Work Text:
UA high school is very, very different after dark.
By day, the school is a thriving hubbub of noise and life. There are twenty-four classes in total, and they all follow slightly different schedules, so there’s rarely a time you won’t find someone running down a corridor late to their next class, or slinking away to one of the break rooms, or hanging around outside a classroom waiting for their friends.
The corridors are twice as tall as they are wide, built to accommodate any and every quirk. They’re coolly but brightly lit, with long fluorescent tube lights running the full length of the ceiling, although the floor-to-ceiling windows render those lights somewhat useless during the day. Air vents dot along the walls, near to the ceiling, emitting a low and constant hum and an occasional shuffling or clanging noise, a barely noticeable but ever-present bassline to the various sounds of the school.
After dark, these corridors are very different. They’re a little too open, a little too tall, and a little too wide for Hatsume; she’s got no aversion to open spaces, and walking through these corridors in the daylight is fine, but something about the school at night is just… unsettling, really. The artificial light is lacking in warmth in a way that doesn’t normally bother her, but right now, approaching midnight, it almost feels sort of clinical in here. It’s too clean, too white, too pristine, too devoid of life. It’s like being in a hospital rather than a school.
She turns another corner, quietly pushing open another set of double doors, and the new corridor she steps into is unnervingly dark for a few seconds before her presence is detected and the lights blinker slowly on. The familiar almost-metallic plinking noise as each bulb lights up seems to bounce and reverberate up and down the corridor, filling the air and making Hatsume feel somehow not alone, as every long tube lights up, one by one.
Hatsume isn’t agoraphobic, nor is she scared of the dark. Either of these things alone should not ( do not) bother her. But, together... the darkness and the strange liminal openness of the empty school combined, they do. UA is just a little too different at this time of night, and whilst she tries to see the fascinating side of it - how many odd sounds you can hear that normally go unnoticed; the way shadows are captured, caught and tangled in places she never normally sees them; how strangely tricky it is to navigate, despite the familiar layout - for the most part, she just wants to reach her destination as quickly as possible.
This is the part of her nights that she hates the most. This, and the reverse journey, in a few hours, when she’ll sneak back to the dorms before sunrise - before she can get caught.
At long last, the door of the Development Studio is in front of her, tall as the corridor itself, and strangely imposing. She slides it open with a slight huff, making a mental note to take a look at the slightly squeaky rails at some point (she’s supposed to inform the UA Estates Team, but it’s honestly less effort to just fix it herself) and she flicks the lightswitch, lighting up the workshop, before pulling the door closed behind her.
Like the rest of the school, quietness does not suit this room. Emptiness does not suit this room. Oftentimes, outside of regular class hours, it’s just her and Maijima Sensei in here, and sometimes they don’t even speak for hours - working on their own projects, opposite sides of the room - but between the two of them, they somehow manage to make the room feel busy.
Alone, though, Hatsume is very aware of just how spacious and quiet the workshop really is. Don’t get her wrong; working in a team has never been Hatsume’s style. But then, working alone isn’t her style, either, and much like a very picky cat, she’s always been far happiest when left to her own devices, doing her own thing, but still in the company of others.
Nevermind, though. She has work to catch up on, tonight, and she can handle being alone just fine while she focuses on that. She heads straight to her personal workbench, dumping her satchel on the floor, hopping up onto the tall wheely chair and getting settled. She flicks on the overhead light, illuminating the surface of the bench and dispelling the myriad shadows from the discarded tools and half-finished gadgets littering the surface.
She takes a moment to stare at the mess, cataloguing each item, before she begins to sift through it. There’s five different projects, here; two of them have been consigned to the scrap heap once already, and then reluctantly pulled back out after she realised that the parts could potentially be re-used. The other three projects haven’t been scrapped yet, but they’d best beware, because they are on very, very thin ice.
Unfortunately, the failure pile has been growing a little more quickly than she’d like, lately. In fact, scratch that, the failure pile is the only pile she has going, because the ‘eureka, it works’ pile is literally non-existent, and has been for weeks. ...Or months, perhaps? When did this bad luck spell begin? She isn’t sure. She isn’t sure, in fact, if she can even call it a bad luck spell. Maybe it’s just a bad inventing spell.
Maybe it’s just plain old bad inventing.
She lifts a discarded power drill from the right-hand side of the bench, releasing a spidery device that was trapped underneath it: one of the three projects that still maybe has some potential. She delicately pulls one of the eight spindly legs away from the main body, unfolding it to full length, before letting go, watching as the spring-loaded leg snaps back to its neutral dead-spider position. This is a Baby that she hasn’t looked at in a few weeks; maybe now that she’s had some time away from it, she can finally work out what’s stopping it from powering up.
