Recap:
Shoto stood in the center of the ice-choked hallway, the mist of his own breath swirling around him. He realized that words weren't enough.
She was so convinced of her own worthlessness that his voice couldn't reach her anymore.
^ • ^
Shoto looked at her-really looked at her-huddled against the ice he had created, treating herself like trash to be discarded for his benefit.
He realized that as long as they were in this house, surrounded by the luxury her father had bought, she would never believe him.
He did the only thing he could think of to break the cycle. He didn't reach for his phone, and he didn't reach for her.
Instead, he turned toward the wall of ice he had built to trap her. With a sudden, violent surge of heat from his left side, he didn't just melt it-he **vaporized** it.
A massive cloud of steam hissed through the hallway, and the glass doors to the balcony shattered outward from the pressure.
The path was clear.
"Fine," Shoto said, his voice dropping to a hollow, terrifying whisper. He stood perfectly still, his arms hanging at his sides, his chest exposed and vulnerable. "Go. The ice is gone. I won't stop you."
(Y/N) blinked through her tears, startled by the sudden blast of cold night air rushing into the hallway. "Shoto...?"
"Go to your father. Tell him the 'asset' is broken. Tell him the 'merger' failed," Shoto said, his eyes locking onto hers with a raw, bleeding honesty. "But before you go, you need to understand one thing. You think you're saving me? You're not. If you walk out that door, your father wins. My father wins. The contract wins. Because they will have successfully convinced you that you aren't a human being."
He took a step toward the open balcony, the wind whipping his hair. "I'm not a hero right now, (Y/N). I'm not a son. I'm just a man who is watching the only person who ever made him feel 'real' walk away because she believes a lie written by some old man who couldn't even love his own child."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet.
He took out his identification and his Hero License-the things that defined his status-and dropped them onto the floor.
"If you leave because you think you're 'dragging me down,' then I'm done. I'll quit the agency. I'll let the Todoroki name rot. Because if the world is so cruel that a woman like you thinks her only value is her womb, then it's not a world worth saving as a hero."
He stood at the edge of the threshold, the moonlight illuminating the scars on his body-the ones his family gave him, and the ones he bore for the public.
"You want the truth? The truth is that I am nothing without you. Not because of a contract. But because I finally found someone who looked at Shoto and didn't see a weapon. If you leave, you're taking the man with you, and leaving the weapon behind. Is that how you save me?"
(Y/N) stared at him, the wind chilling the tears on her face. For the first time, she saw the stakes. It wasn't about Momo or the money or the agency.
It was about whether she would let her father define her reality, or if she would believe the man standing in the ruins of his own home, willing to throw everything away just to prove she was enough.
(Y/N) stared at the Hero License lying discarded on the floor-the plastic card that symbolized everything Shoto had fought for, everything he had suffered to reclaim from his father.
Seeing it tossed aside like trash just to get her to stay made her heart lurch with a new kind of terror.
"You don't mean that," she whispered, her voice cracking as she shook her head. "You can't. Shoto, that's your life. That's your dream. You can't throw it away for someone like me."
She felt defeated. The fire of her anger had burned out, leaving only the cold, hollow ash of exhaustion.
She felt small-so incredibly small-against the backdrop of the political and familial titans that had orchestrated their lives.
"I do mean it," Shoto said, his voice steady even as his hands trembled at his sides. "I mean every word. I spent years being a tool for my father. I won't spend the rest of my life being a tool for yours. If being a 'Top Hero' means I have to live in a world where my wife thinks she's a factory, then I don't want the title."
(Y/N) looked at him, and for the first time, she saw the true cost of her self-hatred. She thought she was being noble by trying to leave. She thought she was "saving" him from a bad deal. But seeing him stand there, ready to dismantle his entire existence just to show her she was more than a contract, made her realize she was doing exactly what her father did: she was deciding Shoto's life for him.
"I just..." she choked out, a final, lonely tear falling. "I just wanted you to be happy. I didn't want you to look at me and see a mistake."
