U.A. didn't announce itself so much as confirm it was still inevitable.
Morning filed the campus into order: banners that didn't need wind, glass that reflected ambition without promising anything about the future. The map in Renya's hand could have been a ritual. He did not consult it. He had walked these routes yesterday at orientation until his feet remembered them better than paper did.
"Square," he said under his breath.
A palm-wide frame stitched itself just behind his heel, corners true. The Veil slid over him like a pressed shirt—no shine, no drama, posture that earned the right to be ignored.
The door plaque read 1-A as if the alphabet had petitioned for rank.
He entered early enough to belong and late enough not to be noticed for entering. Desks had arranged themselves with the authority of assigned seating waiting to be discovered. Windows admitted a rectangle of light that made the room feel like a promise measured in chalk.
Students arrived in waves. The first carried two energies at once—nervous, practiced. A tall boy with engines in his calves placed his bag with the precision of a judge and then bowed to the air because manners feel real when fear is large. A pink-skinned girl with a grin like graffiti claimed a seat and made the desk look like it had joined her team. A boy with hair like a perpetual explosion found a corner and glared at the concept of corners. The freckled one—green hair, bandaged hand—stood in the doorway for an extra heartbeat and then chose a desk like a person chooses a word: carefully, hoping it lands right.
Renya found his seat and let the room fill lines around him.
"Yo!" Pink-skin leaned back. "New faces! I'm Mina!" She pointed the way a host points out exits—cheerful, necessary. "Let's be friends unless you're boring. Even if you are."
Renya inclined his head. "I'm committed to being boring."
"That's a high bar here," she said, delighted.
Engines Boy adjusted his glasses, already halfway into a speech he did not yet know was a speech. "Iida Tenya," he introduced himself to everyone and no one. "Please rely on me for any procedural questions! I reviewed the handbook thrice last night—"
Mina mimed fainting. "We are saved."
A brunette with gravity in her palm waved at them both. "Uraraka Ochaco! Nice to meet you!" She looked at the room like it was a sale rack she could organize into sense.
Two boys argued about the ethics of laser beams versus tape. A raven-haired girl with a perfect bun sorted her notebooks with the competence of someone who had already written the exam. A boy with a tail tested the chair's willingness to accept a tail. A boy under a hood ate snacks like hope.
Noise braided itself into a classroom hum. The shadow pressed the square and then settled, interest without appetite. Renya let it listen.
The door slid open again and chose not to close. A capture scarf pooled like a cat on the threshold; beneath it, a man looked like the part of morning that turns off alarms. Aizawa Shouta didn't walk in so much as arrive. His eyes acquired the room and filed it.
No one stood. No one sat wrong. Everyone felt seen and tried not to admit it.
He did not clear his throat. "If you're here to be famous," he said, "you picked the wrong homeroom."
It wasn't a threat. It was accurate.
A blond with dynamite vowels scoffed. "Whatever."
Aizawa's gaze drifted to him and away without comment. The boy scowled at the absence of conflict.
"I am Aizawa," the man added, as if offering a spare noun. "We'll handle introductions later. Change into P.E. gear. We're going outside."
A chorus of eh?! rolled toward him; he looked bored by sound.
"The entrance exam is a measure for crowds," he said. "I evaluate individuals. Five minutes."
He stepped aside. The door, denied closure, sulked in its rail.
The locker room behaved like a confession booth remodeled by a hospital. Boys turned away from one another the way strangers do when practicing privacy. Conversation was a shuffle of zippers, breath, and someone pretending not to have forgotten a shoe.
"Bakugou Katsuki," the blond announced to the room that hadn't asked. Pride arranged his name like a weapon on a table.
"Midoriya Izuku," came softer, as if the syllables asked permission.
"Ojiro Mashirao."
"Kaminari Denki!"
"Tokoyami Fumikage," one boy intoned, and the darkness under his desk hummed approval to itself—another shadow-speaker, different dialect.
"Yaoyorozu Momo," came from the other room—confident, precise, carrying through vents and architecture alike.