It’s supposed to be a robot designed for assisting rescue heroes. The idea is that they can always keep one on hand, compressed and compacted into an tidy little ball, and then when they need to activate and deploy it, the legs will unfold from the main body, pistoning into life through a nifty little rig of hydraulics - one oil-filled cylinder per limb, connected to a tiny servomotor and a cable through to the end of the limb to actuate it - that Hatsume has spent hours designing and tweaking to perfection.
Real spiders don’t have muscles, but instead move their limbs by pushing fluid back and forth through their limbs, much like how man-made hydraulic systems work. That’s why spiders walk in such a creepy, unnatural way, and why so many people find them upsetting to look at; they don’t meet humanity’s expectation of how an organic, multi-legged animal should walk, bearing far more similarity to machinery - to the inorganic and the artificial - than to anything else actually alive . To Hatsume, discovering that fact actually made them a lot less frightening; it also gave her the idea to try building a little spider-like device of her own.
The body at the centre of the legs contains a tiny button-sized microprocessor, which is programmed to open and close valves in the hydraulic cylinders on each leg, each activating in the right order, adjusting the rhythm and tempo of movement to simulate a spider’s gait, all eight limbs working in synchronic harmony to carry the device smoothly over any terrain. Or, in layman’s terms: it walks. It walks good.
The applications of it are entirely dependent on this superior mobility; it could be deployed into fallen buildings to search for survivors, or it could act as a ground-based flare, scurrying out of a tight spot and guiding rescuers to where someone is trapped, maybe even delivering water and medicine through gaps a hero can’t get through, or it could… Well. Hatsume practically has her sales pitch already written. The possibilities for this little gadget are endless.
That versatility is where it ought to stand out from the crowd, too, as far as mobile rescue robots go: there are no wheels to get stuck in mud or gravel, no axels to become tangled, no exposed underbelly to take damage from dodgy terrain. The excess of legs are perfect for stability, and if one breaks off, there’s another seven to get the little guy home. It’s a breakthrough idea. It’s perfect. Or, at least, it would be perfect, if the damn thing would fucking work.
Hatsume drops it to the bench in frustration, wincing slightly at the high-pitched metallic clang that rings out through the room. She regrets it the moment she’s done it; the poor thing is designed to be robust, it’ll have to survive more than a five-inch drop if it’s going to be any use in rescue work, but still… this is one of her babies. And it’s only in the beta stage, it hasn’t been tested for fall damage. Yet.
She gingerly picks it up again, biting back the urge to verbally apologise, and flips it over, carefully pulling all eight legs out from the centre. She pins them down with one hand, and flicks open a little hatch under the body, allowing her to get to the brains inside. The software shouldn’t be the issue; she’d spent far too long studying arachnids and perfecting the pre-programmed gait pattern for that to be the problem. She’d even convinced Principal Nezu to allow her to keep a tarantula in the dorms, as a gait analysis study companion specimen.
She picks apart wires and delicately dislodges sensors and circuit boards, gently brushing each piece for dust with a soft toothbrush as she goes, mindful not to knock away any of the intricate soldering that’s holding it all together. But wherever she looks, there’s just… nothing wrong. Technically, it’s fine. Technically, it’s built exactly to spec. Technically, it should work.
But it doesn’t.
It won’t even power on.
And she doesn’t even have anything to learn from it, because she doesn’t know what’s wrong. So it’s another one for the failure pile, another resounding waste of time, another ten hours of work for absolutely nothing.
Another failure, in a long, long, long series of failures.
She pouts, despite there being nobody around to see, and pushes the spider-bot away from her, leaning forward to prop her elbows on the bench, and sullenly resting her chin in her hands. She’s a little surprised at the sudden warmth and long-forgotten tension that sparks up behind her eyes. Oh. She’s going to cry. Why is she going to cry? Hatsume never cries. Hatsume fails all the time, all the time, and it doesn’t upset her. Failure is the mother of invention, damn it.
...She especially does not cry over a failed invention as tiny, as insignificant, as this one. Failure should be a springboard to success. She’s supposed to move on, pick herself up, try again. That’s her whole thing! So why is this upsetting her so damn much?
