Archive of Our Own

By this point in the school year, Shouto had begun to expect the unexpected in his classes. Between the wildly differing personalities of both his teachers and fellow students, UA's... unique approach to education, and of course the abnormally high probability that disaster would strike Class 1A, he had learned that his monotonous, predictable school days were far behind him.

He still performed best in a structured environment, but he liked to think that he was slowly becoming more adaptable; with each new surprise he spent a little less time blinking dumbly as he processed the sudden change, and was quicker to react to his new circumstances. Which was fortunate, because he was learning that flexibility was one of the most important skills for hero work. A part of him wondered if this wasn't an intentional part of UA's curriculum, perhaps another "logical ruse"

Today, however, he seemed to be having something of a relapse.

Aizawa-Sensei’s entrance to the classroom began normally enough. Through the door he slouched, eyes narrowed and trademark sleeping bag slung over his arm like any other day. But then his other arm, which would usually be hanging limply at his side, came into view. It extended behind him, like he was pulling something along, and Shouto only had a split-second to steel himself for whatever it might be before Aizawa-Sensei stepped fully into the classroom and brought with him something... indescribable.

It was a cart. Actually, the cart itself was fairly non-descript, nothing more than two beige shelves on wheels. It was its cargo that unnerved him. The cart was stuffed to the brim with piles upon piles of some of the most colorful objects he had ever seen. His eyes were starting to hurt just looking at it.

Some of the the objects he could identify: paper, pencils, and... was that glitter? Some were familiar objects, but slightly altered, such as scissors with strangely shaped blades. And still others he had never seen before in his life. What any of them had to do with each other, he couldn't even begin to guess.
Around him, every other member of the class was silent, staring at the cart with expressions ranging from shocked to incredulous. Apparently he wasn't the only one who was confused. Good.

He tore his gaze away from the spectacle and focused his eyes back on Aizawa, who had stepped to the lectern. Steeled himself for whatever fresh challenge awaited him today. Heroics wasn’t easy, he reminded himself. But Shouto could handle it. He always could.

               "Today is not a normal class," he began in his typical bored voice. That much, Shouto thought was obvious. He watched Midoriya lean forward, hanging on to their teacher's every word.

               "As I'm sure you know, public relations and kindness are crucial skills in heroics. That's why today, you will be making birthday cards for children at the local orphanage. Handmade cards from the next generation of heroes will mean a lot to them, I'm sure. You may use the materials on the cart and decorate them however you see fit, given they're appropriate. Bakugou, Mineta, that means you. And make them nice, your work will reflect on the school."

The moment he had finished speaking, Ashido's hand was in the air, waving back and forth frantically.

               "What."

               "So basically," her voice was several decibels louder than necessary and she was practically vibrating in her seat. "We get to spend a period doing arts and crafts?!"

Aizawa took a moment to respond, and when he did, it was prefaced by a heavy sigh.

               "You know what? I'm too tired for this. Sure."

There was a single, quivering moment of silence, everyone glancing at each other, eyes wide, before the room erupted with noise.

"Peaceful" wasn't a word he'd use to describe his class at any time, but the pandemonium that ensued was raucous, even for them.

Several of his peers were cheering, Mina and Kaminari's voices nearly drowning out the others.

Questions were being shouted at Aizawa, Bakugou had set off an explosion and was screaming an expletive-ridden tirade, and Iida had climbed on top of his chair and begun pleading for order, raising his voice steadily to be heard over the cacophony.

And from the back, Shouto was silently watching the chaos unfold, and simultaneously trying to work out what "arts and crafts" could possibly be.

Given the passion of his class's reaction, and the fact that Mina was the one who had brought up the term in the first place, it seemed safe to assume that everyone in the room, apart from himself, understood what it meant.

Shouto felt a twinge of frustration. This wasn't the first time that he'd been the only one "in the dark", so to speak, about a topic everyone else seemed to be knowledgeable in. At the beginning of the year, Jirou had told him he was like "Prince Zuko in real life” and had been shocked when he had simply stared at her blankly. Similarly, his classmates had been horrified when he had asked what "Uno" was, and why Bakugou was threatening to kill Midoriya because of it.

But overwhelming the frustration, he was curious.

