I didn't get a chance to respond to what Jirou told me. After her confession, she got up and left. If what she said was true, I wondered if that off feeling I felt with her before wasn't jealousy of me getting close to Momo, but jealousy of Momo getting close to me.
I thought about what she said all night, and I couldn't sleep. It didn't help that we had to get up at 5:30 in the morning to start training.
Aizawa explained to us all that our Quirks were like muscles. Muscles become bigger once they tear and heal themselves. If we wanted to strengthen our Quirks, we were going to have to push ourselves to the max.
Each of us was assigned an activity to break us. For example, Bakugo had to dip his hands in boiling water to expand his pores; he'd then fire off bigger blasts from his palms. Todoroki sat in a human-sized pot of water, firing his ice and fire in succession to regulate the temperature. They even had Uraraka roll down a hill in a plastic ball so that she could get used to flipping around in zero gravity and control her nausea.
As for me, well, I had it pretty bad.
I think Aizawa heard what I said about him, or maybe he was trying to be hard on me since I'd won the Sports Festival, but my workout routine was straight-up ridiculous. On one hand, my fingers were taped down onto the point of my palm that I squeeze to excrete my webs. This was so that I could increase my web capacity. With my other hand, I was tasked with punching through a mountain, using my electricity to power up each punch. This helped me increase the capacity of my electricity as well, while also hardening my fists. Every twenty minutes, I switched hands. It got to the point where I couldn't even feel my hands anymore, and the webs coming out of me were basically just sticky water.
This training went on until the sun went down. It was so grueling that it wasn't until we stopped that I thought about Jirou again. My stomach rumbling was enough to get my brain to change the subject to food. Like I said, yesterday was the only day that the pussycats were going to cook for, so we were on our own.
Speaking of which, we were introduced to two new members. Mandalay and Pixie-Bob were the two we met on the first day. Ragdoll was the third member. She had long, green hair, a yellow dress, and her Quirk let her learn everything about your Quirk just by looking at you. She had these really creepy, round eyes that made the whole analyzing thing way more off-putting. Not to mention, she was a loose cannon. Speaking of loose cannons, there was one other member. He was a burly man who wore the same dress but in brown. He had an obsession with strength training and was on my ass the second I decided to take a two-second breather. I don't even know what his Quirk is; I just know he hits hard.
Without the help of adults, Classes 1-A and 1-B made dinner for ourselves; it was a beef stew that tasted like nectar from the gods, but that might've been because we were so tired. So tired that everyone went to sleep the instant we cleaned up. No hot springs, no confessions, just sleep.
The next day was more of the same. Intense training that almost killed us, and then a delicious dinner made by us students. This time, though, we weren't lucky enough to hit the sack early. Instead, we had what the teachers called a "test of courage" in the forest at night.
The objective was simple. Class 1-B hid in the forest and were tasked with scaring us in Class 1-A. They weren't allowed to make physical contact with us; all they could do was use their Quirks in a way that could scare us. After class 1-A finished our route, both classes would switch roles.
Class 1-A was broken up into pairs, and as if the god of fate was enjoying the show from a couple of nights back, I was paired up with Jirou. We watched as Bakugo and Todoroki, the group before us, disappeared into the darkness. At the starting line, we could hear the screams of our classmates echoing through the void. After a couple of minutes, Jirou and I were given the signal to proceed. And so, we plunged into the darkness together.
The leaves were so thick that the moonlight was almost completely blocked out. I was nervous, but I wasn't as scared as Jirou, who was basically hiding inside her jacket as if it were a turtle shell.
"Hey, Morales. Do these people count as threats?" she asked me.
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"Your Spider-Sense. It'll warn us, right?"
It took everything inside of me not to bust out into laughter, but I managed to hold it in. I realized then that things between us weren't all that weird or different from what they were a few days prior.
"Sorry, Jirou. Since they won't be attacking us, I don't think it's going to go off."
She sighed. "I can't believe Aizawa said we can't use our Quirks... What a dick."
"Well, we are supposed to be testing our courage, right? I guess it would be unfair if we could see it coming."
