MHA: Lust Quirk

The library was empty because everyone with sense was somewhere else.

Exams were done. Summer break started tomorrow. Kaminari had organized a karaoke trip. Kirishima was hosting a ramen crawl. Mina had texted me six options for what to do tonight and all of them involved leaving my apartment. The class was celebrating: loudly, together, with no concept of pacing.

Momo Yaoyorozu was in the back corner of the U.A. library with four textbooks open and a notebook full of handwriting so precise it could have been typeset.

I sat down across from her. She looked up. Her hair was in the ponytail. Her blazer was off, sleeves rolled to her elbows. The library's afternoon light came through the tall windows and caught the edge of her jaw.

"You should be celebrating," she said.

"You're not."

"I'm preparing for next term."

"Then I'll prepare with you."

She looked at me. Her onyx eyes were steady. Her pen was between her fingers, held at the angle of someone who'd been writing for hours. A cup of tea sat next to her elbow, half-finished, the steam long gone.

She went back to her book.

I pulled out my own notes. Rescue protocol review. Nothing I needed to study but the notebook gave me a reason to sit here. I opened it to a random page and started reading a section about tourniquet application that I'd memorized weeks ago.

Momo's pen moved across her notebook. She wrote in columns, each entry precise, cross-referenced with page numbers in the margins. Her handwriting was small and even and looked like it had been designed rather than developed. Occasionally she'd pause, re-read a passage, and her brow would furrow for half a second before the pen moved again. She was working on advanced hero law, two semesters ahead of where we were.

We studied in silence for twenty minutes.

Real silence. Not tense, not loaded. Just two people reading at the same table. The light moved across the floor in a slow stripe. A bird landed on the windowsill outside and pecked at the glass once and flew away. Momo's pen moved across her notebook in steady strokes. My pen moved across mine in less steady strokes because my rescue protocol notes were already memorized and I was mostly drawing boxes around words.

At some point she Created a pencil sharpener from her forearm without looking up, sharpened a pencil, and dissolved the sharpener back into atoms. The whole sequence took four seconds and she didn't break her reading rhythm. The skin on her forearm shimmered briefly as the molecular assembly happened and then resumed being normal skin. She'd done it without thinking. Automatic.

Momo broke first.

"Hayami-kun."

"Mm."

She closed her textbook. Set her pen down precisely, parallel to the book's edge. Folded her hands on the table. The gesture was formal but her knuckles were tight.

"During the exam, when you tore Aizawa-sensei's capture weapon. Your strength exceeded any recorded measurement for your registered Quirk type."

"You ran the numbers."

"Of course I ran the numbers." She said it like the alternative was breathing underwater. "I run the numbers on everything."

She pulled her notebook toward her and opened it to a page I hadn't seen. Not textbook notes. Data. My data. Columns of numbers, dates, annotations in her precise handwriting. She'd been tracking me.

"Your growth rate correlates with specific time periods," she said. "I've mapped the inflection points." She turned the notebook toward me. A timeline. Dates on the left, power indicators on the right. Arrows pointing to jumps.

"After the USJ break. A measurable increase in grip strength and reaction time. After the Sports Festival. Another increase, larger. After the internship. Another." She turned a page. More data. "After the post-internship period. The largest jump yet. Your exam performance reflected it. The capture weapon break confirmed it."

Each jump had a date. Each date was circled in red ink. I knew what those dates meant. The USJ break was when Mina and I had our first time. The Sports Festival gap was when we'd established a routine. The post-internship period was Ochaco coming to my apartment.

She'd circled the dates. She didn't know what they meant. She knew they meant something.

"I cross-referenced with your training schedule," she said. "The jumps don't align with any documented training event. I checked your gym access logs. Your training hours are consistent. The jumps happen BETWEEN training periods."

"The pattern isn't random," she said. "The jumps don't correlate with combat or training. They correlate with..." She stopped.

She closed the notebook. Set it aside. Her hands went flat on the table, palms down, fingers spread. Composing herself. One element at a time.

