Chapter Text
U.A. loomed in the distance, a sleek monolith of glass and steel glinting under the late-morning sun. The sky was clear and high above Musutafu, the clouds few and feathered, casting almost no shadow, too pristine a day to match the twisting in Midoriya’s stomach.
He stood just outside the main gates of the campus, nervously adjusting the strap of his bag over one shoulder for what had to be the tenth time in five minutes. The heavy weight of his orientation folder was tucked under his arm, its edges already softened from how many times he’d opened and re-checked the printed schedule. Everything around him felt slightly too loud, with breezes rustling in the trees that lined the pathway to the main building, the crunch of his shoes on the gravel, the murmur of students ahead of him moving through security and toward the central courtyard.
It was the first official day. Not combat training, not some harrowing exam, just orientation. While not a part of an official hero course class, this is important all the same.
His heart was hammering in his chest as if it didn’t trust the rest of his body to remember what to do next. He tried to force his breathing steady as he walked, eyes wide behind his lashes, drinking in every detail like they might be important later. Trees, layout, signs pointing toward the dorm buildings, and various departments; he filed each detail away like puzzle pieces he wasn’t sure how to assemble yet.
The U.A. campus itself was stunning. Every path was landscaped perfectly, every corner of each building sleek and new. Clean-cut lines. Crisp signage. It had the feel of a place that belonged to people who knew what they were doing. A place dedicated to producing the best.
He didn’t quite feel like one of those people yet.
Around him, a slow stream of students, some alone, some clustered in twos or threes, were making their way toward the main hall. He could hear bits of conversation: introductions, nervous laughter, confident boasts. Already, some kids were treating this like the first day of a reality show. Others walked with the quiet, bottled-up kind of energy Midoriya knew well because those were the ones like him. Focused. Anxious. Grateful to be here, but terrified to mess it up.
His hands tightened around the folder as he stepped through the doors and into the main building.
The orientation auditorium was larger than he'd expected, granted it must fit all of the first years. Rows of chairs arranged into neat columns, with large holoscreens pulsing softly at the front of the room. The ceiling arched high, giving the space a strange, cathedral-like feel if said cathedral was modernized.
There were signs hanging along the walls in gold and navy blue that read “Welcome to U.A. High School – First-Year Orientation,” and beneath them, a cluster of staff members chatted quietly while preparing for the formal welcome. Everyone had a copy of the same cream-colored orientation folder, bearing the U.A. emblem pressed into the cover.
Midoriya stepped in fully, scanning for where the general studies and hero students were meant to sit. Most of his presumed classmates were here yet, or they’d already found their spots, but that didn’t matter.
For the first time, the thought settled heavily in his chest: he’d done it. He was here. In the very halls where All Might once walked. The very school where future heroes were forged. Where he might finally grow into the kind of hero he’s dreamed of for so long.
It should’ve been overwhelming. And it was. But it was also real.
He took a slow breath, found a seat a few rows from the front, and sat down with posture radiating tension, unable to relax just yet. Students filed in around him, some chatting, others simply focused on reading the folder. Midoriya fiddled with the edge of his, his eyes never still.
So many new faces. Future heroes. Future associates. Future friends?
He exhaled slowly, eyes sharp despite the anxious twist in his stomach. He was trying to focus on the speakers up front, trying to take in every word, but his instinct, his lifelong habit of analysis, wouldn’t turn off. His mind cataloged postures, voices, minute facial expressions, tone, and tension, trying to get a read on everyone around him.
That’s when he noticed her.
Just barely.
She wasn’t sitting too far from him, business course, judging by the red-accented trim on her uniform. Her posture was good, but not overly stiff. Relaxed, like she’d done this kind of thing before. Surrounded by a few other students who all seemed to already be aquainted.
She spoke quietly to them, laughing at something one of them said. Her laugh stood out, neither loud nor showy,but it lingered. The kind of sound you remembered hearing.
Midoriya tilted his head slightly, curious. Something about her energy stuck out to him.
While she was visibly attractive, it didn’t stem from her looks. Her expression was calm, yet tinged with an air of frustration. He caught one or two other students shifting to glance in her direction, one whispering something to their friend. She didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe she just didn’t care.
What caught him was the way she held space. Not in the flashy, overconfident way of some students he’d already marked as likely to get in trouble on Day 1, much like Kacchan. She was composed. Like she already understood her place here. Not self-conscious. Not defensive. Just present.
Midoriya blinked, mentally filing that away.
