MHA: Lust Quirk

Aizawa looked worse than I did.

He was standing at the podium when I walked into 1-A on Monday morning, his arm in a sling that hadn't been there before the internships, fresh bandages around his right hand. The capture scarf was wound tighter than usual, covering the lower half of his face. His eyes were the same. Flat, tired, uninterested in whether you were impressed or intimidated.

"Sit down," he said to the room. Then he looked at me for a second longer than he looked at anyone else.

I sat down.

The classroom was different. Same desks, same windows. Same crack in the whiteboard tray from when Bakugo had slammed his fist on it during the first week. But the students in it had shifted. Sero had a tan line from his tape-dispensing elbows where his costume had left the skin exposed. Tokoyami's posture was lower, heavier, like Dark Shadow had gotten bigger during the break. Momo's hair was tied differently and her notes were already out and there was a confidence in how she held her pen that hadn't been there before.

Everyone had done something for a week. Most of them had trained. Some of them had fought.

Iida was at his desk.

Left arm in a brace. The fabric sling was black and medical-grade and it held his forearm against his chest at a precise angle. His glasses were new, the old pair having cracked in Hosu. His posture was the same rigid upright Iida posture but the left shoulder was lower and the rigidity was doing work it hadn't done before, holding something still that wanted to hurt. His desk was organized. His textbook was open to the right page. His right hand was holding a pen and his left wasn't holding anything because it couldn't.

He looked at me. I looked at him. The nod was small. His chin dropped a centimeter and came back up. I did the same.

Aizawa started talking about the end-of-term exam and I half-listened because Kirishima was leaning across the aisle.

"Dude." He kept his voice low but Kirishima's low was most people's medium. "Is it true? The Hero Killer?"

"Officially, Endeavor handled it."

"Yeah but the FORUMS-"

"Officially," I said. "Endeavor."

Kaminari leaned in from the row behind. "Bro, there's a video. Someone got footage of three students and one of them is DEFINITELY-"

I looked at him. Kaminari was dumb about some things but he could read a face and he read mine and he leaned back.

"Right. Endeavor. Totally."

Jiro was at her desk across the aisle. Her earphone jack was coiled around her pen and she was looking at her notebook. She'd been looking at her notebook since I walked in. Her jack hadn't been aimed at my chest when I entered a room like it usually was. It was wrapped around the pen, tight, deliberate. She was choosing not to listen.

That was new.

Aizawa assigned reading. The class settled. Midoriya was taking notes at a speed that suggested his hand had a separate Quirk for penmanship. Bakugo was leaning back in his chair with his feet on the desk and nobody was telling him to put them down because even Aizawa picked his battles. Ochaco was two seats ahead of me and when she turned to pass back a handout, her fingers brushed mine and she pulled her hand back a fraction too fast and her ears went pink.

The morning passed. Yaoyorozu raised her hand to ask a clarifying question about the exam structure. Kaminari raised his hand to ask if the exam was multiple choice. Aizawa looked at him with an expression that could have gone either way between answering and expelling. Present Mic's voice boomed through the wall from the next classroom and someone on the other side laughed loud enough that Aizawa's eye twitched.

Lunch.

I took my tray to the roof because the cafeteria was too loud and my head was full of Hosu and Mirko and medical files and I wanted ten minutes of quiet. Lunch Rush had made katsudon today and the smell was everywhere and Midoriya was eating it like a man receiving communion. The roof access door at the east end of the fourth floor was technically restricted but the lock had been broken since September and everyone knew it. I pushed through it and the wind hit me and the sky was wide and gray and the air smelled like rain that hadn't started.

Tsuyu was already there.

She was standing at the railing, looking out at the campus. Her school uniform was neat and her dark-green hair was tied at the bottom with the bow. Her hands were on the railing, fingers spread wide, the big frog-pads flat against the metal. She didn't turn around when the door opened. She didn't need to. Her hearing was good enough that she'd known I was coming since the second-floor landing.

I walked to the railing. Stood next to her. Left a foot of space between us.

The campus spread out below. Training grounds. The main path. A cluster of second-years crossing toward the support building. Cementoss was doing something to a training wall that involved reshaping it into a curve while two students watched.

Neither of us said anything for a while. The wind blew her hair sideways and the bow at the bottom swayed. My bandaged hands were on the railing and the metal was cold through the gauze. A maintenance drone buzzed past at head height, circled a ventilation unit on the far side of the roof, and flew back.

"You went to Hosu on purpose."

Her voice was low and flat and she was still looking at the campus.

I looked at her. She didn't look back. Her enormous green eyes were fixed on something below and her wide mouth was set in a line.

"You chose an internship in the same city where Iida-kun's brother was attacked." Her tongue flicked out once. Darted and retracted before I could blink. "You're reckless but you're not stupid, which means you went there knowing the Hero Killer might be there."