He knew what art was. He had a class in art. Midnight taught it; they spent most of the time trying to learn how to replicate the likeness of things they saw in the real world on paper, like bowls of fruit and each other's faces. Admittedly, Shouto wasn't very good at it. Tokoyami had been rather offended when he saw Shouto's attempt at rendering his head.

However, in art class they sat down to work with minimal supplies: pencils, erasers and paper. Those items appeared to be present on the cart, but the rest... well, that must be where crafts came in. It was the crafts part of this situation that was making his stomach start to turn.

Again, he reminded himself that he could handle it.

This was a little harder to believe when he realized he was the only one who didn’t know what “it” was.

               "ENOUGH!!"

Shouto was drawn out of his thoughts by Iida's powerful roar rising above the din.

He looked up to see the class president, red-faced, now standing on top of his desk and glaring at the group below him. The class quieted.

               "I am severely disappointed in you. This is UA, not an elementary school." Shouto was fairly certain he had done nothing wrong, but felt shame well up anyway under Iida's stern stare. Iida's voice dropped back to its normal level of seriousness when he saw his peers looking down at their shoes, thoroughly chastened.

               "These children are depending on us, so let's use this time to its fullest potential. Please form a line and collect the supplies you wish to use in an orderly fashion!"

With an arm chop and a second, more subdued round of cheers, everyone started to move towards the front of the room. Shouto rose and shuffled forward with them, trying to shake off the sensation of being severely out of his depth.

Anxiously he watched his classmates pass through the line and walk past him with their chosen tools in hand on their way back to their seats. Sero was spinning several rolls of colored tape on his fingers. Koda had selected a piece of thick fabric. Uraraka was clutching a canister of beads. All too soon it was his turn.

Standing over the dreaded cart, he suddenly wanted nothing more than to be having a normal class. Even being paired with Bakugou in a training exercise would be preferrable to his current predicament. There would be a lot more screaming and swearing, but at least he would have some idea of what was going on.

As a last resort, he turned to Aizawa-Sensei, hoping his expression would communicate his confusion, and his Sensei could give him some guidance.

Unfortunately, the man had vanished from his place near the lectern. Where could he have gone? A possible theory popped into his head, and with a sinking heart he lowered his gaze to the floor, where- yes, there was the man responsible for his education, curled up inside a bright yellow sleeping bag on the floor, snoring softly.

No support coming from there, then.

He turned back to the cart, and was immediately overwhelmed. He had thought he was confused before; it was even more vexing up close. The objects he was confronted with were so bizarre, he couldn’t even begin to fathom their purpose. Nestled next to the scissors that looked like they wouldn’t cut anything was a pile of… fuzzy straws? And next to those, a sheet of white disks with plastic dots inside them that moved when his hand brushed against them. Bottles marked “glitter glue”, and why was there a box of uncooked pasta?

               “Hurry it up,” Bakugou grumbled from behind him, startling Shouto from his ruminations.

How long had he been standing there? Definitely longer than he should have been. He needed to find something, now, and get out of the way.

Heartrate getting faster by the second, he scanned the options in front of him, and chose the first two things he recognized: several pieces of thick white paper, and a pencil, before hurrying aside to let the next person ahead. He realized he was breathing harder than usual, like he had just gone for a run, and forced his lungs to still before anyone could notice.

He shuffled back to his desk, feeling out of place with his simple selections, but nobody stopped him, so apparently he was doing this right.

He could handle it.

A birthday card... ok, Shouto could make a birthday card. Truth be told, he couldn't remember ever giving or receiving one, but he understood birthdays, and he had a solid grasp on cards as a concept. A card was a piece of paper with well wishes that you gave to a person when something of note happened, like a birthday. He had seen some in a store once, although he hadn't been paying very close attention.

He spared one more worried glance at the others, bent over their mystery items and beginning "arts and crafts" before turning to his own desk. The importance of self-reliance was one of the few of his father's teachings that he agreed with, so it didn't matter what anybody else was doing. How hard could this be?

Pencil in hand. He could handle this.

In the center of the paper: "Happy Birthday".

That didn't look right. The words were too small.

He erased, and wrote the words again, bigger.

Much better. He reached for another piece of paper to move onto the next card.