"The only mistake," Shoto said, finally closing the distance between them, his voice dropping to a soft, pained plea, "is that I didn't tell you sooner. I let you live in the dark because I was afraid of this exact moment. I was afraid the lie would be louder than my voice."
He stopped just inches from her, his warmth fighting the cold night air pouring in from the shattered balcony. He didn't reach out this time; he waited for her.
"Natsuo was right about the contract, (Y/N). It's ugly. It's cruel. But he was wrong about me. And you're wrong about yourself." He looked down at his discarded license. "That card says I'm a hero. But I don't feel like one if I can't even make the woman I love believe she's human."
(Y/N) looked at the open door, the path to her father, the path to "freedom." Then she looked at Shoto-the man who was willing to become a nobody just to prove she was his everything.
The defeat she felt started to shift. It wasn't the defeat of a victim anymore; it was the surrender of someone who realized that fighting the truth was only hurting the person who loved her most.
"I'm so tired of fighting, Shoto," she whispered, her knees finally giving out.
Shoto didn't let her fall. He caught her, his arms wrapping around her like a vice, anchoring her to the world as she trembled.
"I don't know what to believe anymore," she sobbed into his chest, her hands clutching his shirt as if she were drowning. "Everything feels like a trap. Every word... every look... I don't know what's real."
"I know," Shoto whispered, his voice thick with a resolve she had never heard before. "So I'm going to show you. Not with words. With them."
He didn't give her a choice. He scooped her up, ignoring her weak protests, and carried her to the car. He drove through the night with a singular, quiet intensity.
He didn't head for a hotel or her father's estate. He drove straight back to the traditional Todoroki household.
When the car pulled up to the gates, (Y/N) shrunk back into the leather seat, her eyes wide with terror. "No... Shoto, please. I should not be here. No one wants me here."
"They need to see you," Shoto said, rounding the car to open her door.
"They hate me, Shoto!" she cried, her voice rising in a panicked pitch. "Natsuo hates what I represent. Fuyumi is terrified of the trouble I bring. Barging in here is never a good idea-it always ends badly! It's like the dinner all over again, only worse because now they know I know."
She looked at the dark windows of the house, her soul feeling completely flayed open. "I can't face them. I can't see the pity in your mother's eyes again. I just can't... I just want to die, Shoto. I want it all to stop. The noise, the contracts, the expectations... I just want to disappear."
Shoto stopped. He gripped the car door, his knuckles turning white.
Hearing her say she wanted to die-that the world he was part of had pushed her to the edge of existence-shattered the last of his restraint.
He pulled her out of the car, not with force, but with a desperate, grounding embrace. "You aren't disappearing. Not on my watch."
He led her to the front door and didn't knock. He slid it open with a heavy *thud*.
The house was quiet, but the light in the kitchen was still on. Fuyumi and Natsuo were sitting at the table, the tension from earlier in the day still hanging over them like a shroud.
They looked up, shocked to see Shoto and a disheveled, tear-stained (Y/N) standing at the entrance of the room at 12:00 AM.
"Shoto? What's going on?" Fuyumi stood up, her face full of worry.
Natsuo stood too, his expression hardening. "Look, if you're here to yell at me for telling the truth-"
"I'm not here to yell," Shoto interrupted, his voice echoing through the hall, cold and sharp as a blade.
He stepped forward, pulling (Y/N) into the light so they could see her-see the way her spirit had been crushed. "I'm here because my wife thinks you hate her. I'm here because she thinks she's a 'human incubator'. She thinks she's a poison for this family."
He looked at Natsuo, his eyes burning. "She thinks she's dragging me down. She thinks I'd be happier with a memory from UA than with the woman standing right here. Is that what you wanted, Natsuo? When you threw those words at her, was your goal to make her want to die?"
The room went deathly silent. Natsuo's face went from defensive to horrified in a split second.
He looked at (Y/N), seeing the way she wouldn't even lift her head, the way she looked like a ghost of the girl who had brought groceries over just hours ago.
"I... I didn't..." Natsuo stammered, his voice failing him.