"Yeah, well, courage isn't really my strong suit," she confessed.
Now this made me laugh. From my perspective, she was the boldest woman I'd ever met.
"I don't know. What you did the other day was pretty gutsy. I don't think a girl has ever been so direct to me before. It's why I just kinda stood there like an idiot after you said what you said."
"Oh, I wasn't expecting a response," she said. "I just wanted to get it off my chest. I've been holding onto that for a while, so."
"Really? How long is a while?"
"Remember when you protected Yaoyorozu and me during the USJ incident? Ever since that moment, you were sort of all I could think about. I meant to thank you for it, but Yaoyorozu beat me to it since she's more forward than I am. I'd accepted it for a while, but once you and I actually started talking outside of class, you know, about music and stuff, and I saw how similar we were, I liked you even more."
"So, you've just been holding this in the entire time?" I asked her.
"Yeah," she nodded. "I felt guilty. She hasn't said it to me, but I know Yaoyorozu probably feels the same way about you that I do. I don't want to disrupt her.
"I'm glad you let it out then," I told her. "It must've been horrible having to hide the way you felt this entire time. You're a good friend, Jirou. Don't feel guilty for how you feel. You're allowed to have feelings, too."
"I know. It's just that I didn't want to hurt her. And I didn't want things to change."
"No matter what happens, Jirou, we'll all still be friends. Trust me."
I couldn't help but think that things had been quiet for a while — a little too quiet. Maybe these feelings I had were my Spider-Sense in some form, because a few seconds later, a head popped up out of the ground in front of us. The head's shoulder-length, black hair covered the face, reminding me of an old movie I'd seen about a ghost lady crawling through a TV. I stopped in my tracks, and my body vibrated, but that reaction was nothing in comparison to Jirou's. She leaped into the air and latched onto me, screaming as the head stared at us.
Right then, I could hear laughter coming from the bushes. Honenuki and Kendo from Class 1-B were the ones laughing, poking their heads out from the foliage. I realized then that the head belonged to Yui Kodai, a quiet girl from 1-B, whose Quirk allowed her to resize things; however, it was Honenuki's Quirk that enabled her to hide in the ground. He must've softened it to have the properties of a liquid.
"Did you see the looks on their faces!" Honenuki said in the most obnoxious tone imaginable. "You got them good, Kodai!"
"Mm," Kodai hummed.
"That's enough, Honenuki..." said Kendo, one of the only reasonable students from class 1-B.
"You guys better watch out when it's your turn," I told them all. "Especially you, Honenuki."
I could see Honenuki tense up, but he hid it behind the facade of laughter. "I'd like to see you try!"
Jirou clung to me as we continued down the path; I don't think she even realized it.
"Does doing that make you feel safer?" I teased her. She immediately threw her hands into her pockets, and I couldn't help but laugh.
"What!?"
"You're just funny. I didn't mind, by the way. If it makes you feel better, you can hold my arm."
I extended my arm toward her. She hesitated for a moment before latching on. Truthfully, I was being selfish then. I wasn't offering my arm for her sake; it was for my own.
"You know," I said. "It makes me feel safer, too."
I wondered then. Am I a bad person?
To this day, I still don't know the answer to my own question. Before that night on the roof, she was nothing more than a classmate to me — the chill, quiet girl who loved music in the same way that I do. But when she said those words to me, 'I like you', it's as if she altered the chemistry in my brain. It was that gentle grin that did me in. So gentle, you could only see it in the corners of her mouth. I wondered if I was the first one to see that smile. Suddenly, I found beauty in that expressionless gaze of hers and how it contrasted with the way she'd blush and twirl her left earphone jack when we were alone — a version of her that only I got to see, personalized for me.
Was it wrong of me to only start seeing her this way until after her confession?
With Momo, it was the opposite. The moment I saw her, I thought she was beautiful. When I heard her speak, I admired her intellect. That admiration for her beauty and brains multiplied by ten when we became close. When she explained her love for certain ideas and subjects, and when she'd go through every last detail about whatever we were studying, I'd become entranced. I loved how confident she was — at the same time, her most beautiful imperfection was that she too succumbed to feelings of indecisiveness. And when she spoke my name, my first name, I felt as though I could fly to the moon and back.