My heart rate spiked and Jiro's earphone jack wasn't on this roof but Tsuyu's hearing was better than most people realized.

"How did you know?" she said.

The wind blew. Below us, the second-years disappeared into the support building.

"I didn't know," I said. "I suspected."

She turned her head. Those eyes. Green, enormous, flat, patient. She blinked, slow, and her inner eyelid flashed before the outer one closed.

"You suspected."

"Iida picked Manual's agency. Manual is in Hosu. The Hero Killer was in Hosu. Iida's brother was attacked by the Hero Killer. I put it together."

"And you didn't tell anyone."

"No."

"You went to a city with a serial killer because you suspected a classmate might do something dangerous." She looked at me full-on now. Her head tilted to one side and her hair slid off her shoulder. "And you told nobody, ribbit."

"Would you have let me go?"

She blinked. Considered it. Her mouth worked once on nothing.

"No."

"Then I couldn't tell you."

She looked away. Her tongue flicked again. Her hands tightened on the railing and the frog-pads whitened against the metal.

"You're either the bravest person I've met or the most reckless, ribbit."

"Tsuyu."

Just her name. She looked at me.

"I didn't get hurt."

She put her hand on my forearm.

Same arm. Same flat, direct gesture. Wide frog-padded fingers pressing against the skin of my forearm through the gap between the bandage on my hand and the cuff of my sleeve. She just placed her hand there, covering the spot where Shigaraki's fingers had tried to turn me to dust.

Her fingers were cool. Last time they'd been warm, her cold-blooded body running hot from adrenaline and the USJ fight. Today was just Monday. No villains. Just Tsuyu on a rooftop with cool frog skin and her hand on an arm she'd touched once before.

"Liar, ribbit." Quiet. She was looking at the fading bruise on my temple. "Your hands are bandaged. You have a bruise on your head. You got hurt."

She moved her hand down to my wrist. Held it. Turned it over and looked at the gauze wrapping, the tape at the edge, the thin line where skin met fabric. Her thumb traced the border between bandage and wrist. Mina had done the same thing two days ago, tracing the gauze on my palm. Same gesture. Mina's fingers had been warm and damp with spent acid. Tsuyu's were cool and dry and steady.

Her fingers stayed on my wrist. Cool. Steady. Her pulse was slow against my skin. Mine wasn't.

She held on for longer than she needed to.

Then she let go. Her hand went to her side. She looked at the campus again. The wind blew and a bird flew between the buildings, low, going somewhere.

"I'm glad you're okay," she said. "Even if you're lying about how okay you are."

She turned and walked back toward the door. Her shoes were quiet on the concrete. Low center of gravity, balanced on the balls of her feet.

The door opened. She stopped.

"Hayami-kun."

"Yeah."

"Next time, tell me." She was looking at the stairwell, not at me. "I won't stop you. But I want to know."

The door closed behind her.

I stood at the railing. The metal was cold under my bandaged hands. The wind was picking up and the clouds were darker and the bird had disappeared behind the support building.

Below, the lunch period was ending. Students were filtering back toward the main building. The second-years came out of the support building carrying something that looked like a stretcher made of carbon fiber. Cementoss had finished his wall.

I went back inside. The stairwell smelled like floor polish and somebody's curry udon from the cafeteria below. The tray I'd brought up was still on the landing where I'd set it. I grabbed it on the way down. The rice was cold.

Kaminari was in the hallway showing Sero something on his phone and they both went quiet when I walked past, which meant it was the Stain video.

The afternoon was normal. Heroics class. Ectoplasm did his cloning thing and we ran capture drills. I partnered with Tokoyami because Dark Shadow couldn't grab me if I was fast enough and I needed to be fast enough. His bird head tilted when I dodged faster than he expected and Dark Shadow hissed. Jiro was across the training ground, partnered with Momo, and her earphone jack was plugged into a wall and she wasn't looking at me.

She hadn't looked at me all day.

The day ended. I walked to the station with Kirishima and Kaminari. The sky had stayed gray all day and still hadn't rained. Kirishima talked about his internship with Fourth Kind and how he'd learned a defensive stance that made his Hardening more efficient. Kaminari talked about how his internship had mostly involved paperwork and how he'd accidentally shorted out the agency's computer system on day two and how his supervisor had made him write an apology letter to the IT department. Normal stuff. The kind of conversation that didn't need to go anywhere.

The train home. The convenience store for rice and eggs. The walk to my building took longer than usual. My apartment. Gerald on the ceiling.

My phone buzzed.

Tsuyu: I meant what I said. Next time.

No emojis. No abbreviations. She texted like she talked.

I typed: Okay.

A pause. Then:

Good. Goodnight, ribbit.

I put the phone down. Gerald watched from the ceiling. The fridge hummed. My wrist was still cool.