It was just another observation. Another point in the endless swarm of data building around him as he tried to figure out where he fit in all of this. He shifted his weight, adjusted his grip on the folder, and focused back on the front of the room as the faculty continued with their welcome speeches.
Midoriya’s pen hovered over the corner of his orientation folder. He wasn’t even taking notes yet, just scribbling shapes, dots, arrows. Movement vectors. Habit. It’s as if he cannot help but over-analyze each portion of his surroundings.
His eyes kept scanning, unaware that he had begun to mumble to himself under his breath.
"Split seating by course... Business, General Studies, Heroics... Yeah, that makes sense," he murmured under his breath, barely audible over the ambient chatter. “Hero track to the left... pros in training... some already look ready for the field…”
His gaze landed on a boy with broad shoulders and navy blue hair gestured robotically while talking to someone, seemingly instructing them to engage in proper conduct. Iida Tenya. Nearly identical to his brother, Ingenium. Class rep type. Good form, controlled posture.
A few rows over, a tall boy with stark red and white hair was seated a few rows ahead, his posture straight, expression unreadable. The air around him was quiet, unapproachable in a sense, and people seemed to leave space without even realizing it.
“Surely, that’s... Todoroki Shoto? Naturally. Son of Endeavor… ranked number two Pro Hero for the last seven years… Heat quirk. Or ice. Or both? Seems to be both.. The discoloration of his hair implies..”
He noted Todoroki's form: how still he sat, how his eyes stayed forward even when others glanced his way. He looked less like a student and more like someone waiting for a mission to start. Undoubtedly, he will be placed in Class 1-A.
Midoriya swallowed down his nerves and scribbled a quick note in the corner of the page: “Observe training habits if possible. Estimate upper limit of elemental quirk usage.” He pauses briefly. “Befriend if possible.” It would be nice if he could create a circle of friends for himself, especially of those destined to be in the hero course as classmates.
His gaze drifted to the girl seated closely beside Todoroki, who is bright, smiling, and animated in her gestures. Notably, she’s seated in the section for hero course students despite her red-accented trim on her uniform belonging to business students. She waved cheerfully across the aisle to someone, a spark of motion in a sea of tension. Midoriya followed the line of sight without meaning to, just curious.
The person she was waving at smiled faintly in return. Her group was seated diagonally across from his, in the business course section. A cluster of students in identical uniforms, chatting lightly, comfortably.
And there she was.
Midoriya didn’t know her name. Not yet. She was laughing at something someone beside her said, chin tilted slightly, her hand still holding her folder casually in her lap. Her voice didn’t reach him clearly, just a few syllables laced with begrudging amusement, but it was enough to catch his attention.
He blinked. “Confident social grouping… maybe previously acquainted?” he muttered absently, scribbling an asterisk next to “Business track: internal dynamics? Groups already forming.”
It was a mere moment of interest, like any number of observations he’d made since walking into the room. But something about how she occupied her space stuck in his mind. She wasn’t overcompensating. She wasn’t trying to prove anything. She was just... there. And those around her seemed to respond to it.
His thoughts were interrupted by a loud, familiar scoff somewhere behind him. His spine straightened involuntarily.
Bakugou Katsuki.
No mistaking that tone. Even across the room and through the din, Midoriya’s ears had been trained for years to hear the curl of irritation in that voice. It hit him like a spark to nerve endings.
He resisted the urge to look. He knew exactly where Kacchan was, and how he probably looked: arms crossed, scowling, radiating barely restrained disdain for the entire concept of orientation.
Briefly, he wondered why Nozo’, Takahashi Nozomi, was not seated beside him before belatedly recalling that she enrolled in the business section, choosing to focus on agency management.
Midoriya jotted nothing down this time. His grip tightened on the pen instead.
“Stay focused. You’re here now, too. We’re nearly equal,” he reminded himself under his breath, jaw tense.
A voice over the mic at the front of the auditorium pulled his attention forward. One of the instructors began the introduction, and the lights dimmed just slightly. Heads turned.
Midoriya looked up, eyes forward again.
But somewhere in the back of his mind, just past the whisper of his thoughts about training regimens and quirk analyses and probability curves, he still felt the shape of her laughter lingering in his memory.
Like a note that hadn’t fully faded just yet.
The first few weeks had been chaos. The entrance exam, the surprise placement into Class 1-A, the villain attack at USJ, the trauma of combat practice with Kacchan, and the physical toll of harnessing One For All left his body sore and his nerves rattled. Every moment had felt like he was balancing on a tightrope, wobbling between success and collapse.