Renya tied his laces, checked the case he'd been permitted—training blade of dense polymer sitting like a habit—and left as the others tried on the uniform of being teammates.
Outside, the field was the kind of honest that grass learned the hard way. Aizawa waited beside a pile of equipment that did not look like it planned to be educational.
"Quirk Apprehension Test," he said. "Throwing, sprints, long jump, grip, sidestep, endurance. Same categories your schools used. The difference is you have quirks now." A pause. "And I will be watching."
Someone raised a hand. Iida, of course. "Sir, how will scoring be normalized across—"
Aizawa looked at him and the explanation died of exposure.
"Last place gets expelled," he lied with a straight face.
Everyone believed him hard enough to move the earth.
"Start with softball," he said, the scarf shifting slightly, as if coiling around a thought.
They lined up. Aizawa pointed to Bakugou. "You. Tell me your farthest throw in middle school."
"Sixty-seven meters," Bakugou said, already smiling because he got to prove something.
"Good. Use your quirk." Aizawa tossed him a ball like a sentence.
Bakugou wound up like a noun preparing to become a verb and detonated the air. The ball vanished into sun. The machine beeped a number rude to gravity.
"Seven hundred five point two," Yaoyorozu read off the screen, impressed despite herself.
Soft whistles. Mina whooped. Kaminari declared art. Iida composed a commendation he had no time to deliver.
"Fun, right?" Aizawa asked. "You'll be doing the rest with the same honesty."
He worked down the line. Uraraka threw a ball forever and then declared it weightless, giggling, until Aizawa reminded her that minus infinity was not a number the machine could accommodate; she apologized to physics and accepted a revised, still absurd, distance. Midoriya stared at the ball like he'd been asked to assemble a bridge out of fear. Iida sprinted with his calves, then with his soul. Sero taped a path and called it strategy. Tokoyami consulted with the bird of night in his chest and made silence look assertive.
Renya moved through the tests with a pace he computed rather than felt. He did not sandbag; he did not posture. On the throw, he let the shadow harden along his arm as compression, not propulsion—a sheath that corrected micro-shake without advertising itself. The ball left his hand clean and honest; the number was good but did not volunteer for a headline. On sprint, he avoided the trick of making shadow a second track under his feet; he simply chose form that refused to waste. On long jump, he borrowed exactly one breath of lift—the kind of help that reads as excellent timing to people who don't see threads.
Aizawa looked like furniture. He wasn't.
"Midoriya," the teacher said when the green-haired boy's turn came again. "Throw."
Midoriya swallowed. He took a step and smashed hope into air with a motion that nearly killed his hand. The ball left the atmosphere. The boy's fingers paid for it.
Aizawa's scarf flicked; capture cloth bit the arm, not ungently, the look in the teacher's eyes a very loud no. Quirk erased. Midoriya's next throw resembled a teenager's. He looked down, crushed and true.
"Know your instrument," Aizawa said, quieter now. "Leave with it intact."
Renya watched Aizawa's restraint in real time—the calculus of discouraging a catastrophe without humiliating a student. Aizawa's gaze brushed him once during the endurance shuttle. Renya kept his breathing as boring as advice.
When the last cone had been shamed into submission and the last beep documented everyone's choices, Aizawa collapsed the clipboard at the pace of a guillotine reconsidering.
"No one is expelled today," he said, as if boredom had saved lives. Half the class fell over. "I wanted to see how you behave when stakes are badly explained." A glance at Bakugou. "Some of you get loud. Some of you get precise." A glance that bounced between Renya and Yaoyorozu. "Some of you get small and move correctly."
He let that land.
"Homeroom in ten. Change. Then we talk about why you came here."
The walk back to the building was a parade of private autopsies. Iida recited critiques of his arm swing to air. Kaminari tried to high-five everyone until denied enough times to become introspective. Uraraka laughed at herself and meant it. Bakugou burned a hole through silence.