Pretty soon he had a small stack of cards growing on his desk, and was wondering what all the fuss had been about. The task was ridiculously simple. He could probably make at least a hundred of these before the class was over. He could still hear his classmates chatting excitedly, but didn't look up. Many of them had a habit of making things more complicated than they needed to be. The traces of a smile tugged at his lips as he congratulated himself for catching on so quickly. He added another card to the pile.

He was running out of paper, and debating whether he should start adding exclamation points to some of the cards, just for variety, when a familiar voice spoke hesitantly from his left side.

               "Er... Todoroki?"

Glancing over, he saw Yaoyorozu watching him, pencil frozen midstroke, her eyebrows furrowed in concern- almost exactly the same face she had made when she saw Bakugou knocking down a load-bearing wall in Ground Beta during training.

Something uncomfortable happened in his stomach.

               "Yes?"

She paused, apparently lost for words, her eyes fixed on his cards. He stared back, baffled. What was wrong?

He turned his head slightly, looking from her to the cards and back again, until it dawned on him.

He was making cards wrong.

He was doing it wrong.

He couldn’t handle this.

Yaoyorozu was still looking at him, eyes full of confusion and- was that pity?

His entire face felt as red as his scar. They stared at each other uncomfortably, her trying, no doubt, to tell him in the most tactful way possible that he was completely screwing up, and him in sheer mortification.

Eventually the prolonged eye contact and the heat in his cheeks became too much to bear. He looked away, eyes flicking downwards, to her desktop, and felt- not for the first time that day- his mind short-circuit.

Yaoyorozu’s card was... different, to say the least. Yes, she had written the same words he had in the center of the page, but instead of his basic print, she had penned them elegantly in ink that somehow sparkled. And in the left-over space, which he had left blank, she had created a garden.

They had drawn flowers once in art class. Shouto had spent forty-five minutes memorizing the curves of the petals and copying them over to paper, yet his drawing still turned out looking oddly flat. Even Tsuyu, who had managed to shade hers with colored pencils within the allotted time period, hadn't been able to produce an image as lifelike as the real thing.

Yaoyorozu's flowers, on the other hand were shockingly lifelike. Delicate layers of petals literally popped off the card, as if they were somehow growing from the paper beneath. For a moment he thought she had cut them from one of the plant beds outside the school, until he leaned closer and realized they were made of a thin, slightly wrinkled material.

               "Todoroki?"

He jerked back up from where he had been leaning towards her to better see her creation to see her still staring at him, looking even more concerned than before. Weird. He was acting weird, he needed to say something.

               "How did you do that?" He asked the question on instinct, and it seemed innocent enough, but he regretted it a moment later when his classmate's eyebrows rose towards the top of her forehead. Try something else, anything else.

               "That's very..." He realized halfway through his sentence that he wasn't sure what adjective described what she had made. "Good," he finished lamely.

Yaoyorozu blushed and waved her hand dismissively.

               "Oh no, it's nothing. Just layering tissue paper."

Shouto nodded slowly, the sinking feeling returning when he realized he was expected to know what tissue paper was.

Yaoyorozu returned to staring at him, but now her expression had changed, brows furrowed, as if she were trying to solve a mathematical equation. Shouto looked back, trying his best to appear as though he had any idea what was going on. This was supposed to be a simple assignment, something a grade-schooler could do, and now he was locked in a staring contest with his classmate, at a total loss of what to do. Unconciously his eyes darted back to her card, and he noticed her gaze follow his a moment too late.

Understanding bloomed across her eyes, and she finally broke the silence

               "Do you want me to show you how to make one?"

He hesitated. His instincts told him to say no. This situation was embarrassing enough; the least he could do to salvage his pride would be to politely decline and remedy his mistakes alone, now with a clearer image of what he should be doing. Common sense, however, reasoned that he wouldn’t be able to replicate Yaoyorozu's handiwork on his own. Swallowing shame, he nodded again.

Immediately Yaoyorozu broke into a wide grin.

               "Wonderful! Hold on, I'll go get more paper." He drummed his fingers nervously on his thigh as he watched her hurry to the front of the room and back, now carrying an armful of colorful sheets. The edges moved slightly as she walked, light enough to be disturbed by the motion.

