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At the end of their first semester in second year, Ojiro finally gathered his courage decided to ask out Hagakure. It was right after their final exams and right before summer break started, which was just about the best time to try and actually have a personal life while attending hero school.
Not to mention the fact that Kaminari had noticed him staring at Hagakure in class, immediately jumped to the correct conclusion, and begun tormenting him over it. Ojiro could put up with Kaminari constantly messing around with his tail, but Ojiro did have a personal bubble, and that bubble was popped every time Kaminari leaned forward and whispered furiously into his ear about how he should totally ask Hagakure out already. Ojiro couldn’t help it if his immediate instinct was to slap Kaminari upside the head with his tail, and there were only so many detentions a man could take.
So, now or never.
“Ojiro, watch out!” Hagakure shrieked, a sudden flash of light blinding the villain right behind him. The spandex-clad woman cringed away, and Ojiro downed her rather unceremoniously with his tail.
Hagakure was on her in an instant, resourcefully using the villain’s own weaponry to bind her. She puled her previously-discarded gloves back on, extending one of them with a bounce and a giggle. “Whoo, we did it! Good job!”
Ojiro high-fived her. “Hagakure,” he said. “Would you like to go on a date with me”
“H-huh?”
Ojiro was getting woozy. “Date?”
“Oh! Oh my god, yes!”
There was a dramatic wail from the ground. Midnight was crying into her shoulder, still incapacitated by the bindings around her arms and legs. “Young love… So cute,” she mumbled.
He found Hagakure after training was over, feel more awkward in his own skin than he had felt in a long time. “Sorry, that was kind of a bad time,” he said.
For a moment he wished he could actually see Hagakure’s face just so he could tell what she was thinking, but then she’s jumping up and down and squealing, “Nooo, don’t worry about it,” and it doesn’t really matter because she’s just so expressive anyway.
“So, I was thinking this Saturday if that’s okay with you?”
“That sounds great! What should we do? Karaoke? Go to an amusement park? Skydiving?!”
“Um,” Ojiro blinked. “I kind of thought we could just go out and eat lunch together, see where it goes from there.”
”Pfft, what?” Hagakure exclaimed. “How boring, Ojiro! Leave it all to me, I’m going to plan us a date you’ll never forget!”
“Oh,” Ojiro said. “Yeah, that’s fine.”
Which was how they had ended up here, standing outside of a pretty-much destroyed building.
“Hagakure!” Ojiro yelled, for about the hundredth time. He had been concerned when he couldn’t find her intially — she was a Hero student, after all — but that had quickly turned into full-blown panic. Yes, Hagakure was a Hero student, but she was still just a teenage girl who was very hard to look for.
“I’m here, Ojiro,” a quiet voice came from beside him. Ojiro nearly jumped out of his skin, but relief came soon after.
“Thank god,” he said. “Are you okay?”
A sniffle. “I’m fine. I’m so sorry, Ojiro.”
“None of that was your fault,” Ojiro said, putting a hand on her shoulder.
She shrugged him off. “It was! You were right — we should have just gotten lunch or something like that, but instead I got us dragged into this mess and the date is ruined and you probably never want to see me again. I just wanted to make this exciting and fun for you but it was awful and I’m sorry,” she was sobbing in earnest now, shoulders shaking and tears staining the sleeve of her shirt as she wiped them away.
“Hagakure!” Ojiro said.
She seemed to falter, her sleeves falling to her sides and shoulders drawing together. “I’m sorry, Ojiro,” she said, voice dropping into a quiet nothing.
Ojiro reached out to the general direction of her hand. It took a few moments, but eventually she placed her hand in his, slender fingers curling against his palm. Ojiro ran his thumb against the back of her hand, soft and warm and real.
“I just don’t understand what’s going on.”
Silence, and it was always so unsettling when it was Hagakure. She was always so bright, loud and peppy and cheerful, and in the silence she seemed to just…
Disappear.
Ojiro wasn’t oblivious — he knew that Hagakure struggled with that, even if he didn’t know what to do about it.
“Hagakure,” he said finally. “When I asked you out, I just wanted to spend time with you. I already know you’re fun and exciting, so you didn’t need to prove that to me. You don’t need to prove anything, or pretend to be something you’re not.” He bit his lip. “If that makes sense.”
“Ojiro, I’m about to tell you something really awful.”
“Yeah?”
“When I was a kid, it was really hard for me to make friends. It’s supposed to be easy when you’re young because five year olds don’t really notice if you’re weird or different, but it’s really hard when the other kids don’t notice you at all.”
“That is —” awful, he wanted to say, but she shushed him.
“So, like the stupid, lonely kid that I was, I began acting out. It was so bad that I was getting suspended and threatened with expulsion. From elementary school. My family ended up moving, it was so bad. Eventually, I decided that middle school was going to be different. I was just sick of it, you know? I changed everything about myself, did everything to put myself out there, just to get noticed. So somebody, anybody, would pay attention to me.”
Ojiro gripped her hand tighter.
She snorted, something wet and teary. “Which is a really long way to say that I’ve been misleading you this entire time. I’m a huge fake, Ojiro. Even the reason I want to be a hero so bad — it’s all just an attention-seeking ploy. I’m just a really bad person, aren’t I?”
“You’re not,” Ojiro said. “The way you felt, that was horrible. But everything after that was brave. You’re one of the brightest people I know, and it’s not because you pretend to be happy and cheerful.”
Another quiet moment. “You’re a really good guy, Ojiro,” Hagakure said.
Ojiro gave her a sheepish smile. “Thanks.”
“I’m serious!” She said, grabbing his arm. “You’re kind, and honest, and hardworking. You’re amazing, Ojiro. You look away every time I undress in front of you and that’s just about the sweetest, silliest thing in the world.”
Ojiro blushed. “You really need to talk to the Support Department about your costume.”
An unexpected, gentle poke in his cheek. “And miss out on teasing you?”
“That’s a really bad reason to get naked every time you need to fight a Villain.”
Hagakure laughed — a real one, for the first time that day, light and clear. She sat down on the sidewalk curb, dragging him down next to her with the strong grip on his arm.
“I really, really like you, Ojiro,” Hagakure said. “And if you’re okay with it, I’d like to try this ‘first date’ thing again.”
“What did you have in mind?”
Hagakure leaned against him, strands of hair brushing against his cheek. “Lunch?”
Ojiro smiled. “It’s not too boring for you?”
“Definitely not.”