"Hey," Mina said, appearing at Renya's elbow as if recruited by coincidence. "You move like a cat that finished reading the manual."
"I prefer manuals," he said.
"You didn't use your quirk much," she added, testing curiosity for sharp edges.
"I did," he said. "Just not where it would be fun."
She considered, then beamed. "I like you. You make safety hot."
"I make safety small," he corrected.
"Yeah, but in a hot way," she insisted, running ahead to harass Kaminari with tape.
Midoriya drifted close without meaning to, anxiety orbit inviting a gravity well. "Um," he said, eyes darting to Renya's hands and away, "earlier—when the robot—during the exam, I think something… slowed me down? Like the ground was kind?"
"The ground likes people who ask it to be," Renya said.
Midoriya blinked, filing that sentence beside diagrams of hope. "Thanks," he said, unsure who he was thanking and committing to thank anyway. He hurried off when Bakugou's glare demanded an audience.
Aizawa's voice caught them in the doorway like a net. "Kurotsuki."
Renya stopped. The class flowed past, grateful not to be the subject.
Aizawa regarded him without suspicion or warmth. "You're good at choosing the right size."
"Thank you," Renya said.
"You'll prove it," Aizawa replied, as if assigning posture. "After lunch, first exercise. Teams of three. Different quirk categories per room. The point isn't winning. It's seeing the room. You'll have… suboptimal partners."
He did not ask whether that was on purpose. He didn't need to.
"Objective?"
"To guard," Aizawa said, and a corner of his mouth admitted to liking the word. "Not to show."
"Yes," Renya said.
Aizawa left him with the impression of a compliment accidentally disguised as work.
Homeroom had the dignity of desks that had seen better students and refused to compare. Aizawa dropped a stack of syllabi on the front table with the energy of someone who understood paperwork too well to hate it out loud.
"We will not waste time with speeches," he said. "You are here to learn, not audition."
They went through names. Each one arrived with a small narrative—accident, intent, inheritance, spite. Renya's came last and left no echo.
"Training after lunch," Aizawa said. "Three-on-three, rescue-heavy. Teams posted on your phones. Eat something people recognize as food."
The class erupted into the tiny chaos of freedom. Yaoyorozu cornered four people with colored pens and a plan. Iida tried to teach etiquette to hunger. Uraraka used kindness as currency. Bakugou declared war on air.
Renya checked his phone. Team 7: Kurotsuki / Uraraka / Mineta. Opponents: Bakugou / Kaminari / Sero. Rooms: Complex B (multi-level, narrow sightlines). Objective: Protect "civilian" asset while evacuating. Constraints: One quirk dampening flare possible (Aizawa discretion).
He let none of that show on his face.
Uraraka waved at him with the enthusiasm of someone who had decided to pass optimism around like snacks. "We're together!"
"Seems so," he said.
Mineta popped up at knee-height like a punchline no one requested. "And me!" he announced, eyes too eager by half. "Don't worry, I'm a genius." He winked at Uraraka in a way that made the room file a complaint. Renya measured the boy's utility and decided to deploy him as adhesive and not as personality.
Bakugou grinned in their direction without humor. "Try not to cry," he advised.
Kaminari pried tape off Sero's arm and declared teamwork before proving it.
Renya ate rice and water and silence. The square held.
Complex B had the architecture of controlled panic: catwalks, blind corners, doors that promised both options and mistakes. Present Mic narrated from a speaker somewhere as if joy could improve acoustics. Aizawa watched from a platform that afforded him all angles and no patience.
"Teams ready," a proctor called.
"Objective," Aizawa said, eyes on Renya, "is not heroics. It's custody. One of the dummies is the asset. Protect and evacuate. If I erase you, adapt."
The buzzer gave them permission to breathe.
Renya pulled his team just inside the entrance and drew a map in the air with two fingers—quick, clear. "Two priorities," he said. "Sightlines and noise. Bakugou eats sound and corners. Kaminari floods space. Sero pins mistakes. We move like we belong here."
