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Minku was not looking forward to living in the dorms. She really, really wasn't. How could she be? She'd have to be Izuku all the time, now that she was living on campus. She'd have to count down the days until she could leave, for even just a couple days, and then she'd be back here, and back to pretending not to be a girl, pretending not to be a Shigaraki, for days and days and days.
She already hated it, and they had yet to even move in.
Aizawa-sensei made a face at them, a face that was shot through with both judgement and pity, then told them all to get inside. He'd been acting so weird after the League had given Bakugou back... maybe it had something to do with the fact that they'd given him back with no hands.
Minku had cut them off herself. She hated how much those hands had hurt her over the years. She wished that they could've left the blindfold off, so that he could see who was ruining his life, but they still needed her at UA, so she hadn't given him anything immediately identifying.
Pity. The class was down to nineteen people now, and it wasn't because of expulsion. She wished it had been, but, well... it seemed that the system needed a few more shocks to it.
She walked forward into the dorm building, wishing for nothing more than the soft swish swish of her skirts, but knowing that it would be weeks and weeks before she could wear a single one.
~~~
In any other circumstance, Minku would be jubilant to be rooming next to Yuuga. She'd been friends with him since they were both little quirkless five-year-olds, and Yuuga's parents came looking for her father for a solution.
Dad had given them lawyers, paperwork, and 'support equipment'. It was almost funny that Yuuga had been able to fool people into thinking that belt was a quirk for over a decade. It was so funny, in fact, that it caused her to start giggling, alone in her room, harder and harder, becoming almost hysterical until -
Choh chok choh huagk!
...What? There was something... something in her hand...
She looked down. Blood, bright red, painted her hand, running down her arm in little unhappy rivulets. In the middle of it all, a flower like three unfolding pairs of lips, the pale orange of a sunrise.
Fuck.
She wasn't stupid, she knew what this was, what it meant. Hanahaki was for those about whom you cared the most. For her, that was Yuuga now, Yuuga since they had been small, Yuuga forever into the future. Normally, after school, they'd spend time together close, not romantic, but close. She might like it to be romantic, but what was romance, really? It was enough for her that they were close.
And now they weren't. And now they couldn't be, because of the stupid dorms instituted because of stupid Bakugou. Because the school was being blamed for not keeping him safe, even though the League would've always wanted to take him out because of how much he'd hurt her.
The hero system was so stupid and corrupt. When quirks were the only thing that mattered, who gave a flying fuck about the people who got hurt, as long as they didn't have the nice, pretty quirks the public wanted? It deserved to be torn down.
Seeing it from the inside only made her more certain.
But damn it! Hanahaki, really? She'd have to hide it... Just until Sunday...
On Sunday she'd go home. Just for one day, but she'd go home. When she was home, and Yuuga was home, she'd tell him, and everything would be fine! She just had to hold out for one week... hide it for one week...
She couldn't risk the questions. While it wouldn't be too bad from the off, if it came out that she and Yuuga were close now, and then later one of them was exposed as a League spy... fuck, that would be so bad. They couldn't risk losing both of their spies, their people on the inside.
Then the only spy left would be Amaike-san, and it would be pretty difficult to play hero society against itself if they only had information on one side of it. Very bad. Not good. No, she needed to keep this hidden, no matter what. No questions could be asked.
No one could know.
~~~
There was something wrong with Midoriya. She could tell.
Momo was, perhaps, not the most emotionally intelligent person in their class, but she had the benefit of sitting behind Midoriya in class, and Mineta was short enough that she was not hampered in her view of Midoriya, day in and day out. If there was one person to whom she was attuned to their body language, it would be Midoriya.
And something was wrong with him.
Something had been, since the day that they had moved into the dorms. It was getting worse and worse all week; at first it was just a feeling that Momo had, but now Midoriya was actually swaying back and forth in his seat, and looked a touch pale. Something was very, very wrong with him, and Momo hadn't the faintest idea what it could be! Maybe she should talk to someone about it... Midoriya was close friends with Uraraka and Iida, so maybe she could ask them if they knew what was going on!
Yes, she'd do that tonight. She really hoped that they knew what was happening...
~~~
Minku felt awful. She was struggling not to expel flowers in class, and felt so ill that she was unable to eat at lunchtime. Now that classes were over, she was trying to do her best not to stagger as she went up to her room, because she needed to - she couldn't -
Very much against her will, she suddenly doubled over in the second-floor dormitory hallway, the entire day's worth of flowers coming out all at once, a deluge of blood and flowers and a bit of bile, splattering on the ground and instantly beginning to smell.
Shit.
Her head felt clearer already, but now there was panic, threading through her, desprately looking about and trying to find a way to clean this up before - wait a minute. The doors were on the wrong side of the hallway. Had she... had she gone to the girls' side of the dorms? Was she really that out of it?
This was bad. It was only Friday... There was no way that she was going to be able to manage classes tomorrow, not in this state. She would absolutely not make it all day if she couldn't even make it back to her dorm today.
Fuck.
Knowing that she didn't really have another choice, she pulled out her phone and hit the contact labeled 'Nii-san'.
~~~
"Shit."
That one word was all the warning that Keigo really got before a portal opened in the middle of the League's living space, and a fucking UA student stumbled out of it.
The bone-breaking kid from the sports festival, at that. If there was any kid that Keigo wasn't expecting, it'd be that one. He'd've been less surprised if Tokoyami came out of that portal, and he would've been awfully surprised at that.
He was kind of staring.
"Oboro-nii!" the kid yelled, his voice sounding different than it had on TV, "Oboro-nii, can you bring Yuukun here? I need to - hack, cough - Oh, shit."
A bloody flower sat in the palm of the kid's hand. The kid who referred to the elder Shirakumo as his brother? Was this kid also a Shirakumo? He liked to think that he would've noticed that...
"Minku!" the elder Shirakumo hurried to the kid's side, "What happened?"
"The stupid dorms apparently count as enough separation that I got fucking hanahaki," the kid spat, blood in his spittle, as he pulled something from his hair, "I was going to wait until Sunday to deal with it, but I was so out of it after class today I somehow forgot that the mask I've been wearing since I was four is male and ended up on the girls' side of the dorms."
Wait, mask? Was the kid... she was a girl?
Did the school know that?
"That sounds... less than ideal," the elder Shirakumo frowned, "Are you alright with me fetching Yuuga-kun as soon as he's by himself?" Shirakumo-san had his phone out again. Still.
"Please," the girl sounded exhausted, "I just want to deal with this. Preferably quickly."
Shirakumo-san ran a hand through her curls, smiling, and some strange, tight feeling gripped at Keigo's chest. "Of course, Minku-chan. Don't worry about it, everything will be fine soon enough."
~~~
She was so brave.
That was the only thing Keigo could think about, especially now that he'd gone back to his own room. If he was still a good spy, he'd tattle to the Commission about the two UA spies, but he wasn't.
And they were just kids, and so brave. Keigo didn't think that he'd ever been that brave. Even now, the bravest thing that he was doing was dying on his own terms. He still couldn't even come clean to the League.
He could hear them now, now that things were fixed up. Childish laughter from below, times three. Himiko must've joined them.
How were they so brave? Thinking of them, Keigo felt a strange feeling in his chest... a tight, isolating feeling that he wanted to get rid of, if only he knew how.