               "Alright!" She handed him the stack of paper, picked her desk up, and within a blink of an eye had repositioned it much closer to his, the two pieces of furniture nearly touching. Her chair joined it with a thunk, and then-

Ah. Yaoyorozu was now sitting shoulder to shoulder with him, humming softly as she rearranged the tissue paper.

Meanwhile Shouto was fighting to keep his face in a neutral expression. Logically, he understood that his classmate needed to be in close proximity to demonstrate the creation of something so intricate and minute, but at the same time this was the closest he could recall being to a fellow student, outside of training.

The closest he could recall being to anyone, actually.

It set his nerves on edge, but at the same time he realized it would be rude to move away. So he forced his shoulders to relax and turned his attention to Yaoyorozu, who was pushing the stack of paper back towards him.

               "Right. To start, pick a color."

Shouto blinked.

              "Which one?"

For a moment she faltered, her smile falling into something closer to the concern from earlier, but she recovered it almost before he could register the change.

               "It doesn't matter. Just choose one you like."

               "Ok..." He began to paw through the stack, trying not to feel nervous.

He'd wasn't the kind of person to care much about colors, so "choose one you like" wasn't very helpful advice. Not that he'd tell her that. Instead he slowly shifted through the sheets: pink, yellow, white, dark blue- oh. There, tucked into the bottom of the pile, was a piece a vibrant violet, almost exactly the same color as his mother’s favorite flower. Tentatively he held it up for Yaoyorozu to see, a silent request for her approval.

               "Great." She smiled and grabbed a dark red sheet- very different from his own choice, but she had made no objection, so apparently his blue was acceptable. He felt his heart rate drop back to something approaching normal.

Maybe he could handle this.

Unfortunately, the task did not get easier. The paper was thin, thinner than any paper he'd used before, and the press of his fingers when he went to pick it up left wrinkles on its surface. Dismayed, he tried to smooth them out.

               "It's fine." Yaoyorozu reached over, likely to still his hands, but he froze at the sound of her voice, only a second before contact. "Creases give it texture."

               "Of course," He said, as though he had known that the whole time.

He was able to carry out the next step, cutting the sheet into neat squares, without incident. He had a bit of a scare when she told him to fold the squares "accordion style", as though he knew what that meant, but thankfully he was able to copy her movements as she worked on her own paper. He managed to restack the sheets, trim the ends into a rounded shape, and cinch the whole thing in the middle without embarrassing himself. Finally, Yaoyorozu told him, they had reached the most important part. She shifted closer so he could see as she fanned out the folds and began to bend and separate each layer.

 After a moment, he followed suit. Carefully, took hold of the first paper and tugged it gently, so that it stood at angle, sloping downwards towards the center. It looked odd at first, but he did it again, and again, and again, and watched with increasing wonder as a delicate flower slowly formed.
It was incredible, what could be made out of simple materials if you knew how. Who had thought of this? Who had looked at a piece of paper and seen the potential for faux flora? And how did Yaoyorozu know the exact details of this process? Who had taught her?

Suddenly, his musings were interrupted by a ripping sound. He looked down and- Shit.

In his left hand he was holding the flower, nearly finished. In his right hand, he was holding a scrap of tissue paper. Distracted by his thoughts, he must have pulled too hard.

The usual response to failure was quick to come. He was annoyed, and embarrassed, but what surprised him was that he was also... slightly sad.

This was not unusual in and of itself. He was often sad: he had grown used to fighting off bouts of melancholy, pushing away mournful thoughts of his mother’s hospital room and his father’s fists. The difference was that most of the things he was sad about were important things, events and situations that profoundly impacted his life. Strangely, though, now he felt a twinge of sadness over his tiny creation, for no discernable reason. He could remake it, of course, in a matter of minutes. But it wouldn’t be exactly the same, and the original flower was gone forever.

Odd, how much weight could be held by something so light.

               "Is something wrong?" Although Yaoyorozu was speaking in a normal tone, her being so close by made him flinch as though she had yelled. The flower fluttered to the ground, and he turned to see her smiling sheepishly at him.

               "Sorry."

               "It's not your fault," he replied, ducking under the desk to retrieve it. He tried to force any feelings of shame to the back of his mind. Yaoyorozu wasn't the kind of person who judged people, he reminded himself.