"With what?" I asked. Quiet.

Her mouth opened. Closed. Her jaw worked. She was Momo Yaoyorozu. She never spoke before she was certain. She built atomic structures from memory because certainty was the prerequisite for everything she Created. The thing she was about to say wasn't certain yet, and Momo didn't guess. Momo verified. And she couldn't verify this without saying words she wasn't prepared to say.

She reached across the table.

Her hand settled over mine.

Her fingers were slender and warm and slightly calloused on the fingertips from years of Creation use, the skin roughened where molecules had passed through it thousands of times. Her palm was dry. She placed it with precision, her fingers aligning with mine, and her eyes were on our hands and she was studying the contact the way she studied a molecular diagram she was about to build. Making sure the structure was right before she committed.

My hand was flat on the table. Her hand was on top of it. Her pulse was in her fingertips. Fast. Faster than her face suggested.

Five seconds. Each one distinct. The library was empty and the light was low and the only sound was the climate control and a bird outside the window and her breathing, which she was controlling with the same precision she controlled everything.

"I don't know yet," she said. "But I will."

She pulled her hand back. Her fingers left mine and returned to the notebook and she picked up her pen and the pen went back to its parallel position beside the textbook. Her posture straightened. She adjusted the cuff of her left sleeve.

The tea on the table was cold. She picked it up, took a sip, and set it down without reacting to the temperature.

"You should go celebrate, Hayami-kun."

I stood. My chair scraped the floor. She'd opened her textbook again. Her pen was moving. She hadn't looked up.

"Momo."

She looked up.

I'd never used her first name before. In months of knowing her, strategy sessions, the Battle Trial, the exam, the chemistry correction, every conversation had been Yaoyorozu. The first name landed and her lips parted and her pen stopped. Her eyes went wide. The flush on her cheeks, which had been fading, came back.

"You'll figure it out," I said. "You figure everything out."

She stared at me. Her mouth was a flat line. Her cheeks were pink. Her pen was still between her fingers and it wasn't moving and her knuckles were white.

"Good evening, Hayami-kun," she said. Formal. Controlled.

"Good evening, Momo."

The second use of her first name. She blinked. Her pen dropped. She caught it before it hit the table and her composure held but the catch was too fast, the grip too tight.

I left.

The library door closed behind me. The hallway was empty. The campus was quiet. Everyone had left for somewhere better.

I walked toward the exit. My hand was warm where hers had been. Her fingertips had been calloused from building atoms. Five seconds. Palm over palm.

She'd tracked the inflection points. She'd circled the dates. She'd cross-referenced with training logs and found the jumps happened between sessions, not during them. She was one variable away.

I walked home. The evening was warm. Summer was starting. The training camp was in a week. The streets between U.A. and my apartment were memorized in my legs and my brain was running the same math Momo's brain was running, from the other side. She was looking at the data trying to identify the variable. I was looking at the data trying to hide it from a girl whose Quirk required her to know the exact composition of everything she touched.

The convenience store cat was on the wall. I stopped. Looked at it. It looked at me.

"You don't have any of these problems," I said.

The cat blinked. Yawned. Looked away.

I went inside. My phone had three texts. Mina: "KARAOKE WAS AMAZING you missed Kaminari doing a death metal version of a love song." Ochaco: "Save me some rice if you're cooking tonight?" And one from Yaoyorozu: "Thank you for the company this afternoon. I found it productive."

Productive. She'd called our afternoon productive. The hand over mine. The five seconds. The inflection points. Productive.

I typed back: "Anytime."

I made rice. Enough for two. Ochaco would be here in an hour. She had a key now too, since last week. Two keys. Two girls with access to the same apartment.

The rice cooker hummed. I sat at the desk while it worked. The gauntlets from Mei were on the shelf. Mina's hoodie was on the chair. Ochaco's folded shirt was still on the desk from weeks ago, washed and refolded but never returned.

The rice cooker clicked. Done.

The apartment was quiet and the training camp was in a week.