~~~
"I'm gonna ask him."
Akira sat with her arms crossed over her chest on the sofa, Todoroki on one side and Bakugou on the other. She was surprised he had decided to stick around, but perhaps his curiosity had won him over.
"I don't think you should bother him," Todoroki suggests. "If he's keeping it to himself, then he must have a good reason."
"Even shitty hair's acting weird," Bakugou adds, his feet crossed over and resting on the table infront of them.
Kira watched her stubborn classmate, as he eyed Kirishima. A few days had passed since Bakugou punched her lights out and they hadn't even mentioned it at all. Just another subject to gloss over with Bakugou.
"Yeah," Kira murmurs. "Ochaco and Tsu have taken a vow of silence too."
"Midoriya was crying at lunch today," Todoroki points out. "The hero agency's that everyone's working at must be really hard if they're all acting like this."
"Are you stupid or something?" Bakugou comments, tucking his feet down and leaning forward to glare past Kira. "They're all obviously hiding something."
"But what?" Kira voices aloud. "This is why I'm gonna confront him."
It's true, Kira wanted to respect their privacy when it came to whatever was haunting them, but now a few days had passed and the four students were acting even worse, moping around the dormitory with their heads hung low. Whenever they entered a room, they changed the whole atmosphere. It was both annoying and unnerving. So, she had changed her mind and was dying to know what bothered them so much.
Todoroki sounds uncertain. "I still don't think it's a good idea."
"No one was asking for an opinion, Icy Hot," Bakugou remarks. "I need to know what's going on too. Kirishima's behaviour has been pissing me off."
While the three of them were discussing the topic on the sofa, the rest of Class 1A were lost in their own conversations around the rest of the living room. The fact that everyone else was ignoring them was strange enough.
"Is it just those four?" Kira wonders. "The one's who have been accepted to an agency?"
"Tokoyami is also at a hero agency with Hawks, but he's not acting like the others," Todoroki says.
The three of them simultaneously lean forwards in their seats to stare at their classmate as he nods slightly at something Sato has said. Dark Shadow also seems to have included itself in the conversation, nodding the same time as Tokoyami.
"Kinda hard to tell with him though," Kira mumbles. "Tokoyami's always kinda mopey."
"He's not like that stupid nerd." Bakugou shakes his head. "And the other idiots."
"Bakugou's right," Todoroki agrees. "The others seem... upset. Stressed too."
"Don't agree with me!" Bakugou retaliates.
Akira avoids the steadily rising argument by swinging herself up off the sofa. "I'm gonna ask him," she repeats for the billionth time.
"You had better tell me what he says," Bakugou orders. "I wanna know what that bastard's hiding from me."
Kira places her hands on her hips dramatically. "Well, why haven't you asked Kirishima if you wanna know that badly?"
Bakugou looks away then, focusing on a random conversation from a group of their classmates. "Shitty hair has enough on his hands already," he mumbles.
Akira notes on Bakugou's behaviour when it comes to Kirishima and searches around the room for Midoriya. He has some explaining to do.
"Ochaco!" Kira butts in on her conversation, rushing over with a raised hand. "You know where Midoriya is?"
"Deku?" She frowns. "No, why would I know that?" She looks flustered.
Kira rolls her eyes slightly. "Maybe he's outside then," she tells herself, sighing.
Kira approaches the sliding doors that lead to the back garden, stepping out onto the cold patio with her bare feet. She ensures the door is shut tight in case anyone decides to eavesdrop on them. Maybe whatever it is that Midoriya and the others are hiding is actually quite a serious matter.
"Midoriya?" She calls out to the darkness.
"Hello?" He responds, his voice located around the corner of the dorms building. "I'm over here."
She traces her fingers around the wall and finds her classmate in the middle of the grassy clearing, a book on the ground in front of him.
"Is this what you do when I'm not available?" She asks.
"Huh?"
She gestures to the book, open before him.