The clock on the wall lets out an artificial chime, and a little wooden bird pops out, announcing that it’s three in the morning. Hatsume jumps in her seat at the sudden noise, her eyes snapping up to it. It’s a novelty clock; it runs anticlockwise, and has all the numbers written as mathematical equations, as well as the dumb pop-out cuckoo. It’s plain goofy, and sort of jarring in the sleek metal-and-plastic decor of the Development Studio, but a student had built it as a gift for Maijima-sensei years ago, and he’d hung it up out of pure sentimentality, despite how out-of-place it looks.
Three o’clock. She’s been here for hours. Shit. All she’s managed to do is poke at a metal spider, and start crying over it.
Hatsume sags over onto the desk completely, her arms slumping down and loosely crossing in front of her, and she rests her head on them. She doesn’t have the energy to try and do anything else - mentally or physically - so she might as well just sit and rest for a few minutes, before she gets back to work.
She’s out like a light, fast asleep on the workbench, long before it ever occurs to her that it might have been wise to just go to bed.
+++
“...tsume. Hatsume!”
There’s someone roughly shaking her shoulder, and Hatsume blearily blinks her eyes open, noting with frustration the slight headache that has crept into her skull, and the stiff, awkwardly upright position she seems to have slept in.
“Hatsume. Wake up !”
“Eurggh... A’right, jeez dad, chill, I’m up, I’m awake, I…” She trails off groggily, lifting her head up from her arms, before bolting upright and nearly falling backward off her chair, eyes snapping wide open as she realises who’s just woken her up. “Maijima sensei! Oh gosh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise - what time is it? I must have -”
“I can’t believe this. You fell asleep in here? Hatsume! What have I told you about working alone!? Especially at night!” His voice is sharp, and harsh, and Hatsume instantly feels terrible. “You don’t do that! You know you don’t do that! What if something had happened? What if you’d been injured on the machines - what if you were hurt? There’s nobody around to hear you! There’s nobody around to call for help - jesus, if you hadn’t been asleep - when I saw you slumped there -”
“I wasn’t doing anything dangerous! I wasn’t even using the machines - “
“That’s not the point! ”
His helmet isn’t on yet - a quick glance at the clock tells her it’s only ten to seven in the morning - and his usually dull blue eyes are near-brimming over, wide and shining with barely suppressed fury and concern. He’s completely right, and Hatsume searches for the words to apologise, or to try and brush it off and counter him with her usual fire, but… he’s right, and for once, Hatsume has absolutely nothing to say. There’s an uncomfortable warm tension behind her eyes, and she looks down, unable to keep eye contact with him any longer.
“I’ve had enough. You’re banned from here for the rest of the week. Go to the library, write those damn essays you keep skipping, have a break - I don’t care what you do with the time - but you’re banned. This is serious, Hatsume, you could well have been killed -”
He’s cut off, abruptly, and it takes Hatsume a second to realise why. She’s crying again. She’s crying, in front of her teacher, and it’s apparently jarring enough to shut him up completely. Wow.
“...What’s going on, Hatsume?” His voice is suddenly softer, still wavering with suppressed anger, but... less harsh. More concerned. “This isn’t like you. None of this is like you. What’s going on? What happened? ”
She just shakes her head, lips pressed tightly together in a frustrated, disappointed grimace, as the tears fall faster and faster. After a moment, she hears the rhythmic clomp of his booted footsteps as he walks away, and her shoulders drop even further, but within seconds he’s back, dragging something. She glances up, and through blurry eyes she sees he’s bringing another chair over, scooting it up to the workbench next to hers, and hopping up to sit next to her.
Wordlessly, he hands her a tissue, and he politely looks away as she tries not to sound too gross about blowing her nose, before slumping back into her dejected position from before. She’s still crying, though. It seems like now that the floodgates are open, it’s not gonna stop.
When it becomes clear that she’s not gonna be the one to break the silence, he starts picking through the junk on her bench. She doesn’t stop him. Normally, she’d be incredibly resistant to any attempts to interfere with her work; right now, though, she feels like an elastic band that’s just been pulled one fraction of a millimetre too far, and she doesn’t have it in her to care anymore.
Besides, she’s officially benched anyway. No pun intended. She’s banned til the end of the week; she doesn’t have any right to lay claim to anything on that workbench anymore. Maybe this is his way of kickstarting the cleaning up process, moving her shitty failed creations aside to clear the space so another student can use the workbench while she’s gone.
Torn between curiosity and dread, she looks up, and sees that he isn’t tidying or clearing anything away; rather, it looks like he’s looking for something. Eventually, he stops, turning to look at Hatsume again.
