The sterile scent of antiseptic mixed faintly with the colder, metallic smell of the warehouse—or was it a safehouse? You weren’t sure anymore.

All you knew was the pain, sharp and persistent, crawling up and down your spine, reminding you with every breath that you could no longer move like you had before.

Your legs—your own body—had betrayed you. The injury was permanent, and the reality was suffocating.

And then there was him. Touya Todoroki. Calm. Collected. Unrelenting.

The faint heat radiating from his right side pressed into the air around you, and the chill from his left side made the room feel impossibly cold, yet in a way that didn’t make you shiver—you were too aware, too alert, even in pain.

His eyes, sharp and calculating, were fixed entirely on you, cataloging every movement, every twitch, every tiny flinch from the injury.

“You… suit me perfectly,” he said quietly, voice low, almost contemplative.

He circled you like a predator inspecting a catch, hands tucked casually into his pockets. Every step he took echoed faintly, deliberate, precise, a rhythm that made your chest tighten even further.

“I wanted… someone who needed control. Someone who could be… mine.”

The words hit harder than any punch ever could. The concept was abhorrent—but there was no denying the truth of it. You were vulnerable. You were helpless.

And he had chosen you for it, as though the injury had unlocked something in him—a fascination, a desire, a sense of ownership.

He knelt briefly, close enough that his mismatched eyes—one red, one gray—met yours, studying, analyzing. There was no malice in his gaze, not in the conventional sense.

Instead, there was calculation, possession, a strange reverence for the fragility he saw in you. “You can’t walk,” he continued softly, as if stating a fact rather than taunting. “But you can obey. You can adapt. And that… makes this perfect.”

The air felt thicker. Your chest ached, not just from the injury, but from the intensity of the moment. Every instinct screamed at you to resist, to fight, to run—but your body refused.

The paralysis of your lower limbs was absolute, the cruel weight of helplessness pressing down like iron. And he knew it. He thrived on it.

“Don’t move unnecessarily,” he instructed, his tone calm yet imbued with authority. “I don’t like resistance when it’s… predictable.” He rose, pacing slowly around the small space, his boots clicking on the concrete floor. “You’ll stay here, with me. You’ll learn your place… and you’ll accept it. That’s all I require.”

He stopped suddenly, turning back to face you fully. The heat of his right side brushed against your cheek like a phantom weight, the cold of his left side pressing against your other side with equal force.

It was suffocating, controlling, yet impossibly intimate.

His hand hovered briefly near your shoulder—not touching, just assessing—before retracting, leaving only the impression of authority and expectation.

“You’ll be my pet,” he said finally, voice steady, almost soft. “And I… will be yours. You can’t walk. You can’t fight. But you exist. And for me, that is more than enough.”

The words left no room for argument. You were silent. You were immobile. You were trapped in both body and circumstance. And he seemed to revel in it, the precision of his planning, the inevitability of his control.