Sure enough, when he resurfaced with the flower and showed her the torn bit she simply nodded understandingly and told him it was alright. He set it to the side and began again with a new piece of paper, this time keeping his full attention on his hands.

They worked in silence for a bit. It was nice, actually. Sitting side by side, heads bent down to better see their tiny creations. Even though Shouto usually preferred to work alone, and he didn't shied away from most physical contact, there was a sense of peaceful camaraderie it: their mirrored movements, the occasional brushing of shoulders, the only sound being the crinkling of paper and the rhythm of their breathing.

Too soon, he thought, it was over, Yaoyorozu throwing one last flower onto the small pile that had grown on her desk and leaning back contentedly. He finished his last one quickly and stopped as well, feeling a touch of pride that his pile matched hers in size.

               "...Now what?"

               "Now all we have to do is put them on the paper!" She said brightly, producing yet another stack of paper from somewhere under the mountain of supplies that surrounded her. This time she went first, choosing an thick off-white sheet, before dashing off again for glue. While she was gone he tugged out a green sheet for himself. It reminded him of grass, and by this point he understood that any color he chose would be fine.

After all that had happened, he shouldn’t have been surprised anymore, and yet, when he saw what she was holding in her hands…

               “Um… are you sure you’re allowed to have that?” he asked, pointing to the dangerous-looking contraption.

               “What?” She barely glanced up from where she was plugging the cord into the outlet behind them.

               “Of course, it’s just a glue gun.”

Shouto leaned back instinctively, as far away from the weapon as his chair would allow.

               “Uh…” He trailed off, at a loss for words. Given that they were training to be heroes, danger was not unusual in their classes, but a firearm during homeroom seemed excessive, and the nonchalance Yaoyorozu had holding the weapon was concerning, to say the least.

He wasn’t sure how well Recovery Girl’s Quirk worked on bullet wounds.

Yaoyorozu turned around, and did a double take, frowning as her eyes flicked rapidly between him and gun.

               “Todoroki,” she said, understanding blooming across her face. “A glue gun isn’t an actual gun. It just heats glue and squeezes it out.”

               “…Oh.” Well, that made much more sense. Suddenly he could see how ridiculous his previous understanding had been. What had he been thinking, he asked himself. Of course it wasn’t an actual weapon, it even had the word “glue” in the name. It was harmless, just another fixture of these “arts and crafts” that everyone but him seemed to be so intimately familiar with, and he was foolish, foolish, foolish-

His self-deprecatory monologue was cut off by a light tap on his arm. He turned to find Yaoyorozu, now seated and holding the device out towards him like a peace offering.

               “Why don’t you go first?” She suggested in that ever-gentle voice, and Shouto, not wanting to create any more problems than he already had, nodded automatically.

He took the glue gun gingerly, and slid the cylinder she handed him into the hole in the back of the gadget.

               “It’s solid glue,” she explained before he could ask. “The heat will melt it.”

Carefully, carefully, he began to stick flowers to paper. It was difficult- the “trigger”, he soon discovered, had to be squeezed with exactly the right amount of pressure, so that the glue didn’t come out too quickly- but he managed it without any major mistakes.

Although the room was noisy, filled as it was with teenagers without adult supervision, their corner remained quiet. Yaoyorozu continued to give her guidance, chirping things like “I think you’ll need more a little more glue for that one” and “It’s fine, you can put them wherever you want,” but Shouto didn’t only offered acknowledgement in the form of more nodding. Torn between gratitude for her kindness, and humiliation at having to be helped through the task like a child, he didn’t trust his voice not to betray him.

He finished with his card, and handed the glue gun back to her. He watched her glue down her flowers, her motions far neater and more efficient than his own, in silence. It wasn’t until she had covered half her paper in blossoms that she spoke again.

               “I didn’t learn how to tie my shoelaces until I was fourteen.”

               “I- what?”

She set down her handiwork, and turned to look him in the eye.

               “I always wore dress shoes growing up, so I never had a reason to.” She huffed a quiet laugh. “I’m sure you can imagine how embarrassed I was when I went on my first hiking trip and had to ask my maid to help me with my tennis shoes. I could solve chemical equations in my sleep, but a simple knot had me stumped.”