“...What were you working on? Last night?” He asks quietly, tentatively, as if testing the waters.
Hatsume stares past him, trying to focus on the bench, but she’s confused for a second by her eyes not focussing at the correct distance - typical, her quirk breaking down on top of everything else is exactly what she needs - before she realises they’re actually still just being blurred by the tears.
“Um,” she starts, blinking heavily, her voice wobbly. “Over there, at the back. No - behind the - yeah, you got it.”
He pulls the spider-bot out from under a pile of other stuff as directed, and examines it, delicately tugging on the spindly legs to test them, turning it this way and that, and peering at it closely.
“It’s... a spider?”
“Yeah, no sh...shiitake. It’s, uh, it’s a rescue hero support item.”
“What does it do?”
Hatsume pauses there, her mouth half open, perfectly poised to tumble into the first words of a choreographed, polished reply. She has a whole sales pitch on the tip of her tongue, a whole damn powerpoint presentation stored in her head that she’s ready to let rip, but… what’s the point? Might as well stick to the truth.
“Nothing.” She says, quietly. “It does nothing.”
Maijima looks up at her incredulously.
“Nothing?” He starts poking at it again, finally finding the hatch underneath, and prising it open. “Awful lot of circuitry in here for doing nothing.” He’s so matter-of-fact that Hatsume has to resist a quiet giggle. And then she remembers exactly what they’re talking about and her heart drops again.
“...It’s meant to do something . It’s meant to do a lot of things, actually, but the stupid thing won’t even turn on! It’s just - it doesn’t work. ” She speaks the last words quietly, ashamed of the thing itself, and ashamed of how upset and… well, angry she feels about it. As if it’s the spider’s fault. Logically, she knows just how irrational that is, but she can’t help but feel contempt for the bastard thing, mocking her with all those damn useless little legs.
Maijima hums, dropping his attention back to the spider.
“Mind if I take a look?”
“I’m banned, aren’t I? It’s your workshop. Do what you like.” She regrets the sharp words the second he looks up at her, his eyebrows raised, and she realises she’s stepped dangerously close to a line. Especially considering he quite easily could (and probably should) have kicked her out completely by now. “...Sorry. Please. Go on.” she finishes, a little sheepish.
He says nothing, just reaches for her tools, and slowly he starts to pick away at the gubbins inside the spider’s torso. Hatsume pulls a smaller toolbag out from a draw on the left side of the workbench - it’s a wallet-sized watchmaker’s repair kit, absolutely tiny, and therefore perfect for this kind of thing - and nudges it over to him as a sort of peace offering. From the tiny smile at the corner of his mouth, it maybe works.
They sit in silence for a few minutes as he works on it, slowly pulling the metal creature apart layer by layer, picking away the wires and circuit boards to reach its core. Tiny gyroscopes, inertial measurement units, colourful switches and buttons and countless electronic sensors come out, and begin to cover what little surface of the bench is still empty. Hatsume pulls out a large magnet she keeps stuck under her desk, and uses it to collect together and keep track of all the tiny bits and pieces to stop them from rolling away across the worktop.
Hatsume notices belatedly that her tears have stopped, but their absence does nothing to quell the sick sort of hollowness that’s settled in her stomach. … And it has nothing to do with her not having eaten recently, either, actually. Shit, when did she last eat? Her headache has gotten a little worse, so drinking some water should probably be on the to do list, too. Oops.
Maijima reaches for the soldering iron at the back of her workbench, pulling it out from under a small pile of different sized spanners. He plugs it in, and starts working on a single circuit board, before burning his hand through a mis-positioned metallic fingertip and cursing quietly (Hatsume pretends not to hear; she’d normally jokingly call him out on it, but she’s pushed her luck already today) and he gets up, walking away from the bench.
He returns seconds later with a large, LED-lit magnifying glass, which he clamps in place over the circuit board. Hatsume doesn’t usually bother with one; her quirk does the work for her. He continues to work on the tiny component, swapping the positions of two wires and soldering them carefully in place, before blowing on it gently to cool it off, and pressing it back into the spider.
“There. That’s your problem. Those two should have been the other way round. No big deal. Easily fixed.”
Hatsume says nothing, simply watching as piece after piece goes back in, and finally, Maijima is closing the tiny hatch. She can barely breathe as he flips it the right way up, clears a little space in the middle of the bench to set it down, and presses the ‘on’ button.