Uraraka nodded, eyes sharpened by purpose. "Civilian first."
"Mineta," Renya said gently, "you're adhesive. You place anchors at choke points, then stay behind me."
"Behind you?" Mineta leered.
"Behind me," Renya repeated. "And if you flirt with my teammate, I will assign you to hold doors until graduation."
Mineta swallowed his personality like medicine. "Copy."
They moved. Renya set his pace to ordinary—not slow, not quick, as if people who lived here had invented the floor. He let the shadow extend two thumbnail-thin threads along the baseboards, one to read vibration, one to remember corners. At a T-junction, he lifted a hand; the team stopped. Sero's tape whispered along the far wall—there, and there—testing.
"Left," Renya murmured. "Bakugou will take the high path."
"How do you know?" Uraraka whispered back.
"He likes to be seen by physics," Renya said.
They moved right. Mineta anchored a turn with three purple spheres that would punish haste. Uraraka palmed the dummy—human-sized, weighted just enough to be honest—and shouldered it like debt.
"Asset has mass," she said, as if encouraging herself to respect it.
"Good," Renya said.
Kaminari arrived with the kindness of catastrophe. "Hey!" he yelled, and filled the corridor with warning, electricity already licking the air.
"Ground," Renya said. The shadow flattened, thin as compliance, and became a lane that resisted charge—no spectacle, only honest flooring. "Eyes," he told Mineta. The boy blinked, confused, then realized he had a job: spotting tape. He spotted: "Left, high!"
Renya cut it with the practice blade before it could make a plan.
Bakugou exploded past the catwalk grills with the joy of a threat fulfilled. Renya read the line, stepped into the wrong place on purpose, and let the blast misestimate. Uraraka spun, turned the dummy's weight off for one heartbeat, passed it through the narrowest gap, turned it on again. Sero cursed something about geometry.
"Keep moving," Renya said.
Kaminari charged a second pulse. Renya put his hand on the wall and spoke to the shadow the way he'd taught it to care: guard, not gorge. The thread along the baseboard brightened and then dispersed the crackle like a net releasing fish—it slipped past them down a stairwell, popped harmlessly at a grate.
Kaminari blinked. "Huh?"
Bakugou didn't blink. "Stop playing small!" he roared, detonating a stairwell into a lesson about force.
"Mineta," Renya said. "Anchor."
The boy threw three spheres in a triangle; Bakugou landed in the middle, surprised to find adhesion where glory expected vacancy. He tore free with insulted power; it had cost seconds. Seconds were the currency Renya had come to spend.
"Uraraka," he said, "drop weight at the turn—three steps—regain."
She did, muscle memory and guts, and the dummy slid across floor into a position that let a door accept it. "Exit's close," she breathed.
"Go," Renya said. He stepped into the hallway as Bakugou re-acquired arrogance. The blond grinned because a fight had finally asked to be a fight. "You," Bakugou announced, "are dull."
"Correct," Renya said, and let dullness become art.
He refused the duel. He refused the escalation. He took three small steps that made Bakugou's angles shame themselves, cut tape without panache, invited Kaminari's electricity to pick the route that would miss. He set Mineta to be useful and not awful. He let Uraraka be the hero in the scene where the asset left the building.
The proctor's buzzer declared outcome. "Team 7—asset delivered. Opponents contained. Minimal collateral."
Aizawa's scarf lifted slightly, a nod no one but the air could read.
Bakugou stared at Renya with the respect you give to walls that had the audacity to be stronger than your temper. "Fight me for real," he demanded.
"I already did," Renya said. "I refused."
Bakugou's smile was an argument. "Coward."
"Custodian," Renya corrected.
Kaminari laughed despite himself. "Dude, that's cooler than it sounds."
Sero unwound tape and shrugged. "We got outplayed. It happens."
Uraraka put her hands on her knees and breathed. "That was—" She searched for a noun that didn't overpay. "Good."
"Team," Renya said, and meant all three syllables like something he planned to repeat.