She paused, probably expecting a response, but all Shouto could do was blink, still trying to process this sudden non-sequitur, one more addition to the long list of things he didn’t know how to react to.

How much longer was this day going to last?

Yaoyorozu did something odd, then. Movement in his peripheral vision made him break eye contact, and he looked down just in time to see her set her hand on his arm. It sat there, resting gently just above the cuff of his blazer.

Maybe it was just because his left side was usually so cold, but he could have sworn he could feel the heat of her palm, even through several layers of fabric.

               “Everybody has something like that, Todoroki. There’s no shame in learning something a little later than most people,” she said. There was something earnest, desperate even, in her eyes, like she was scared her words alone wouldn’t be enough.

The intimacy of it would have made him uncomfortable, but the wave of relief that washed over him was strong enough to overwhelm any sense of unease.. For the first time that day, he understood what was going on.

Yaoyorozu was trying to comfort him. The seemingly-random anecdote, the soft eyes, the hand on his arm… it all made sense.

It was the touch that tipped him off. The warm pressure triggered a memory, something his mother used to do when he was upset.

Dripping snot, hot tears. A growled promise to start again the next day. Footsteps- father?! No, too quiet. Mother, crouching down, a warm lap, heat that didn’t hurt. Hands much bigger, skin much smoother, than his own, pressing down- not a slap, not a punch. Not the kind of touch intended to cause pain. The kind that soothed it: a gentle pressure, saying what words could not.

He was drawn out of the flashback by the minuscule sound of a teardrop hitting paper.

A wet blotch marred the corner of his card, spreading slowly. His hand flew to his face to erase the evidence.

Yaoyorozu was still watching him. She had probably seen this moment of weakness. A part of him wanted to turn away, to hide his shame, to do something, anything, to recover his dignity.

A couple hours earlier, that part would have won. And it probably would tomorrow, too. But now… Now, he swallowed his pride, and offered the girl who had taken the time to help him a small smile, one that he hoped could convey his gratitude.

               “Thank you.”

               “Of course,” she said warmly. A peaceful silence followed, one that he regretted having to break.

               “So… what next?”

               “Ah,” she said, as if she had momentarily forgotten what they were supposed to be doing. She plucked two pieces of paper, plain white this time, from the desk, and handed one to him.

               “We’re almost done. All we have to do now is write a message.”

This time, he asked his question without a second thought.

               “What should the message say?”

Yaoyorozu paused at this, a slight frown taking shape on her face, as if now she was the one unsure of herself.

               “Well, a birthday card usually includes a congratulations, maybe a compliment… oh, and some well-wishes, either for the day itself or the year ahead.” She smiled apologetically. “I don’t think I can tell you exactly what to say, though. I’m sure you’ll do fine,” she continued, reaching for a box of markers and holding it out towards him. “Just write from your heart.”

               “…Right.”

He picked a marker from the proffered box- teal, halfway between the blue of the flowers and the green of the paper, to tie it all together- his earlier sense of uncertainty returning as he did so. returning as he did so.

Shouto did not possess a gift for writing. For most of his life, the only things he had to write were notes and the occasional essay for school. His letters to his mother were a recent development, and even after writing several he still wasn’t completely comfortable with it. When he read them over, his sentences sounded stilted. Sometimes the words wouldn’t come at all. He would stare at the page for five minutes without making a mark, with no idea of what to say next.

Nor did Shouto have many “people skills”, as evidenced by the day’s events. In general, he preferred to keep to himself, but even when he did socialize, he wasn’t very good at it. Maybe it was a result of his isolated childhood, or perhaps an innate aspect of his personality; either way, he struggled to interact with people he considered friends, and those further from him? He didn’t even try. He only talked to most of his classmates if they talked to him first, and there were a few he wasn’t sure he’d spoken to at all.

All of which was to say that he was better equipped to take on the entire League of Villains on his own than to write a birthday card to a child he had never met.

But he’d done lots of things he wasn’t equipped to do today. Yes, he’d needed help, and no, he hadn’t necessarily been very good at them, but he’d done them all the same.

Slowly, taking care with every line, he wrote.

…

               “All done?” Yaoyorozu asked brightly when he recapped the marker. She had put down her own writing implement several minutes earlier, clearly having had a much easier time with the task than he had.

