This Time

Chapter 35

It was quiet except for the tapping of keyboards and the scratch of pen on paper. The teacher workroom was just that - a workroom - and while often it was filled with chatter, now was one of the instances when everyone was actually working diligently.

A loud sneeze startled me out of my groove and my hand jerked, swiping my pen across the page I was marking unintentionally. "Dammit, Toshinori," I complained quietly, not actually as cross as I probably sounded.

"My bad," the hero working at the space beside me apologized sheepishly, grabbing another tissue.

"A summer cold, huh?" Aizawa asked, glancing up from where he sat across from us. "Better not get me sick."

"Wouldn't dream of it," he replied, smiling in spite of how miserable he looked with his nose red and cheeks flushed. "I'll be fine," he assured his coworker.

A frown pulled at my mouth despite his words. This is what you get for running around in the rain yesterday, I thought with a mental head shake. "You're not running a fever, are you?" I asked, reaching out to feel his forehead and he batted my hand away.

"Hey, hey," he complained, "It's just a cold; stop mothering me."

I giggled and rolled my eyes. "Oh, you love it," I teased, and he blushed before ducking his head to resume the lesson plan he'd been working on, trying his best to ignore my jest. Really, that only proved to me that I was right.

Grinning smugly I returned to the student essays I was working on, and scribbled a small apology in the margin of the essay I'd accidentally defaced.

"How's it coming?" Present Mic asked, leaning over my shoulder. Usually he was the one who taught English lessons, but given my experience with writing and the ease I had with the second language, I had been helping out with Mic's classes the most so far.

"So far so good," I hummed. "A couple of these are a little sloppier than I would have expected though."

"Yeah. That usually happens this time of year, what with the students getting excited about the start of work studies," he explained with a look of slight distaste.

I sighed and scrubbed a hand over my face. "That makes sense," I said. "But it's still no excuse to slack off."

"Of course not," Aizawa said. "Which is why they'll be drilled mercilessly in training today."

"What makes you think these are your students' papers I'm grading?" I asked, quirking an eyebrow and half smiling. The essays were actually one of the second year classes, but I was amused that Aizawa seemed to immediately assume it was his group misbehaving.

"I don't care whose they are. The first years have been getting too rambunctious lately," he drawled, and I chuckled.

"They're kids. They're excited," I said a tad too dismissively, and the look my former teacher gave me was most definitely not amused.

"You should know better than that. These 'kids' have a lot riding on them as the next generation of heroes. With our Symbol of Peace retired-" he shot a quick glance at Toshinori, who nodded grimly, "- it's more important than ever that they buckle down and focus."

"I didn't say it wasn't," I defended immediately, "I'm not saying it's not important for them to do their best, but I am saying regardless of responsibility they're still just children. It's okay for them to be excited by something."

"I think we're all guilty of forgetting they're still kids sometimes, especially with this year's group," Toshinori said, eyes contemplative.

"That's fair, yo," Present Mic agreed with a shrug of his shoulders. "These kids have gone through far more than any regular student at their level, and they've grown up quicker because of it."