"Oh!" He picks it up, waving it sheepishly. "It's just some notes on... Iida, actually. He said he doesn't mind!" He gushes. "I've just been using the notes that I've taken to train on my own when I can. Sometimes I look at the notes that I have on you too. Not that I look at you a lot! It's just that your style is very unique and strong and-"
"Whoa, whoa." Kira raises her arms up, as if pushing back a wave of his mutterings. "I never said it was a bad thing. The fact that you keep detailed notes on everything is in fact, a good thing. How else are you supposed to learn?" Kira decides to step towards her classmate, shrugging with one shoulder. "I mean, if we keep notes on our other studies, why shouldn't we do the same with our physical training?"
Midoriya nods at her reasoning. "You're right. So, I hope you don't mind that I've taken a lot of notes about you and your Quirk and your combat skills."
Kira shakes her head with a smile. "By all means..."
"Have you come out here to train too?" He wonders, closing his book.
"Actually, I've been meaning to ask you something."
"Okay." He nods again.
Akira wonders how best to put it when she concludes that perhaps bluntness is the best solution. After all, Midoriya doesn't respond well to peer pressure. The last thing she wants him to do is find a way to tell another lie if he's hiding something bigger than she thinks.
"You're hiding something," she says bluntly, crossing her arms over her chest. "It's been annoying me for a while now, so you need to come clean."
"Uh- hiding something?" The grip on his book tightens, the paper wrinkling under his hold. "What do you mean?"
Kira's brows raise knowingly. "You know what I'm talking about."
Midoriya switches the book into his left hand and subtly wipes his hand on the back of his thigh.
"Look." She sighs, letting her arms swing back down by her sides. "I've been honest about a lot of stuff already. A lot of personal stuff. The least you can do is be honest with me."
"There's just some things that can't be shared," Midoriya mutters his reply, his eyes slowly dropping to the grass beneath them.
"Something like this?" Kira pushes. "Something I can just tell is eating you up inside?"
"Has Kacchan said something?" Midoriya says, his lips barely parting to form the words. "Because he said he wouldn't. He promised."
"Bakugou?" Kira frowns. "N- no. Why would he?"
Midoriya looks up then, returning the frown. "Well... because he knows too."
Akira's frown deepens, shaking her head slightly in confusion. "Knows?" She repeats. "Knows about what? Wait - what are you talking about?"
Midoriya pauses, his lips tight before he returns the question. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about your weirdness these past few weeks. You, Kirishima, Ochaco and Tsu."
"Oh."
"Oh?" She echoes. "Oh?"
"I though you meant-" He sighs heavily, as if in relief. "Nothing."
"No, no, no, no." Kira marches closer to her classmate, wagging her index finger side to side as if she's scolding a family pet. "What the hell are you talking about? And what do you mean: 'Bakugou knows'? Knows about what?"
Midoriya doesn't gift her with answer. He just stares at her with wide eyes and a stubborn lip.
Kira narrows her eyes at her classmate. "I knew something else was going on. I've been hearing some weird things. Like you and Bakugou having a very quiet conversation during our house arrest. You wanted to tell me something, but Bakugou convinced you not to. And now Bakugou said something else recently. He said: 'given'," she rants, spinning on her heel in the cold, frosty grass. "He said that you didn't deserve the power that you were given. Now, what the hell does that even mean? What are you and Bakugou hiding from me!?"
Midoriya's innocent eyes had slowly, but surely transformed into eyes filled with guilt, regret and hurt all at once.
Kira curses herself inside for losing her cool, for freaking out for potentially no reason. After all, these two classmates - Bakugou and Midoriya - what right does she have to pry into their lives? She's known them all of six months. They've known each other for years. How dare she include herself in their secrets? Especially when she has a few of her own still.
"Just forget it," she says quietly, sagging slightly. "I'll ask Kirishima."
Kira turns without expecting a word, about to turn the corner, when her fingers pause on the edge of the building at the sound of his quiet, unsure tone.
"We're planning a siege," Midoriya tells her. "The agency's that we're in - they plan to take down the Shie Hassaikai. Their leader, namely Chisaki, he has a young girl held captive and we think he's abusing her." Midoriya shrugs, almost nonchalantly. "We're just waiting for the go ahead."
Kira turns around slowly, still confused. "So, why does it have all of you so worried? Isn't this a good thing? You finally get to take this monster down. You should be fired up."
"I am," he says. "But... you didn't see her."
No, she didn't. She's too busy trying not to fall behind.