But as October bled into November, he’d managed a good amount of footing
His classmates had become more than just names on a roster. He now knew the difference between Kaminari’s dumb jokes and his genuine insight, could predict when Iida would raise his hand before speaking, and had come to appreciate Todoroki’s quiet nods during strategy discussions. Even Kacchan, well, he was still Bakugou Katsuki, but Midoriya had long since learned how to read the flickers of nuance in his scowls.
He trained hard. He studied harder.
And he earned respect, not through flashiness or bravado, but through consistent grit.
In combat training, he was often the first to jump into danger and the last to leave. His classmates noticed. In study groups, his notebooks, full of sharp analysis and careful observations, became quiet staples. Mina and Kaminari now demanded copies before a written exam as if the notes were a holy grail.
Aizawa, for all his understated demeanor, had even started giving him a rare approving nod during lessons.
U.A. was intense. But it was also invigorating. He lived and breathed its air with reverence. Every morning, he woke up in the dorms with a renewed sense of purpose. Every night, he fell asleep with sore limbs and a mind racing with possibilities.
But even with this progress, he didn’t feel completely anchored.
He still hesitated before raising his hand in class. Still stammered when too many people looked at him at once. Still worried, in some small corner of his heart, that he wasn’t quite enough, that he was only as good as his last recovery.
Existing as All Might’s sole successor is a large task in itself without the additional obstacles it generated.
There were times, especially in the quieter evenings, when he watched his classmates laughing together in the lounge or chatting easily over meals and felt just a step behind. Not excluded, never that, but outside the ease of it all.
He didn’t resent it. It wasn’t envy. Just an ache. A soft yearning to one day belong without trying so hard.
He journaled. He trained. He muttered to himself constantly.
But slowly, so slowly, he hadn’t noticed at first, others had started filling in the spaces around him.
Uraraka always waved when she entered the common room, and not just at him. Iida dragged him into group study sessions, whether he agreed or not. Asuimade quiet comments that showed she’d been listening to his thoughts, even when he hadn’t intended to speak them aloud.
He had begun to feel like something in Class 1-A wouldn’t quite work the same without him.
It was more than enough. Rather, it’s exactly what he’d wished for before his enrollment into U.A. To find a place where he could carve out room to belong.
By the time snow had begun to frost the corners of the dorm windows and the sun hung lower in the sky, U.A.’s first-year students were beginning to feel the full stretch of the academic year. Midterms had passed in a flurry of stress and caffeine, internship experiences were being logged and processed, and talk of the upcoming sports and rescue training evaluations began to spark within the halls of the hero course like flint to kindling.
And then came the elective announcement.
It arrived in the form of a digital update through the campus system: an interdepartmental elective program titled Heroic Public Relations & Market Identity. Attendance mandatory. One period per week. A collaboration course between select students from the Heroics and Business Departments.
The response in Class 1-A was immediate.
“Public relations?” Kaminari said aloud, nose wrinkling. “We’re gonna have to learn how to… market ourselves?”
“We already do,” Yaoyorozu replied calmly, arms folded. “This just formalizes it. The public is half of a Pro Hero’s battle.”
“But with the Business kids?” Mina leaned forward, eyes shining with interest. “Aren’t they like… trained to think like managers and agents?”
“It’s meant to prepare us for real-world dynamics,” Iida said, adjusting his glasses with a mechanical swipe of his hand. “Pro Heroes work with PR teams constantly, media, branding, and sponsorships. I believe this is intended to provide cross-disciplinary insight.”
“Cross-disciplinary insight sounds a lot like letting weak extras tell us how to smile for a camera,” Bakugou muttered from his seat, slouched but listening.
Aizawa’s follow-up was as dry as ever.
“Get used to it. Heroes are products as much as protectors. This is the part of your job that involves staying employed.”
And that was that.
The class was scheduled every Thursday just before lunch: 11:15 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. A full semester, twelve sessions, culminating in a presentation project in pairs chosen across departments. Students wouldn’t know their partners until the third class.
Room G-3 in the east wing of the main building was selected as neutral ground. An open-floor lecture hall with flexible desk groupings, a presentation projector, and glass windows on one end that overlooked one of the courtyards.
On the first day, the hero students filed in cautiously, some out of curiosity while others did so out of suspicion.
Midoriya was somewhere in between.