He nodded, a little stiffly, not entirely confident in his work. Apparently he was alone in his doubts; Yaoyorozu gave a wide smile and a hum of approval, and then moved on without hesitating.

               “If you want, we can use these to trim up the edges.” She produced two pairs of scissors from somewhere within the pile of supplies that had grown on her desktop, and slid one towards him. His eyes widened when he recognized them as the strange scissors that had confused him so much when he’d seen them on the cart at the start of class.

               “They’re called pinking shears,” his classmate explained. “They let you make fancy edges easily.”

He tried them out, and sure enough, the cut in the paper curved back and forth, just like the blades that had made it.

               “Huh.”

It was easy from there. He didn’t need any further instruction to line up his two sheets of paper, the reverse sides of his message and the faux garden facing each other. A quick dab from the glue gun in each corner…

               “Aaaand, we’re done!” Yaoyorozu announced. She turned her card over with a flourish, and Shouto did the same.

Finally, it was done. He examined his finished creation, pushing gently on the paper to test its thickness and running a light hand over the flowers on the front. It wasn’t quite as good as it could have been, the slightly uneven edges and strings of dried glue peeking through the gaps between the flowers being noticeable signs of his amateur abilities, but there were other parts he was proud of. The flowers had all turned out the same size, and the colors, he thought, complemented each other well.

It was… nice.

               “Hiya!”

The enthusiastic greeting came from the previously empty space directly behind his head, prompting him to flinch and yelp in a distinctly unheroic manner.

Uraraka stepped into his line of sight, looking sheepish.

               “Sorry Todoroki, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

               “It’s alright,” He replied, only slightly shakily, and glanced down to assure the wellbeing of his card. Luckily, he hadn’t balled his hands, so the project was undamaged.

Uraraka followed his gaze, her mouth opening into an “O”, and then shifting into a smile.

               “Todoroki!” She exclaimed in that high-pitched tone she and some of the other girls used when they were excited. “I didn’t know you knew how to make stuff like this!”

               “Um-”

               “We did it together,” Yaoyorozu provided, saving him from having to answer.

Uraraka’s head swiveled to the other girl’s card. Somehow, her expression became even more delighted than before.

               “This is the most adorable thing I have ever seen!” She squealed.

               “What’s adorable?” Hagakure asked, already hurrying towards them. At that point Shouto decided to relocate himself. Yaoyorozu caught his eye as he slipped out from behind the girls, and nodded understandingly before turning back to chat with her friends.

Now in a less crowded area of the classroom, he noticed some of the others depositing their projects on a plastic tray balanced on top of the cart in the front, and headed that way.

He reached to drop his card on the tray, and froze for what felt like the hundredth time that day.

The multitude of cards spread out in front of him were similar in some ways to the contents of the cart from the beginning of class. Brightly colored, flashy, and endlessly varied, his temples twinged with the beginnings of a headache just from looking at them. However, unlike the materials they had come from, there was order in the final products, a gentle deliberacy that made it hard to turn away.

Many were decorated with drawings. One person had turned their paper lengthwise, and painted a tranquil lake. There were a few with illustrations of odd, colorful animals that were vaguely familiar. What were they called? Pokemen? He recalled that they were in a popular cartoon series, so it made sense to put them on gifts intended for children.

He assumed that, like his own, they all had a message for the recipient on the back, but a few with words on the front as well caught his eye.

One had the words “PLUS ULTRA” spelled out in patterned tape. That must have been Sero’s. Another had a rabbit’s face crafted out of fabric, with the words “Hoppy Birthday” written at the bottom. It took him a minute to process that, but once he grasped the joke (rabbits hopped, and “hoppy” sounded a lot like “happy”) he had to admire the cleverness of it.

Once again, his contemplation was interrupted by Bakugou.

               “Get out of the way, loser,” the boy growled, pushing Shouto roughly aside. He caught a glance of his classmate’s creation before he slammed it face-down onto the pile. Black paper, as dark as the night sky, had been dotted with white specks, like stars, and overlapping them were shimmering lines resembling fireworks. He watched Bakugou toss one of the bottles of “glitter glue”, bright orange like his explosions, back onto the cart, and couldn’t help the smile that rose to his face as he watched him slouch away.