"She clung to me." Midoriya grabs his own arm, just above the elbow. "She pleaded to stay, but I had to let her go. It wasn't the right time. But, I looked into her eyes, so now she's my responsibility to save."
"Midoriya," Kira whispers, stepping back over to him slowly, feeling the individual blades of grass between her toes. "You shouldn't burden yourself like that. Remember, the pro heroes are there - they'll shoulder the most of it."
"But, I had to let her go," he argues. "It's on me to get her back."
"It's not," Kira says with certainty. "It's not. The adults planning the siege - it's their responsibility, their burden. The fact that they're even including you, a minor, is what's shocking to me. We have enough pro heroes to deal with a mob like the Shie Hassaikai."
"Not anymore," Midoriya remarks. "Not with All Might no longer joining the fight. Now, we need all the able bodies to help as we can. Like you said, it's the yakuza - they have an army of loyal criminals included and now that I have my provisional license, I can be a part of it."
Kira looks away at the mention of his license, feeling a pang of guilt and also jealousy deep in her gut. She hated herself for her mistakes, for being so useless in an upcoming situation such as a siege on a notorious gang.
"Just as long as you don't-" she cuts herself off. She was about to say: 'as long as you don't get yourself hurt'. But with Midoriya's Quirk, that's what happens to him. "Don't get in the way," she says instead, hoping that it'll jerk some sense into her classmate.
Akira decides to leave him to his individual training. Getting involved after their riveting conversation is bound to be awkward. Instead, she steps through the glass sliding doors, where her bare feet warm up on the heat of the carpeted floors.
Bakugou notices her approach and stands up quickly, eyeing her for answers. "Well? Spit it out already, you idiot!"
"Bakugou," Todoroki says calmly. "Let her warm up first. She was just out there for quite a while talking to Midoriya and it's starting to get chilly now."
"Oh, shut up!" He bellows, collapsing back down onto the sofa. "Don't you tell me what to do. Besides, it's not even that cold out there!"
Kira places herself back into the same spot she was in earlier, in the middle of her two classmates. They both watch her attentively, apprehensively, waiting for an answer.
She wasn't even sure if they deserved it - Bakugou anyway. Both he and Midoriya were hiding something from her and as much as she wanted to respect their chaotic relationship they had with each other and not be a complete hypocrite, she was positively dying to know the secret. Everytime she merely glanced at one of the two, she was going to reminisce on how they're hiding something from her - something massive.
"It's... nothing," she tells them. "Midoriya just said that the agency he's at is really exhausting. After all, he is working with Sir Nighteye."
"Oh, bullshit! I'm gonna go ask shitty hair!"
Bakugou leaps up from the sofa again and Kira instinctively snatches onto his wrist. Surprisingly, he didn't recoil from her touch, but his head snaps down to her, perched on the edge of her seat.
"Don't," she pleads. "Don't bother him with something like this." She side-eyes Todoroki quickly, hoping Bakugou would get it. "If they're all exhausted with their agency work, then you should just leave Kirishima alone."
She uttered the final word with such depth, that she could only pray that her hidden message got across. Todoroki was a curious person - she didn't want to get him involved in anything happening with Kirishima.
"Let go of me, you idiot," he says lazily, tugging his arm free.
"Please, Bakugou." She too stands from the sofa, staring after him with entreated eyes, as he pauses only two steps away from the sofa.
"Whatever," he mutters. "I'll find out eventually."
As Bakugou decides to sort out his curious heart away from the others, approaching the lift with disputed desires, Todoroki places a warm hand on her shoulder and Kira nearly forgot he was there.
"Everything okay?" He asks, his tone quiet, yet sincere.
Kira places her hand ontop of Todoroki's as she watches Bakugou enter the lift, jamming the button with an expression that could only be described as confliction.
She doesn't even know why she wouldn't tell the truth. Was it a petty reason? Something else? Some of her classmates had a pretty big task ahead of them - she wanted them to succeed. Did she believe that Bakugou would want to get involved if he knew what was really about to happen? He probably would.
Now that she thinks about it, Todoroki probably would want to get involved too. After all, his father is the number one hero. She's sure it would be easy to pull some strings and get involved.
She's glad she kept quiet.
"Yeah," she nearly croaks out. "Everything's fine."
~~~