A faint glow lights up at the centre of the spider’s torso, and all at once, eight spindly legs unfold, bracing against the desk and extending out to lift the whole thing up into a standing position. It twitches a few times, before shaking it’s torso like a wet dog - a waking programme Hatsume had programmed, to ensure it would be unfolded properly before going anywhere - and then it starts to skitter around the bench, disoriented, looking for its owner.
Hatsume ought to talk to it, give it instructions, say something, but all she can do is stare at it, gobsmacked. She finally just groans, slumping down to rest her head on the worktop, watching sideways as the spider scuttles away, toward Maijima-sensei.
“I just…” She groans again. “I feel so stupid.”
He looks up at her sharply.
“You just built a fully functional robotic spider. And you feel stupid?”
“I - it didn’t work! The whole thing - it was a failure until - gah, for just two wires! Two wires!”
“So what?” He asks, nudging the spider as it reaches his side of the workbench. It’s receptive to his nudge, immediately turning around and skittering back the other way again. “It works now. And anyway, you’re not remotely stupid. You know that. Hell, you’re one of the brightest students in the school.” He scratches his head. “…I don’t tend to tell you that, because I honestly thought your head might have fallen off from the sheer weight if it got any bigger, but it’s the truth.”
Hatsume goes a little red, and her arms immediately draw up into a flailing flap as she processes it.
“It’s not - I’m not that -” She stops, tangled in the words, sighing and slumping down again. “I don’t know. I just feel stupid. That was just a stupid, stupid mistake.”
“Right. Okay. But like I said earlier… this isn’t like you. Hatsume, I’ve seen you fail project after project, and it’s the fact that you keep trying again regardless that makes you -”
“That’s just it!” She blurts out. “I’m failing. I’m failing every single thing I make - I haven’t made anything that’s worked in weeks! I can’t do it anymore, I - everything I’ve made right, everything that worked so far - it was blind luck, a fluke, all of it! Every single thing was a damn fluke . And now UA think I’m some kind of genius, but I’m not, I just - I keep getting lucky! I keep making things that work by accident . And now I’m out of luck, and everyone’s expecting me to produce something amazing, but how the hell am I supposed to live up to that-”
Her voice cracks and breaks, and she realises she’s crying yet again. Her head throbs angrily in protest, already dehydrated from her shitty hydration habits and all the crying she’s done so far. Maijima-sensei is still sat beside her, leaning on his elbows at the desk, quietly listening. He makes no move to interrupt, can clearly tell she’s got more to say (because Hatsume has always got more to say), and she takes a deep breath before ploughing quickly on.
“And I’m not even learning from my mistakes. That’s it, that’s the problem. All of my failures are piling up, and I’m spending so much time trying to just catch up to the next project that I haven’t had a chance to think about why the last ones aren’t working in the first place… I keep repeating the same mistakes again and again and again , and usually after so many failures I eventually hit gold, I make something that works - but… this time it isn’t happening. I just… some of these things are for the hero students! I have to get results, they’re literally depending on me getting these things right so they can train safely -”
“Woah there.” Maijima-sensei finally interrupts. “Slow down. Now, that’s completely untrue, for a start. Everything you do for a hero student is extra-curricular, you can quit that if it’s stressing you out. And none of it is life-or-death. I’ve only been giving you those projects because I know you can do them.”
“But I can’t! That’s the point! I can’t do it!”
He doesn’t say anything to that, instead just humming, and turning back to the spider, which has now settled down into an oddly friendly-looking sit, in the middle of the workbench, like some sort of tiny arachnoid dog.
“...I don’t think anything you’ve made so far has been a fluke. Nor do I think that any of your failures were ‘stupid’. No - really, I don’t.”
Hatsume feels like protesting for a second, but the fight has left her again after her little rant, and the moments of fire have been replaced with that strange hollowness from before.
“What I do think, Hatsume, is that you need a break. How often are you sneaking in here at night? Working late?”
Hatsume tenses up immediately. Uh oh.
“I… Uh... “ She looks up, to see his gaze piercing into her again, and a little bit of the anger from before is back. She scrubs at her eyes, and stares straight at the desk, before speaking very, very quietly: “Most… nights? I, um, I normally sneak back out before dawn...”
There’s no response for a second, and she dares a glance up. Maijima’s face has darkened into an angry glare.
“...Do you realise how much danger you were in? Hatsume… you know you can’t work in here alone. You know that. And you know why, too. You know that it isn’t just some arbitrary rule. This workshop is full of dangers. No matter who you are, or how good an inventor you are. Even I don’t risk that! What could possibly be more important than your life?”