Aizawa's voice rolled from the speaker. "Swap sides. New objective."
They ran it again with sharper mistakes and better apologies.
By late afternoon, Class 1-A owned the kind of exhaustion that lets pride behave. Aizawa dismissed them with an economy that implied approval without confessing to it.
"Homework," he said. "Sleep. Tomorrow, less noise."
They drifted toward the doors in pairs and trios that might become something. Yaoyorozu debated leverage with Iida like ethics were best explained with rulers. Kaminari and Sero tried to make Bakugou laugh and succeeded in making him furious at the attempt, which was almost the same. Tokoyami spoke to the bird under his ribs in a language that belonged to night. Midoriya kept watching everything with the reverence of a person who still believed in miracles and was trying not to abuse them. Uraraka texted someone I didn't float away and smiled at the reply.
Renya gathered his bag. The square held. The shadow hummed exactly once—a polite notification that the day had stored itself correctly.
In the hallway, Aizawa drifted beside him like a shadow who'd taken a course in sarcasm. "You didn't take the bait," he said.
"Bait belongs to hooks," Renya said.
"Sometimes hooks catch what needs catching."
"Then the case wasn't mine," he said.
Aizawa accepted the philosophy the way good teachers accept correct math that isn't in the book. "Your restraint will irritate people."
"I've planned for that."
"Good," Aizawa said. He glanced up at the ceiling, at the ductwork, at the careless miracle of a functioning school. "You have three problems," he added, conversational. "One: an institution that likes stories more than systems. Two: peers who want you to perform."
"And three?" Renya asked.
Aizawa's eyes slid sideways without moving. "A government that wants to own what it fears."
Renya did not look for the nearest coat and caution. "And a teacher," he said, "who's willing to be inconvenient on purpose."
Aizawa's mouth almost smiled. "Don't make me regret it."
"I intend not to," Renya said.
"Intent is cheap," Aizawa replied, affectionate as a sandpaper handshake. He disappeared into a stairwell that didn't need him to sign out.
The evening put the city back in its right size. The apartment recognized him by the sound of the key. Aki looked up from a textbook that had not earned her loyalty and closed it without marking the page.
"How was your first day," she asked, answering her own question with the relief in her shoulders.
"Class exists," he said. "Teachers are real."
She made a face at his precision and fetched two bowls from the kitchen with the competence of someone who refused to let celebration bankrupt them. "Details," she demanded.
"Apprehension test," he said, and told her the version with fewer names and more choices. "Training match," he added, and told her exactly how not to fight.
She considered, then smiled the way people do when their world feels slightly safer. "You made safety beautiful again," she said.
"I made it boring," he corrected.
"You made it watchable," she insisted.
He accepted the compliment on parole.
They ate. The shadow brightened once where her toes crossed the square; it did not ask to be thanked. After, he sat in the rectangle with ankles touching edge and let breath find its own job. The day replayed itself without begging for edits. The zero-pointer. Midoriya's hand. Bakugou's insistence. Aizawa's almost-kindness. Uraraka's steady courage. The way the room obeyed when he decided to make it honest.
The charm in his pocket hummed a single blip. Attention, not pursuit. He didn't go to the window to find its source. He knew.
Across town, Kurobane filed nothing that would make a meeting interesting and wrote everything that made him certain the next one would be dangerous. He typed Subject—first day: restraint under provocation; selects task over theater; notable compatibility with teacher A. He added, in the ledger no one else saw: He refused a fight in front of peers and made dignity contagious. That is more difficult than any throw.
He closed the file. The city exhaled.
Aki set a pen on his notebook the way people set offerings. "Tomorrow," she said, pointing at the calendar where she had written eat / sleep / be boring in three colors. "We do it again."
"We will," he said.
He turned off a light that didn't need to be on and let the room keep its shape. Between masks and mirrors, Class 1-A had met him. He had answered with size, not volume. The shadow approved.
He didn't plan to stand in the spotlight.
He planned to decide where it failed to reach—and what would be safe there.