the end of the trail, mere inches behind her.
“I beat you,” Ochako gasps, and allows herself to collapse into the cool grass.
A second later, Deku flops next to her, face flushed and chest heaving. “That – was – incredible,” he says, forcing out the words before he has a chance to catch his breath. “You were – so fast!”
Ochako rolls on her side to face him, too tired to sit up. “I’ve been trying to do that – since the first day. You passed me and – all I wanted was to beat you.”
Deku rolls over too, his eyes lighting up as he looks at her. “And you got that much faster in a month! That’s awesome! We should – listen, I was thinking about entering a race at the end of summer, and you should enter it too and we could run together and have a real race, and maybe we could train together too, and–” He cuts off with a squeak as his gaze breaks from hers, and a moment later, Ochako comes to the same realization about exactly how close their faces are.
It takes everything in her not to pull back in embarrassment, but she tries to draw on that same determination from earlier. “I – I’d love to run more with you,” she says. And then, “And I’d love to do other things with you too.”
Deku’s eyes widen. “Other things?”
It’s now or never, Ochako. “Like dates.”
The blush floods back into Deku’s cheeks, but at the same time, a smile blooms across his face. “I’d love to go on a date with you.”
He rolls just a little closer, and Ochako moves at the same time.
Their lips meet, and the kiss tastes like salt and sunlight and the promise of the rest of summer laid out before them, just waiting for them to run towards it.