She stares down at the desk, feeling significantly worse than before.
“I just… I felt like... I just needed one thing to go right.” Her voice drops to a near-whisper, and it feels pathetic in her ears. “Just one success. That’s all. Then I can break this failing streak and prove I can do it -”
“You’ve already proven that, over and over again. You don’t need to risk your life to prove it one more time.” Maijima lets the silence hang between them, and Hatsume just shrugs in response, feeling utterly dejected. Maijima lets out a heavy sigh. “Like I said before, this stuff isn’t life or death.”
“But… that’s just it.” She feels so hollow. “It could be. It will be, in just a few years time - once I’m making gear for real heroes, I can’t afford a failure. What if something of mine malfunctions in the middle of a fight? What if-”
“It won’t. You have the skills to prevent that. The fact that you’re scared of that happening means that you’re already taking more care - taking more responsibility, to avoid any errors that could hurt someone. And like you said yourself: given the time, you can unravel the problems and make sure that things won’t fail.”
“I won’t have the time, though! I can’t afford to spend weeks on every project -”
“What if you did? What’s the worst that would happen? The hero would be benched for a week? I don’t know, I think most heroes wouldn’t have an issue with that, if it means their support gear is perfect by the end of it. They can catch up on their paperwork, lift some weights, do some interviews. There’s always work.”
“But… but what about all the people they could’ve saved during that time? They should be out saving lives, not sitting around waiting for me -”
“Other heroes will pick up the slack. That’s why we have so many of them. That’s why UA is churning out more of them every year, too. There are more than enough heroes. You don’t need to be afraid of keeping a few of them out of the field while you fix their gear.”
Hatsume chews over the words, and has to stop herself from chewing her lip, too, as she thinks about it. She reaches out, bopping the spider-bot on the head, and it shuts down, contracting back into a little ball again. The legs fold up, springing into place, and it rocks side to side on the bench with the momentum of the movement.
“...That still doesn’t fix anything, though. I still just… I can’t do anything right, right now.”
Maijima hums, thinking about it.
“Go back to basics, then.”
“...Basics?”
“Yeah. Make… hm. Make a smoke bomb. Those are simple enough, right?”
Hatsume laughs, without humour.
“Are you kidding? I was making smoke bombs when I was six! Of course they’re ‘simple enough’, the problem is making anything more complicated -”
“No, that’s not the problem, actually. You just said you needed one success. Who says it has to be something revolutionary?”
“...Oh.” She sniffles. “Yeah. I guess. Maybe.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to tidy up your bench a little, while you’re at it.”
“No way!” She blurts out, horrified, her voice still thick and awkward from crying. “I know where everything is like this! It’s fine! It’s all exactly where it should be - oh.” She cuts off sharply, as soon as she notices the barely-contained laughter he’s trying to stifle. “Not funny, sensei. This bench is off limits.”
“Okay, okay. Fine. You’re still banned til Monday, though, so get out of my workshop and go to bed. Seriously, Hatsume, take a damn day off. Go and read some manga, or watch a hero class training or something. Oh, and if I ever catch you trying to work in here alone, you will be banned for life. I’m being serious. You’ll be expelled into the General Course. Understand?”
She nods quickly. The threat is very clearly real, and she has no plans to test that.
“Yep. Yep yep yep. No working alone, I’ll be expelled, got it.”
“...After hours is fine, just as long as you have a chaperone. I’ve half a mind to ask Nezu to brief the security bots to patrol this side of the school more frequently, actually, I think they’re mostly focussed on the dorms… hey, wait a minute - how did you get past those, anyway?”
Hatsume scratches the back of her neck sheepishly.
“...Oh, well… I, uh… Nezu had me program them, actually. Back when the dorms opened up. I wanted to keep a pet, and he said I could if I did an extra project for him, which was to set up the security bots. I might have… conveniently forgotten to add myself to the curfew list…?”
Maijima-sensei’s expression darkens again.
“ Hatsume Mei -”
She leaps up, grabbing her satchel up from beside the chair, and slinging it over her shoulder, bolting for the door.
“Banned! Got it! Bye sensei! Thanks for all the help!”
She’s out of the door before he has a chance to say anything else, jogging through the corridor with a mad grin quirking up her cheeks, making a beeline for the safety of the dorms. She dares a glance over her shoulder as she goes, just checking in case he’s following her - and the corridor behind her is wonderfully empty.
...Although, she can swear she hears some quiet laughter, fading into the distance, as she runs away.