It was amusing (and also, if he was being honest, reassuring) to know that even the unruliest student in his class took this assignment seriously.

He walked back to his desk, the same feeling of accomplishment he enjoyed after a good training session filling his chest.

Soon, a shuffling sound came from the front of the room, and Aizawa-Sensei emerged from his sleeping bag, looking just as exhausted as he had when he laid down.

Their teacher surveyed the classroom, narrowing his eyes at the detritus of their activities, paper scraps, stray bits of glitter, and even a few paint stains scattered on the floor. Then he examined the tray that held their cards, lazily shuffling a few to see the ones beneath, and Shouto could have sworn he saw the man’s expression soften, if only for a second.

He turned back to the class and gave them a nonchalant shrug.

               “Looks fine. I’ll deliver them tonight, and if it goes well, we might do this again sometime.”

A cheer went up around the room, and though Shouto didn’t join in the noisemaking, he agreed with the sentiment.

Odd, how much could change over the course of a single class period.

Aizawa-Sensei started towards the door, dragging the cart behind him.

               “I’m going to take this back to the storage room. You’re free until I get back.” He glared at them from over his shoulder. “But if this room isn’t spotless by then, you all have extra homework.”

A few minutes later he found himself on his knees, gazing at his sparkling pink palm in dismay. All he’d wanted to do was scoop some glitter off the floor; why was it sticking to his hand? He felt a tap on his shoulder, and turned to see Yaoyorozu offering him one of the wipes she had created to clean paint off the floor.

               “Thank you.”

               “No problem.”

They lapsed back into silence; she went back to scrubbing at the tile, and he tried to busy himself with cleaning his hands while he worked up the courage to say what he wanted to next. Unfortunately he only managed to spread the mess around.

               “…Hey Yaoyorozu?”

               “Yes?”

               “If we do this again… do you think you could teach me how to make something else?”

The words came out softly, barely more than a whisper. For a moment she didn’t reply, and his palms began to sweat, afraid that she hadn’t heard him, and he would have to repeat himself. He could jump into battle without hesitation, but somehow, asking for help felt like the hardest thing he’d ever done.

But then, a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t have to turn around to imagine her expression, which was fortunate, because he was certain his entire face was red.

               “I would love that.”

He ducked his head to hide the smile that overtook his face.

               “…Yaoyorozu?”

               “Hm?”

               “It’s not coming off.”

               “Oh, dear.”

He revised his earlier statement.

He could handle this... with some help.

And he was starting to believe that that was ok.

Akari held her gift reverently, in awe that a hero- a real hero- had touched it. Had taken time out of their busy day, filled with so many important duties, to create this for her.

This beautiful thing, made by the hands of a stranger, but still so familiar, the paper flowers that decorated its surface exactly the same as the ones her class had made in school for Mother’s Day.

Mother’s Day. She’d shoved her flowers to the bottom of her backpack, tossed it under her bed, and cried. For her mom, who should have been alive to receive them, and for herself, who shouldn’t have been alone. Ever since her mom died, that’s how it had been, “should” and “shouldn’t” all mixed up, everything wrong, wrong, wrong.

Looking at the card, she smiled for the first time in a while.

Then, her fingers brushed against something on the back- was there more? Her smile turned into a grin when she discovered the second piece of paper, taped neatly to the back.

Finally, her hard efforts in learning to read had paid off. It was a little harder, reading something handwritten rather than printed, but thankfully the hero had written carefully, their kanji much neater than her own shaky characters. The first part was a normal birthday greeting, just like anything you would see in a card from the store:

               Happy birthday. I hope the year ahead of you brings you joy.

But below that, in smaller writing, almost as if the hero was self-conscious about their words:

I owe you a thank you for giving me the opportunity to do this. I enjoyed making this card, and it’s given me a lot to think about. I hope you like it as well.

-S.T

She reread the message a few times, mouthing the words to herself like that would help her understand them better. Why a hero would want to thank her when they were the one being kind, and how anyone could get a lot to think about from a simple craft project, she didn’t know. Still, as weird as the note was, it made her smile again. She wasn’t sure why.

Akari turned the card back over, running a hand over the flowers. She took a minute to think about the strange hero who had made them, and her mother, who would have loved to see them.

She set the card down on her bed, and went to find some tape to put it on the wall.