The first week at U.A. passed in a blur of classes, tests, and figuring out where everyone fit. Anim found himself falling into a routine—morning workouts with Kirishima, lunch with Mina and whoever she'd dragged over that day, afternoons spent watching his classmates and learning who was who.
And somewhere in all that, Jiro kept showing up.
Not on purpose. She wasn't the type to force herself into conversations or make a scene. But she had a way of ending up nearby—sitting a few seats over in class, getting paired with him during exercises, or just being there when he looked around the room.
"You're doing it again," Mina said during lunch on Friday, that tone in her voice that meant she thought she was being sneaky.
"Doing what?" Anim stabbed his food harder than he needed to.
"Staring at Jiro." Mina's grin was way too pleased with herself. "She's right over there if you want to actually talk to her instead of boring holes through her head."
Anim glanced toward where Jiro sat with Yaoyorozu and some other girls, those earphone things hanging from her ears as she picked at her lunch. She wasn't really talking, just listening with that focused way she had.
"I'm not staring."
"Right. And I'm not pink."
"You're more coral, actually—"
"Don't change the subject, asshole." But she said it fondly. "Seriously though, what's going on? You've never cared about anyone before."
That hit closer than Anim wanted. He really hadn't cared about anyone before, not like this. Part of it was the whole past-life thing—hard to take high school crushes seriously when you had weird memory fragments of someone else inside your head, fear of being found out and seen as a weirdo. But something about Jiro cut through all that mess, made him want to figure out what was going on behind those sharp eyes.
"Nothing's going on," he said. "She's just... sharp?."
"Sharp." Mina said it like it tasted weird. "Yeah, that's totally why you can't stop looking at her."
Before Anim could argue back, the cafeteria exploded with noise. Bakugo had apparently gotten pissed at something Midoriya said and was now standing over the green-haired kid with smoking hands and murder in his eyes.
"SAY THAT AGAIN, DEKU!"
"I just meant your technique could use some work—"
"MY TECHNIQUE IS PERFECT, YOU USELESS PIECE OF SHIT!!!"
The words hit the room like a slap. Everyone went quiet, heads turning, the whole place getting tense. Calling someone useless was enough to have someone enraging, but saying it to Midoriya—who was clearly struggling with his own power—was just cruel.
Anim was up and moving before he'd decided to.
"Bakugo." His voice cut through the silence, calm and easy. "Maybe tone it down."
Those red eyes snapped to him, all that anger finding a new target. "Did I ask you, rubber boy?"
"Nope, but here we are." Anim stepped closer, watching how Bakugo shifted into fighting stance. "Apologize to Midoriya."
"Like hell. Stay out of this before I blast your stretchy ass back to whatever freak show you came from."
The threat hung there for a second. Everyone around them went dead quiet, sensing this was about to get ugly.
Anim smiled, and it wasn't friendly.
"You know what I like about you, Bakugo? You never change. Still the same asshole you were day one." His voice stayed casual, but something in it made people step back. "Here's what's happening. You apologize to Midoriya, sit down, and eat your lunch like a normal person."
"Or what?"
"Or I show you why my test scores were better than yours."
Simple words, said like he was talking about the weather. But they cut right through Bakugo's anger, reminding everyone that this pink classmate had beaten the class hotshot in more than half the physical tests.
For a moment, nobody breathed. Bakugo's hands crackled with tiny explosions, his face twisted up with rage and maybe a little doubt. Anim just stood there, waiting.
Then Iida came charging in between them, arms chopping through the air.
"This is completely inappropriate! Fighting in the cafeteria could get you suspended! We need to handle this properly—"
"Shut up, four-eyes," Bakugo snarled, but the moment was broken. He glared at Anim one more time, then stormed off, shoving past anyone in his way.
The cafeteria slowly got loud again, everyone going back to their conversations with that weird energy that comes after almost seeing a fight. Midoriya looked like he wanted to crawl under a rock.
"Thanks," he said quietly when Anim sat back down. "You didn't have to—"
"Yeah, I did." Anim picked up his food again, noticing his hands weren't totally steady. Getting that close to losing it had pushed him further than he liked. "Bakugo's a dick, but he's our dick. Can't have him poking people." ... :) pun intended*
"That was..." Mina was staring at him with a mix of impressed and worried. "Scary."
"Was it?" He kept his voice light, but inside he was thinking about the moment. How his body had wanted to react, that protective anger that had nothing to do with being a hero and everything to do with someone picking on someone weaker.
Very Buu-like, actually. Majin Buu had never liked bullies. He felt inspired as he reminisced about it.
"Yeah." A new voice joined in, and Anim looked up to see Jiro standing next to their table with her lunch. "Can I sit?"
Mina's grin could have lit up the whole building. "Of course! Tons of room."
Jiro slid into the seat across from Anim, those dark eyes studying his face with that look he was getting used to.
"You okay?" she asked quietly.
"Fine. Why?"
"You look like you want to hit something."
She wasn't wrong. "Maybe a little."
"Good thing you didn't then." She opened her milk with careful fingers. "Fighting Bakugo in here would've been stupid."
"Would've been fun though," he admitted, and was surprised when she chuckled almost smiling.
"Probably. But then we'd all have to visit you in the hospital."
"You think he'd win?"
Jiro thought about it seriously, which he liked more than he should have. "Depends how far you were willing to go. And how much stuff you were okay with breaking."
The answer was smart in a way that made him wonder what she'd figured out about him this week. How much had she seen?
"Smart girl," he said, meaning it.
"Smart enough to know when someone's hiding stuff." Her voice was casual, but her eyes stayed on his. "Question is whether that stuff is dangerous."
Mina was watching this back-and-forth like it was a TV show, her head going between them. Around them, the normal cafeteria noise covered up a conversation that felt way more important than it should have.
"Everyone's hiding stuff," Anim said finally. "That's what makes things interesting."
"True." Jiro took a sip of milk, and when she looked at him again, something had changed in her expression. "But some secrets are bigger than others."
Before he could figure out what to say to that, the lunch bell rang. Students started packing up, the moment falling apart into the usual chaos of getting to the next class.
But as they walked to their afternoon lesson, Anim found himself wondering exactly what Kyoka Jiro thought she knew about him.
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AN: Hey!
Actually I wasn't ready to upload the chapters, I had just written the ones you just read, I just uploaded them after giving them the finishing touches and was planning on writing more today later but that guy caught me off-guard so I had to give them sooner.
So I'm gonna be writing them today and probably finish uploading the promised remaining chapters tomorrow.