This Time

Chapter 49

I can do this, I can do this.

A racing heart, shaking hands, and a determined scowl accompanied me as I stepped up to the large metal doors. There was a nervous buzz in the area around me created by others who shuffled nervously, and a few who mumbled self-directed encouragements under their breath. This room housed one of the groups of fifteen, and since the exam today consisted of almost three hundred aspiring heroes, I had to wonder just how many starting rooms the facility must have. It was crazy to think that the winter licensing exam was a relatively small one compared to summer.

I've got this. I can do this.

Flashes of color caught my peripheral vision as the young adults around me moved - either bouncing on their toes to keep limber, grinning excitedly, or nervously shifting from one foot to the other. Their hero costumes glinting under the fluorescent lights were almost blinding, distracting me from my inner mantra.

I can do this. I can do this.

Earlier, the whispers around me had been a bit different. Some had awe, some disgust, and some were merely bemused.

"Wait, I think I recognize the one in the white costume," I'd heard someone say.

"Hey, I saw her on the news! That's Hara Mei!"

"Isn't that the girl All Might's engaged to?!"

"What's she doing here? I thought she used to be a villain or something."

"No, she's a vigilante."

"Obviously not anymore," I couldn't help but interject, raising my voice enough so that the two young men loudly whispering a few feet behind me jumped and turned beet-red. I smirked, looking over my shoulder at the lilac-haired teenager and his snake-skinned friend. "Soon-to-be hero," I corrected them, much to their mortification.

They weren't the only ones failing to keep their voices hushed enough, and I felt a little flutter in my stomach at the ironic thought that the longer I was with Toshinori, the more I was learning what it was like to live life in the spot-light. Once upon a time, I'd told Izuku wistfully that I'd never be the center of attention like the jovial number one hero. I'll always have to stay in the shadows, I'd told him with resignation. Crazy how the times had changed, huh?

Not that I was anywhere near as famous as All Might yet obviously - and all my fame merely came from association and my brief moment of infamy at this point... but maybe someday soon, my name would bring to people's minds the deeds I'd done, not the man I was with. With some luck and a lot of hard work, maybe someday PurFire would be identified as a hero in her own right, and no one would remember she'd once been the vigilante that infiltrated Yūei High School.

But... I still didn't really want the celebrity either. One thing that hadn't changed is what I'd told the boy in that same conversation. I don't really want the fame or glory... that's not why I do what I do. I just want to help people.

"Focus," I scolded myself under my breath, forcing my thoughts back to centering my energy on the task ahead of me. There was no room for distractions today - it was now or never. It felt like I was at a pinnacle of sorts. After all I'd been through, after all I'd dreamed of and all I'd done, here I was with the goal in sight. All I had to do was reach out and take it.

And, you know, battle three-hundred odd people along the way. No biggie.

I can do this. I have to do this.

The exhausted man who'd briefed us before the exam seemed like he'd keel over at any moment as he told us the vague instructions for the trial we faced today. Going into this, Toshinori had very little insight to offer me due to the fact that the exam changed so frequently, and since I hadn't been able to corrupt his morals quite enough to convince him to divulge the events of his own assessment decades ago.