Yet, there I was, feeling how I felt about her with someone else — a girl I knew so much less about. Momo wasn't my girlfriend; I wasn't a cheater. Still, I felt as though I was betraying someone. Simultaneously, I felt like I was leading Jirou on.
Lost in my own thoughts, I failed to notice the air around us had begun to change. Not in some metaphorical, romantic way; no, she and I were breathing something in. A pinkish cloud started to envelop the forest, and I could feel Jirou's hold on me becoming weak.
"Don't breathe in! There's poison in the air!" I told her. She covered her mouth that instant, but I could tell that she could hardly keep her eyes open.
The gas is probably stronger down here. I need to take her somewhere high.
"Hold on tight," I said as I fired a web up at the tip of the tree beside us before pulling her upward, landing on a tree branch, away from the gas. I could still smell it in the air, but it was at least breathable for the time being.
I started making a gas mask using my webs, learning from the mistakes made in the first version I'd used to beat Midnight. This time, I'd hoped none of the gas would be able to pass through. I slipped it onto Jirou's face, and immediately, I could see her state of mind start to recover.
"What about you... The rescuer is supposed to put his mask on first..." she told me.
"Don't worry about me," I said as I made another mask for myself. "My body is good at fighting off foreign substances. It's part of my Quirk. I could probably last a few minutes in this gas before I pass out. You, on the other hand, need to breathe now."
I put the gas mask over my face and took a deep breath. It was a little better than the previous version, but a little bit of gas was still able to get through. Still, it was better than nothing.
"This is probably someone's Quirk. We have to get out of here before they find us."
I knew that the one emitting this gas was probably a weakling without any real combat experience, thus the need to knock out their opponents before fighting, but because of the rules against unauthorized usage of Quirks to commit harm to another person, I couldn't act. Instead, my priority was to protect Jirou and any other students I came across.
"Alright, Jirou. Congratulations, now is your chance to go for a swing. Are you ready?"
"But I thought you said it was too hard to swing using the trees?"
"Hard, not impossible," I guided her arms to wrap them around my neck before I leaped from the tree, swinging back toward the camp. From where we fled, I could see blue fire and smoke making its way down the mountain, and atop that mountain, I could see a massive explosion.
"That looks like one of Midoriya's full-powered punches... He's fighting?"
It was then that my Spider-Sense started going off. My eyes darted to the side, and I could see a round object hurled toward us. I turned my body and took the attack, protecting Jirou from it. By the time we hit the ground, I could hear footsteps emerging from the shadows of the forest. A man stepped out of them, wearing a striped green shirt and brown pants. His right hand was made of sand, taking the shape of a hammer. I figured that must've been what hit me.
"Jirou, can you move?" I said, standing up while facing the villain. I could hear Jirou pulling herself back onto her feet behind me.
"Yeah," she said.
"Good. I want you to run. No offense, but your Quirk isn't suited for a fight right now."
"But, Morales, we aren't allowed to-"
"I don't care. They can yell at me again all they want. If we both try to run, this guy is just going to keep hitting us with ranged attacks. The trees are too low in this area, and I won't be able to swing away fast enough. I also can't risk potentially leading him to our friends who might not even be able to stand."
"Then I'll fight with you."
"No, Jirou. I don't want another situation at the USJ to happen tonight. I don't want you in harm's way because of me. Go."
I could tell that Jirou wanted to say something before she left, but she remained silent and fled. The man made of sand looked at her, but I stepped into his field of view.
"I'm your opponent," I told him.
"Wow, what a gentleman. How about this, you can tell me where Katsuki Bakugo is, and I won't suffocate you to death with my sand. Deal?"
I laughed. "Yeah? All you want in exchange for my life is Bakugo? Maybe I'll finally stop having earaches. Unfortunately for you, though, that loud mouth is my friend and there's no way I'll ever let you take him!"
"It's a shame..." said the Sandman, his fists transforming into sandy, spiked maces. "I'll let him know you threw your life away for him!"