He knew what PR entailed in theory. He’d read books, studied case studies of All Might’s iconic brand. He’d even scribbled projections of the type of image he'd want to convey when he became a hero. "Approachable. Reassuring. Strategic. A symbol to provide hope." But applying that knowledge in a classroom, in front of peers, and worse, in front of business students who probably knew just as much, if not more, about optics than he did about fighting, sent a jolt of unease through his nerves.
He shifted awkwardly at the edge of one of the modular tables, fidgeting with his pen. The seat beside him was empty for now.
From the other entrance, a cluster of students in neatly pressed blazers and business skirts entered the room. They walked like they belonged, not just in the class, but in the structure of the world beyond it. Their folders were color-coded. Some had tablets out already, styluses tapping quietly. Their eyes scanned the room quickly, assessing.
And among them, of course, was Kawahara Airi.
She wasn’t leading their group, but she stood out even when she wasn’t trying to. She had a calm familiarity with the school that came from walking every hallway as if she had a mental blueprint in her head. The girls of the business course gravitated toward her without her needing to say anything.
Midoriya saw her before she saw him, and he nearly dropped his pen when he did.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t known she’d be in this class. The announcement from Aizawa had been clear: Business Course students would be part of the elective. Logically, this wasn’t a surprise.
But knowing it and being confronted with it, seeing her walk into the room, casual and radiant in her uniform, her hands lightly folded around a tablet, were entirely different things.
His hand twitched around his pen.
“ Why — ” he muttered to himself, eyes flicking down to the half-filled page in his notebook. He wasn’t writing anymore. Why does seeing her make me nervous?
It wasn’t an attraction. Not necessarily. He’d only seen her once before, and briefly, which was at orientation, moving through the courtyard with her group, waving to someone behind him with a smile that didn’t even register in his direction.
She hadn’t even noticed him.
She probably didn’t even remember him.
So then… why?
She hadn’t made a scene, hadn’t said anything yet. But something about her, something he couldn’t quite name, made his skin feel too tight. Like he was bracing for something, even though nothing was happening.
He glanced up again.
Airi was listening to one of her friends with her head tilted slightly, a polite nod in place. Her expression was soft but unreadable. Businesslike.
Professional.
Was this how he was going to feel every class?
He straightened his notes and sat up straighter without realizing it, eyes darting between his paper and the door.
He hadn’t spoken to her much, only in the hallway once or twice. She always tried to smile when she greeted him briefly, but her friends whisked her away quickly. She had a presence that pulled people in easily despite seeming unwilling to make many new friends, and Midoriya had only ever been on the fringes of that pull.
Still, he’d noticed her.
He wasn’t alone in that.
From behind him, there was a sudden low whistle.
“Ooh,” Kaminari drawled with an amused lilt, leaning forward slightly. “Okay, I saw that.”
Midoriya startled, pen jerking across the page. “Saw what?”
“That look you just gave her.” Kaminari laughed, clearly enjoying himself. “C’mon, dude. You were staring like she walked in trailing sparkles or something.”
“I—I wasn’t staring!” Midoriya’s voice cracked slightly as he hunched forward. “I was just observing. Just, uh, general situational awareness. Analysis. Of the room.”
“Sure. Sure.” Kaminari nodded solemnly, then immediately broke into a grin. “Totally normal reaction to analyzing a classmate: go stiff as a board and start muttering under your breath like you just discovered a new species.” Had he been muttering to himself again?
Kirishima chuckled beside him but didn’t add anything yet, just watching with interest.
“I mean,” Kaminari continued, dropping his voice a little, “I get it. She’s super pretty. And she’s got that ‘cool girl who will probably destroy you with a smile’ vibe going on. You into that or something?”
Midoriya made a strangled sound, face already turning bright pink.
“N-No! I mean—I don’t even know her!”
He let out a sigh that sounded like he wanted the floor to open up beneath him.
“Don’t worry, man,” Kaminari said, reaching up to clap him on the shoulder. “We all start somewhere. One day you’re just looking at someone, and the next, boom—suddenly you’re hoping you sit next to them in class.”
Kirishima finally spoke, his tone warm and easy. “He’s not wrong.”
Midoriya groaned quietly, sinking a little lower in his seat.
Airi had just glanced their way.
Midoriya’s heart skipped a beat.
This was fine. He’d fought villains. He’d been punched through walls. He’d survived Kacchan for over a decade. He could handle this.
Probably.
Maybe.